Spirits in the Wires Read Online Free PDF Page A

nights that I left hardly able to keep my tears in check until I was safe in my apartment with no one to see my despair.
    I didn’t have the same problem when people weren’t actually in my presence. I was able to submit pieces to
Street Times, In the City, The Crowsea Times,
and some of the daily papers—soliciting commissions over the phone and submitting the finished pieces by e-mail. I developed a number of friendships that way, though I made sure to maintain them at a distance. The one time I didn’t was a complete disaster.
    Aaran Goldstein was the book editor for
The Daily Journal
at the time— still is, actually. I’d done a few reviews for him and we’d talked on the phone a number of times when he asked me if I wanted to get together for a drink before a book reading that he had to cover that night. Against my better judgment, because, logically, I knew it wouldn’t work out—why should this be any different from all those openings and shows I’d attended?—I said yes.
    We made plans to meet at Huxley’s—not somewhere I’d have chosen on my own. It’s that bar on Stanton across from Fitzhenry Park where the young execs on their way up congregate after work. Lots of chrome and leather and black glass. Lots of big exotic plants and various flavours of ambient techno music on the sound system. Lots of people who want nothing to do with mysteries or myths or magic, so you know how they’d react to me.
    I started to tell him I was blonde, but he stopped me and assured me we’d have no trouble finding each other.
    â€œDescriptions are for peons,” he said. “But you and I … fate has already decided that we should meet.”
    The weird thing is, he was right. Not about fate—at least not so far as I know—but about our not needing descriptions. I stepped in through the front door of Huxley’s at a little past seven that evening and immediately saw him standing at the bar. I’ve no idea why I recognized him. I guess he just looked like his voice.
    He lifted his head and turned in my direction, smiled, and came to meet me.
    â€œYou see?” he said, taking my arm and steering me back to the bar where a pair of martinis were already waiting for us.
    He clinked his glass against mine.
    â€œTo radiance,” he said. “By which I mean you.”
    Aaran was a good-looking, confident man in his thirties—very trendy with his goatee, his dark hair cut short on the top and sides, drawn back into a small ponytail at the nape of his neck. One ear lobe sported two earrings, the other was unadorned. Pinky ring on each hand. He was wearing Armani jeans, a white T-shirt, and a tailored sports jacket that night. Shoes of Italian leather.
    But the best thing about him—what let me overlook his overly suave mannerisms, what meant more to me than his appearance or his sense of fashion—was that he didn’t get the look in his eyes.
    Five minutes went by. Ten. Fifteen.
    Not once did he seem to get creeped out by me. We just talked—or at least he talked. Mostly I sat on my stool, leaning one arm on the bar top, and listened. But it wasn’t hard. He was well-spoken and had a story about anything and everybody: droll, ironic, sometimes serious.
    We had two drinks at Huxley’s. We went to the reading—Summer Brooks had a new book out,
So I’m a Bitch,
a collection of her weekly columns from
In the City
—and it was just as entertaining as you might imagine, if you follow the columns. We had a lovely dinner at Antonio’s, this little Italian place in the Market. We went down the street to the Scene for another drink and danced awhile. Finally we ended up back at my place for a nightcap.
    We’d been getting along so well, it seemed inevitable to me that we would end up in bed the way we did. I remember thinking I was glad I’d worn some sexy black lace underwear instead of the cotton