The Cruel Ever After Read Online Free PDF Page B

think I’ve missed you two.”
    “You’d better call your credit card companies—report the thefts.”
    “Yeah.” He sighed. “Unfortunately, I don’t have the numbers with me. I’ll have to get hold of my assistant back in Istanbul, have him make the calls.” He slipped a cell phone out of his jacket.
    Jane was surprised at how cheap it looked. Maybe he really did live a bare-bones life. “Better get you a pillow and a blanket.”
    “I owe you, Jane. I owe you so much.”
    “We settled all our scores long ago.”
    “I know. Even so, thanks.”

5
    Julia leaned toward the bathroom mirror, applying the finishing touches to her makeup, feeling a kind of grim resignation at the image staring back at her. Severe headaches had dogged her ever since her return to the United States. They’d gone away for a time but in the last few months had returned with a vengeance. Along with the headaches came a kind of continuous nausea. She’d lost weight, which she could hardly afford. She’d already lost too much as a result of the drug-resistant strain of TB she’d contracted while working in southern Africa. The AIDS crisis in that country had consumed her life for the last few years. She would probably still be there if she hadn’t become ill. Her lungs were clean and healthy again, but she wondered if some of the vestiges of the disease—and the cure—weren’t the cause of her current problems.
    A doctor she’d begun to see had put her on a migraine medication that seemed to be helping, although the tests she’d undergone were inconclusive. Except for one. She didn’t have a brain tumor. She’d been so busy starting up a free outreach clinic in downtown Minneapolis that she hadn’t had the time to study the headache issue herself. She did know that migraines didn’t come in clusters, the way hers did. Sometimes she would experience five or six headaches a day, lasting from a few minutes to a few hours. It was debilitating and frustrating when she had so much work to do.
    Julia’s medicine chest was full of medications, most of which didn’t work. She was seeing the medical profession from a different point of view these days, and it wasn’t pretty. Nevertheless, she had made progress on the free clinic, which was her primary goal at the moment, and that gave her a sense of accomplishment even in the midst of personal chaos.
    Last February, Julia had rented a fully furnished Uptown penthouse loft. She’d been looking around for a place to buy but ended up subletting from a man who planned to spend the next couple of years working on a business venture in China. With spectacular, virtually unimpeded views of Lake Calhoun to the west and Uptown to the north, not to mention green building practices, it was everything she’d been looking for and more. She’d asked her lawyer to negotiate a clause in the rental agreement that allowed her first crack at buying the place, just in case the owner ended up staying in China.
    Working in southern Africa for several years had changed her perspective on life and the world—and her values vis-à-vis that world. If she hadn’t had some persuasive reasons for sticking around the Twin Cities, she would have returned. She’d never taken a salary while she was there. She couldn’t. There were so many problems, so much pain and heartache, political corruption, and poverty, and yet the people themselves were generous, dignified, and deeply brave. They were also under the sway of religious traditions that gave them license to live dangerously when it came to HIV and prevented them from getting the help they so desperately needed. One day she would go back. She was sure of very few things these days, but that was a given.
    After filling the electric teakettle in the kitchen, switching it on, and making sure the mugs and biscotti were set out on a tray, ready to take into the living room, she drifted over to the piano, pulled out the bench, and sat down. This was turning into