Résumé With Monsters Read Online Free PDF Page B

saw Monica running toward him. Her arms were stretched out in front of her. Her soft collar did not in any way impede her progress, and she was traveling at a good speed, her short brown hair jumping on her head. A stout, low-to-the-ground woman in slacks, she crossed the slick asphalt gracelessly but with surprising dispatch. She saw Philip at the last minute, acknowledging his presence with a widening of her eyes and a quick, sideways leap.
     
    The pickup truck was right behind her, and Philip saw Helga's round, oddly placid countenance behind the windshield. Philip jumped, but the car's right fender caught him and he was thrown, spinning, in the air. His mind clutched at scraps of the known world: an upside- down tree, parked cars, two karate students in their white pajamalike uniforms turning to look his way, their expressions unreadable but no doubt critical of his floundering passage through the air.
     
    His left leg broke when he hit the ground, a cold, ungainly sound echoing in his teeth, and he did not pass out or even scream, but watched with his head sideways to the wet pavement as the pickup roared on in pursuit of the fleeing Monica.
     
    Monica would have made the curb and the safety of an alley formed by two warehouses, but she fell and as she scrambled to her feet, the truck was upon her and sent her hurtling into the air. Not an aerodynamically sound woman, Monica nonetheless moved with some grace, holding her arms stiffly out from her body and appearing, indeed, to fly. Philip, fresh from his own scrambling, ungainly dive, felt something like admiration and, to his shame, envy.
     
    Monica hit the pavement with the flat smack of a sack of feed hurled from a barn's loft. She did not move.
     
    The Ford turned sharply with a squeal of tires and roared back onto the highway and the young men in their karate garb raced toward the immobile Monica.
     
    As the young men fretted and flapped over the body, they seemed to multiply, becoming a crowd of luminous angels, and then Philip lost interest, overwhelmed by a kind of philosophical calm and disinterest. He heard a long, thin siren wail and wondered, as he always did, what strangers were in jeopardy, what tragedy elicited that plaintive cry.
     

     
    #
     

     
    Lily visited Philip in the hospital. For a moment, Philip did not recognize her. She was disguised as someone's grandmother, in a blue-print dress and one of those small, black hats with tiny pink flowers.
     
    "That's some cast," she said. Philip's left leg was entirely wrapped in plaster and surrounded by a sort of wire scaffolding, as though it were under construction by tiny elves. A silver rod pierced the plaster just above the knee, like a magician's trick.
     
    Lily was holding a large, tropical-looking green plant. "I called your work and they told me what happened. Are you okay?"
     
    Philip said that he was fine. He did not tell her how much he hated hospitals, how the labored breathing of the air conditioning made him feel as though he were in the lair of Dagon or Cthulhu himself.
     
    Lily put the plant on the windowsill and turned back to Philip. Just then Amelia came into the room. Philip's heart jumped.
     
    "Hey Philip," Amelia said. She was wearing a dark suit—no doubt she was out job hunting— and sunglasses.
     
    "Hey," Philip said.
     
    "You're Amelia, right," Lily said.
     
    Don't listen to her stomach , Philip thought, but the fear was unwarranted.
     
    Lily shook Amelia's hand. "I'm Lily Metcalf. I'm Philip's therapist."
     
    "Wow," Amelia said. "Good luck."
     
    Lily told them what she had learned in her call to Philip's office. Monica was still in a coma, and Helga had disappeared, although the police had found her truck at the airport.
     
    "Your boss asked if you could call," Lily said. "He has hired some temps, but he says they are nothing but slackers and cretins, and that if there were some way you could come in... I guess he hasn't visited you or he would know