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Chapter 3 - Fear
Barbara fell asleep at sunset in Michael’s robe. Michael was able to undress privately and read in his rollaway bed as if he were alone. He had two issues of The Economist, a pamphlet from CCH on the latest tax law revisions, the latest Journal of Taxation, and a guidebook to Paris. For years, he had found the articles in The Economist soothing after a long week of work and outings with Sonya. But not this night. He found himself in the middle of articles not knowing what he had read the past minutes or hours. He could not find a comfortable position. The light was all wrong. His glasses kept fogging up. He switched from magazine to magazine to the guidebook and back. He had never seen Europe yet for years the retuning of the economic and political machine described in The Economist had fascinated him. Nothing he saw on the ground so far resembled the images he had formed. He had no way to know if the Thatcherite revolution had changed London or not. Nothing in his reading had prepared him for drivers coming from the wrong side of the road or mandatory tips for bad French service. It certainly had not prepared him for Sonya leaving. Nothing he read interested him or held his attention. Exhausted and scared, he turned out the light and lay under the covers. His best tool for relaxing, a long, thought provoking read, had failed. He heard Barbara breathing. It was like sleeping next to Sonya. Another attractive women he could not touch. A single, crisp, brown leaf, blowing loosely in the wind, bobbing up and down, directionless, never landing, appeared in his mind as he fell asleep.
Barbara woke in the middle of the night, read, wrote notes to herself on the hotel stationary, and left the room for a walk as soon as light appeared in the sky.