What Hides Within Read Online Free PDF Page A

diehard follower of the Brittney child-custody saga. His day wasn't filled with fulfillment.
    When Clive arrived at Harcourt, he did his best to make it unannounced. He sat at his desk, buried his head in his hands, and planned to space out for his first hour of work, a usual Monday ritual. It wasn't until that moment that Clive realized his ear was still clogged.
    "Are you ignoring me?" a gorgeous brunette asked, pressing her shapely hip against the edge of Clive's desk. She hung just over his right shoulder, an angelic beacon in the sea of despair he bitterly called work.
    "What?" Clive asked, barely making out the muffled jargon coming from the woman's perfectly pouted lips. He tugged on his right earlobe and realized his hearing troubles persisted.
    "What were you saying?" He swiveled in his Wal-Mart special, nineteen-dollar desk chair, turning to face the beauty beside him. "I've got some water in my ear that, for some reason, is reluctant to come out. Apparently, I can't hear too much out of it."
    Consuela Maria Avilla Nuñez Gonzalez stared back at her coworker and lunch buddy. Her name being the mouthful that it was, most people, including Clive, just called her Connie.
    Connie was Harcourt's attractive and most sexually harassed receptionist. There were two other receptionists at Harcourt, a male and a female who looked more male than the male. Regardless of her lack of competition, Clive found Connie absolutely perfect, his dream girl, unobtainable. She was tall and leggy, voluptuous and smart. Three nights a week, she attended Bryant College as she worked toward a Master's Degree in Business Administration. Her Harcourt work was temporary, an unhappy but financially necessary stepping stone to a brighter future and a much safer alternative to stripping.
    She seemed to have everything going for her. Yet, for reasons beyond Clive's comprehension, Connie had taken a liking to him. And while most of his male, and some female, coworkers were thinking about how to get her into bed, Clive was thinking about how to get her to go out with him some night for a nice, romantic dinner with some quiet time to get to know each other. If all went well, then he'd try to get her into bed.
    "How long has that been going on?" she asked.
    "Just since last night."
    Clive dismissed his hearing woes as more bad luck. He'd had his share of it in life thus far. So much, in fact, that he learned to downplay it and quickly move on as though it were inconsequential. He could forgive it all, be it his grandmother using an old-school finger method to relieve his constipation at nine; his mom walking in on him while he masturbated to late-night Skinemax at fifteen; his unknowingly breaking his foot during a soccer game, masked by the pain of the simultaneous shot to the testicles he received; his orthodontist informing him that he would need two more years of braces because a gate swung open into his mouth; his walking in on his ex-girlfriend fucking his cousin and his cousin's wife; a seagull taking a pasty-white, liquid shit on his head just last week; and now, an earful of putrefied water causing partial deafness. Such was just another day in the life of Clive Menard.
    "I'm sure it'll just work its way out eventually," he said. "No big deal."
    "I don't know, Clive. Does it hurt?"
    "No. It just sort of feels like I'm wearing an ear plug."
    "You poor thing," she said, resting her arms around his shoulders. Her closeness sent a feeling of uncomfortable excitement coursing throughout Clive's body. He thought about baseball to keep it in check. He often associated Connie with baseball, even when the sport wasn't in season.
    "Well, if it doesn't improve soon, you should probably get it checked. It could be the beginning of an ear infection."
    Clive's face turned sour. "Awe, don't say that." He envisioned nasty micro-bacteria and other unfriendly substances percolating in his recent dunk tank. He wildly fantasized about flesh-eating viruses, bubonic