Lying In Bed Read Online Free PDF Page B

a man but I had no interest in experiencing anything like it again.
    It was only when I stepped out onto the floor that I knew I was looking for Grace. To ask her to take over for me with Gideon Brown. To hope she would read something in my mood or my inflections or my eyes that would encourage her to take me in her arms and hug me and tell me that everything would be all right. To be, for a few minutes, the recipient of the motherly Grace that was the best she offered.
    I’d never walked out on a client before. But she and I had talked about the possibility of needing to when I first went to work for her. She warned me that it was conceivable for a man or, for that matter, a woman to come in ostensibly to hire me to write a letter, but to take advantage of our being in a room alone together. The fact that I wrote erotic letters and stories for hire might not be that far a leap for someone to make and assume I would perform for them in some erotic way also. So we had a protocol set up: an alarm button under my desk that I could press without anyone noticing and hat would alert her and most of the rest of the sales staff.
    I’d never had to use it. I’d never been in danger with a customer. And the kind of danger I felt from Gideon was not like that. It was inside my head.
    I’d forgotten to use the button. My need to get away from him quickly had been that urgent.
    In front of me was the central, wide-open aisle that branches off into all the different areas of the store. Grace might be working in any one of them.
    First, I walked through the ribbon department where Debra, a saleswoman, was working with a customer in front of the kaleidoscopic wall of ribbons, arranged row after row by color.
    Debra was taking out spools of different blues, holding them against a sheet of foil wrapping paper, waiting for the customer’s yea or nay, and then putting them back. Ephemera stocks more than 500 different ribbons which sell by the foot or the yard. The most expensive, at fifty dollars a yard, was made of hand sewn lavender florets surrounded by leaves.
    Some ribbons were edged with gold, others were wired so that once the bows were formed they would hold their shape. There were heavy satins and silks in every hue, in several different thicknesses, from a quarter of an inch to three inches. Grosgrain, chiffon, tapestry, patterns, and solids. We even stock a ribbon made of real silver so thin you could use it to sew with.
    Grace wasn’t in the decorative paper department either. We offer a selection of more than 100 different designs from all over the world. Large sheets, 24 inches by 36 inches, hung over wooden dowels the way newspapers were sometimes displayed in libraries.
    We had more than two dozen different marbleized papers all made in Florence, Italy. Flames of gold, oranges, reds, or swirls of turquoise, azure and purple. Other papers came from China and Japan, some made from rice with petals of real flowers woven into their fibers, or printed with vibrant colors, repeating patterns of fans, butterflies or wisteria blossoms.
    You could also find paper in several sizes in every solid color from rustic browns to shimmering sea green. Most had envelopes to match.
    Continuing on, I glanced at the wooden glass-fronted cabinets that display a wide assortment of writing instruments – from expensive lacquer Mont Blancs to unusual, old fashioned fountain pens that need to be dipped in ink wells. But she wasn’t working there. Nor was she at the showcase of antique seals or two shelves of sealing wax in brilliant shades.
    Crisscrossing through side aisles of arts and crafts items, greeting cards, the pre-made stationery, journals - some covered in alligator, others in suede, date-books and photo albums, I kept looking for her. Usually walking through this Ali Baba’s cave of delight stimulates my senses. Normally I stopped to look at the ribbons, the papers, the imagery on the stickers to hunt around the hundreds of rubber