The Glimpsing Read Online Free PDF

dress.   It was eventually selected for the cover of GQ with a caption that read: “The Brazilian Invasion! ”, which referred to the current influx of talented Brazilian actresses suddenly gaining notoriety in Tinseltown .   Jack had long planned to add the now world famous image of a white-faced Portia rising through a pool of creamy milk sprinkled with scores of rose petals, but that image, up to this point anyway, remained conspicuously absent from the gallery.
    He held the painting up, passing it along the wall, searching for a suitable spot in which to hang the piece.   There were no paintings in the gallery, and on any other occasion he would not have considered adding this one, but the artistry of Portia’s creation (if indeed it had really been she who painted it) was so detailed, so masterfully produced, that it could easily be mistaken for a photograph.
    Finding no room, Jack put the painting atop the dresser, which sat just below and slightly right of the gallery’s center.   He stared at it, the striking color of the woman’s red dress summoning all the attention of his eyes.   It was gnawingly familiar.   He let his mind roam, sifting back through folds of memory... and then it came to him.   Portia’s house.   The closet.   The red he’d seen there.
    He extended both hands, leaning them against the dresser, and remembered.
     
    The door stood before him like some queer idolatrous totem.   It was ominously large, intimidating, a tyrant carved from beautiful brown mahogany.
    He swung a flask of bourbon to his lips and emptied it with a prolonged tilt of his head.   He stumbled a bit from the movement, taking a step back to keep from falling.   He set his bloodshot eyes on the door and cursed it, as if it had reached out and shoved him.
    He crammed the flask into his rear jean pocket, then stood up straight.   He took two steps forward, reached up, and grasped the door’s knob.   He immediately let it go.   Something strange had gone through him, like a wave of dark light.   He stared up at the door again.   He felt… warned.   Like he should simply turn around and go back home.
    For a moment, he considered doing just that: turning around and going back home. But then he saw it again, the vision that had led him here: those soft, staring eyes, that delicate hand taking hold of his, and he forgot all else.
    He turned the knob slowly.   Only a thin black slit had formed in the door when he found himself hesitating again.   Once more he suppressed a guttural urge to go home, and gave the door a rebellious push.   It swung open effortlessly, without the slightest creak, as if carried along by a gentle wind.   Slowly, gradually, the bedroom peeled into view.
    It was dampened by soft shadows, here and there broken up by the blue-gray glow of moonlight.   There was a closet on his left, the door of which Portia had apparently neglected to fully close.   A tall thin window toward the room’s rear stared at him like a lone rectangular eye.   Nearby was a sizeable vanity, and finally, all the way on the right, opposite the closet, was an image so wondrous it literally took his breath away: Portia, sleeping soundlessly on a large and opulent bed.
    A sly, intoxicated grin creased his face.   He let his eyes drop to the door’s threshold, then excitedly prepared to step inside.
    What Jack was about to do had been forbidden.   From the very beginning of their courtship, Portia had strictly warned him to never enter her bedroom.   It was a dictum he had never understood, but he wasn’t going to lose sleep over it (in his experience, most wealthy people had their share of idiosyncrasies).   But gazing into Portia’s bedroom, he now understood it even less.   There was nothing to fear here, no cause for alarm.   No hidden corpses or ghosts roaming within.   It was just a bedroom, an apparently lavish one, yes, but a bedroom still the same.
    He eased a foot over the threshold, and quietly