Things Withered Read Online Free PDF

a mentor and benefactor. As far as I could tell, the most popular part of the reception was not Leaving Robert at all, but the champagne, which people seem to over-consume. I limited myself to a single glass and sipped daintily. Not that anyone noticed. I remained invisible.
    So better to see things.
    Bunches and cliques are common in any office, and I happened to note them, perhaps for the first time. Except for Leaving Robert and two of the other office-dwellers, there were no senior staff on the scene until ten minutes to quitting time. They came into the pit en masse and got drinks and ate a bit of the leftover cheese and crackers that had been laid out for the send-off.
    Oscar was among them, as was Richard. I thought about wandering over to their group, knowing the names only of those in my division, my colleagues, some of years, some of months, such as The Lacey Thing, my shadow that long month now well past.
    I just couldn’t. I attempted simple eye contact with Oscar, a smile and a nod, and went home. Enough.
    It was strictly due to nerves, when I couldn’t sleep that night. I was overwrought with the idea that I wouldn’t be getting that office. That, after all this time, I wouldn’t be moving up. That I would be retiring in ten years at the same desk I was at now.
    To calm myself I was cleaning. It was after midnight and I had yet to go to bed. I was in my good robe because I had recently begun a campaign to try and look my best. The diet had topped out at about six pounds and it was beginning to feel like I was wasting my time, that there would forever be six pounds out there with my name on it, and no matter where I dropped it, it would find its way home to my arse.
    Instead, I was using makeup, hair and clothing tips to camouflage my problem areas. It was a great deal more work and rather than the scale, it required much more mirror gazing than I was used to.
    Worse, I wasn’t sure it helped.
    I began cleaning a junk drawer that had plagued us for years. It was amazing how many odd things accumulated. For instance in that drawer were no less than three packages of birthday candles and for the life of me I couldn’t remember the last time a birthday had been celebrated with cake in this apartment, let alone candles. They went into the garbage.
    It just so happened that I ran across a spare key in the drawer too, with a rubber Marge Simpson on the fob.
    Aw.
The Bramleys’ old key. I held it a moment, remembering how very long ago Marg had given it to me, back when her children were younger, and I kept plants, and the occasional time conflict that required one or the other of us to unlock doors for school-aged children, or water something.
    Oh the days.
    I took the key up to the Bramleys’ apartment. I would put it inside for her older son to find. The fob at least, was a nice reminder of his mother, who could be quite a funny woman when she wanted to be.
    I slid the key into the lock and it worked smoothly in spite of gunk clinging to the grooves on the key from years in a junk drawer (likely source: birthday candle wax). I stepped inside and stepped onto something. The floor was gritty.
    I looked down. Along the edge of threshold, there was white something. It took only a moment to figure out what it was.
    Salt. It ran in a line across the doorway, except for where I had stepped and disturbed it. I frowned, stepped more carefully with my other foot, not to disturb it.
    Curious. And oddly familiar.
    There was more I saw. There was salt on each window sill and what might have been more in the bottom of the light fixture in the dining room.
    I put the key on the counter in plain view and went out the way I came in, careful not to disturb it any more than I had.
    Oddly familiar.
    Just after Clara had died, I had gone into her apartment to take a few measurements, to look the place over, since I would be brokering the place. Of course out of curiosity, I went to the window where she’d done the high dive and