Things Withered Read Online Free Page A

that breathless way of hers. With Gig everything is an exciting event or a horrible tragedy that had to be shared in great hunks of breath.
    “It’s the Bramleys! Their cruise ship! Some horrible virus or food poisoning or something. Everyone is sick! It was on the news—oh are you getting their mail?”
    I pulled their mail out. Bills and invitations to half-off sales. The Bramleys were America’s greatly appreciated tax bracket, the upper middle class and their disposable income was snatched at as often as possible, one half at a time.
    “Are they ill? Have you heard from them? They’re due back day after tomorrow.”
    “But they might be quarantined! It’s on the
news.
”
    I begged off a longer chat and didn’t think about it again until Kevin got home and put on the news. I wasn’t listening at all. I was distracted. Things at work seemed to be getting worse, or I was getting paranoid. I was feeling isolated, between Lacey, the new territories,
sparkling
. Too many new faces at the office. I had never really thought about how often I had been passed over for promotion. Sometimes now, I felt almost a sense of embarrassment, like a cougar at the club. As if I was overstaying my welcome. Or at least that I should be in one of those offices,
dammit
.
    I was obsessing over that when Kevin said something.
    “I’m sorry darling, what?”
    “I said—isn’t that the ship that Marg and Teddy are on?” I looked up and the video was of a cruise ship at a safe distance. The caption under the video was “Death Ship.”
    “Oh my god, that’s a little dramatic, I hope?”
    “Apparently twelve people have died.” He looked at me, concerned. “Maybe we should call someone.”
    Later that night I couldn’t help but remember the thing the Queen of England had said the year after Diana and Charles had broken off their marriage, when affairs had been exposed, when her favourite castle had burned up, favourite paintings included, when her daughter-in-law was caught on tape discussing the family, when her son was caught on tape discussing feminine protection. She had said it was her “annus horribilis.”
    So it was for The Windemere.
    The Bramleys were dead. It took seven phone calls, but we reached Marg’s sister in Florida. They’d gotten news that afternoon. Marg had died the day before, and Ted that morning.
    Their son-in-law would be picking up the keys from us in the next couple of weeks.
    The Bramleys. Barney. Poor old Clara.
    Horribilis. I hoped not
annus.
    There were, unfortunately, several more bad nights after the news of the Bramleys. My poor sleeping habits became worse. The Bramleys had four children and six grandchildren. They had just begun a happy retirement. It was just a terrible thing that served to make me think too much and too often of my own mortality. And Kevin’s. What would I do without Kevin, should anything happen to him? Poor Kevin woke up more than once to find me staring at his chest, making sure he was breathing. He joked, was I waiting for him to die, or making sure he didn’t?
    It distracted me at least as much as my other thoughts.
    I had decided that it was time to speak up about a promotion. I had been much like a kid when these things were announced, trying very hard to be happy for the winning person, so to speak, and not too bitter over my own disappointments, especially since the disappointment belonged to me and me alone. I rarely if ever put myself forward for much at all, beyond tossing my name into the ring. I didn’t politic for these things, expecting instead to be rewarded on a system of, if not merit, then surely seniority. This had turned out not to be so.
    Along with this morbid turn of thoughts and newfound gumption, I found myself more than once at the mercy of a terrible anger. It would rise in me unexpectedly and be a devil to put down again. I raged internally at my infernal co-workers, my pitiful desk by the window, the denial of new territory when a