Pharaoh Read Online Free PDF

imagine living without seem just about bearable.
    H IS WIFE , Judy, was looking very elegant, perfectly made up and coifed, just like when he used to take her out to dinner at Charlie Trotter’s, her favourite restaurant, or to a concert at Orchestra Hall. In a sudden flush of anger, he thought that in just a week or two – or a couple of days, for hell’s sake – she’d be using her wiles – her low necklines, her voice, that way she had of crossing her legs – to entice someone else, to get herself invited out to dinner and to bed.
    And he couldn’t help but imagine what she’d do in bed, with this someone else, and imagining it, thought that she’d be better than she had ever been with him. All this while the judge told them to be seated and asked whether there was any chance of reconciling the differences that had led to their separation.
    He would have liked to say yes, that for him nothing had changed, that he loved her as much as the first time he’d seen her, that his life would be loathsome without her, that he missed her dreadfully, that he would have thrown himself at her feet and begged her not to leave him, that the night before he had found, forgotten at the back of a drawer, one of her slips and that he had gathered it to his face to breathe in her scent, that he couldn’t give a shit about his dignity, that he would let her walk all over him if only she came back.
    Instead he said, ‘The terms of the separation have been duly considered and accepted by each one of us, Your Honour. Both of us agree in requesting this divorce.’
    Judy nodded, and then each of them signed the divorce papers and the alimony agreement, which was completely unrealistic as he hadn’t worked in months and his resignation would be officially accepted in a few hours’ time.
    They took the elevator together and descended for two unnerving minutes. Blake would have liked to say something fitting, something important. Something that she would never be able to forget. As the floor numbers followed each other relentlessly on the panel, he realized that he could not think of any memorable phrase and that, anyway, it wouldn’t have made any difference. But when she left the elevator and walked into the lobby without even saying goodbye, he followed her and said, ‘But . . . why, Judy? Bad things happen to everyone, you know, a string of negative coincidences, that can happen . . . Now that it’s all over, at least tell me why.’
    Judy looked at him for an instant without showing any emotion, not even indifference. ‘There is no why, Bill.’ He hated it when she called him Bill. ‘The fall follows the summer and then comes winter. Without a why. Good luck.’
    She left him standing in front of the building’s glass doors, still as a toy soldier in the midst of the snow that was still falling in big flakes.
    On the pavement, sitting on a piece of cardboard propped against the wall, was a man bundled up in an army jacket, with a long beard and greasy hair, begging. ‘Anything to spare for me, brother? I’m a Vietnam vet. Give me a few coins so I can put something warm in my stomach on Christmas Eve.’
    ‘Well, I’m a Vietnam vet too,’ he lied, ‘so don’t break my balls.’ But when he looked at him briefly, he saw that there was more dignity in the eyes of even this poor devil than there was in his own. He found a dollar in his jacket pocket. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to be offensive,’ he said, throwing the money into the hat in front of the man. ‘It’s been a really bad day.’
    ‘Merry Christmas,’ replied the man, but Blake didn’t hear him, because he was already too far away and because he too, in that moment, was drifting through the freezing air like one snowflake among many, weightless and without a destination.
    He walked on and on without being able to think of anywhere he’d like to be or anyone he’d like to be with, apart from his old friend Bob Olsen, who had supported and encouraged him