Praying for Sleep Read Online Free PDF

study of psychiatry.
    Kohler again yawned painfully, picturing his home—a condominium a half hour from here. This was a rural area, where he could have afforded a very big house and plenty of property. But Kohler’s goal had been to forsake land for convenience. No lawn mowing or landscaping or painting for him. He wanted a place to which he might escape, small and contained. Two bedrooms, two baths and a deck. Not that it didn’t have elements of opulence—the condo contained one of the few cedar hot tubs in this part of the state, several Kostabi and Hockney canvases and what was described as a “designer” kitchen (“But aren’t all kitchens,” he had slyly asked the real-estate broker, “designed by somebody? ” and enjoyed her sycophantic laughter). The condo, which was on a hilltop and looked out over miles and miles of patchwork woods and farm-land during the day and the sparkling lights of Boyleston at night, was—quite literally—Kohler’s island of sanity in a most insane world.
    Yet tonight he made his way back into the halfway house and climbed the creaking stairs to a room that measured ten by twelve feet and was outfitted only with a cot, a dresser and a metal mirror bolted to the wall.
    He stripped off his suit jacket and loosened his tie then lay on the cot, kicking off his shoes. He looked out the window at a dull spray of stars then, lowering his eyes, saw a ridge of clouds in the west slicing the sky in half. The storm. He’d heard it was supposed to be a bad one. Although he himself liked the rain, he hoped there wouldn’t be any thunder, which would terrify many of his patients. But this concern passed immediately from his mind as he closed his eyes. Sleep was all he could think of now. He could taste it. He felt the fatigue ache in his legs. He yawned cold tears into his eyes. And in less than sixty seconds he was asleep.

3
    They signed their names a dozen times and became millionaires.
    A hundred sheets of paper, filled with scrolly writing, peppered with words like whereas and hereby, sat on the desk before the two women. Affidavits, receipts, tax returns, releases, powers of attorney. Owen, stern and looking very much the lawyer, circulated each document and said, “Duly executed,” every time a signature was scratched upon a sheet. He’d squeeze his notarial seal and sign his own name with a Mont Blanc and then check off another item on his closing sheet. Portia seemed amused at his severity and on the verge of needling him about it. Lis on the other hand—after six years of marriage—had grown used to her husband’s playing Rumpole and paid little attention to his gravity.
    “I feel,” she said, “like a president signing a treaty.”
    The three of them were in the den, encircling the massive black mahogany desk that Lis’s father had bought in Barcelona in the sixties. For this occasion—the closing of his estate—Lis had unearthed a shellacked découpage poster that she herself had made ten years ago. It had been a decoration for the party following the sale of her father’s business and his retirement. On the left side of the canvas was pasted a photograph of his company’s very first sign, a small hand-painted rectangle from the early fifties, which read, L’Auberget et Fils Ltd. Next to it was a glossy photo of the huge billboard that crowned the company when it was sold: L’Auberget Liquor Importing, Inc. Around the border was Lis’s own diligent, stiff rendering of vines and grapes, done in purple and green marker. The years had turned the shellac coating a deep, sickly yellow.
    Although the old man had never discussed the company with his daughters (there was no male heir; the fils was strictly for image), Lis—as executrix of the estate—had learned what an astonishing businessman her father had been. She knew from his frequent absences throughout her childhood that he’d been addicted to his job. But she’d never guessed, until their mother died and