Library of the Dead Read Online Free

performance review. If she had unexpectedly returned, he would have tried out some new techniques on her, but Jennifer was still--gone.
    He loosened his tie, kicked off his shoes, and opened the small liquor cabinet under the TV set. Her envelope was tucked under his bottle of Johnnie Walker Black, the same place he had found it the day she did a runner on him. On it, she had written Fuck You in her distinctive feminine scrawl. He poured a large one, propped his feet on the coffee table, and for old times' sake reread the letter that revealed things about himself he already knew. A clatter distracted him midway through, a framed picture toppled by his big toe. Zeckendorf had sent it: the freshman roommates at their reunion the previous summer. Another year--gone.
    An hour later, hazy with booze, he was flooded with one of Jennifer's sentiments: you are flawed beyond repair.
    Flawed beyond repair, he thought. An interesting concept. Unfixable. Unredeemable. No chance for rehabilitation or meaningful improvement.
    He switched on the Mets game and fell asleep on the sofa.

    Flawed or not, he was at his desk by 8:00 A.M. the next morning, digging through his Outlook in-box. He banged out a few replies then sent an e-mail to his supervisor, Sue Sanchez, thanking her for having the managerial prowess and foresight to recommend him for the seminar he had just attended. His sensitivity had increased about forty-seven percent, he reckoned, and he expected she would see immediate and measurable results. He signed it, Sensitively, Will , and clicked Send.
    In thirty seconds his phone rang. Sanchez's line.
    "Welcome home, Will," she said, oozing treacle.
    "Great to be back, Susan," he said, his southern accent flattened by all the years spent away from the Florida panhandle.
    "Why don't you come and see me, okay?"
    "When would be good for you, Susan?" he asked earnestly.
    "Now!" She hung up.
    She was sitting behind his old desk in his old office, which had a nice view of the Statue of Liberty thanks to Mohammed Atta, but that didn't irritate him as much as the puckered expression on her taut olive face. Sanchez was an obsessive exerciser who read service manuals and management self-help books while she worked out. She always appealed to him physically, but that sour mug and nasal officious tone with its Latina twang doused his interest.
    Hastily, she said, "Sit. We need to have a chat, Will."
    "Susan, if you're planning on chewing me out, I'm prepared to handle it professionally. Rule number six--or was it number four?: 'when you feel you are being provoked, do not act precipitously. Stop and consider the consequences of your actions, then choose your words carefully, respectful of the reactions of the person or persons who have challenged you.' Pretty good, huh? I got a certificate." He smiled and folded his hands across his nascent paunch.
    "I'm so not in the mood for your BS today," she said wearily. "I've got a problem and I need you to help me solve it." Management-speak for: you're about to get shafted.
    "For you? Anything. As long as it doesn't involve nudity or mess up my last fourteen months."
    She sighed, then paused, giving Will the impression she was taking rule number four or six to heart. He was aware that she considered him her number one problem child. Everyone in the office knew the score:
    Will Piper. Forty-eight, nine years Sanchez's senior. Formerly her boss, before getting busted from his management grade back to Special Agent. Formerly breath-catchingly handsome, a six-plus-footer with I-beam shoulders, electric-blue eyes, and boyishly rumpled sandy hair, before alcohol and inactivity gave his flesh the consistency and pallor of rising bread dough. Formerly a hotshot, before becoming a glib pain-in-the-ass clock-watcher.
    She just spat it out. "John Mueller had a stroke two days ago. The doctors say he's going to recover but he'll be on medical leave. His absence, particularly now, is a problem for the office.