Read Online The Wrong Stuff by Sharon Fiffer - Free Book Online Page B

to make it more perfect, more complete? Look to nature to find what you need as opposed to what you might want. A brook is a small treasure when it has the right amount of water, a danger when it overflows its banks. We think of a flood as an aberration, a crisis. What about the flood of useless items overflowing your kitchen cupboards and closet shelves?
    Belinda had a point. The trees were perfect, the brook babbled, even the stones in the path seemed the perfect mix of pattern and randomness. The sun, sinking lower in the sky, sent the light slicing through this clean and crisp air, providing picture-perfect illumination.
    Yes, Belinda. Jane thought, I don’t need anything in this moment except what nature has given me: trees, water, stones, light. Even the red wool plaid shirt by the water’s edge seemed a welcome splash of contrasting color on the landscape. Oh, Belinda, if only you were here to see this man drinking in the clear water, in this perfect setting, thought Jane, noting that the only sounds were the whispering leaves and the few faint notes of Mozart that filtered down from the barn.
    Jane watched the man at the water’s edge. The realization that he wasn’t drinking, wasn’t moving, wasn’t breathing, washed over her slowly at first, then flooded her system. She ran to his side and pushed him over, getting his face out of the water. She listened for breath, then started hitting his chest, breathing into his mouth, hoping she remembered her CPR class instructions. She heard footsteps behind her, turned, and saw Tim punching numbers on his cell phone. Someone new came up behind her, moved her aside, and took over the CPR, pleading with the plaid-shirted man between breaths, “Come on, Rick, damn it, come on.”
    Jane turned to Tim, who had just finished giving directions over the phone and whispered, “‘We at Campbell and LaSalle’ seem to have a dead man on our hands.”

5

    I once visited a client who described herself as completely happy while shopping. The happiness turned to depression as soon as she returned home and found that she had no proper place for her new “find.” How many objects can you see, just by looking around in your own space, that have no “proper place?” Does it make you feel disturbed, claustrophobic, out of control?
    â€”B ELINDA S T. G ERMAIN, Overstuffed
    Blake Campbell stood in front of the large, stone mantel in the great room of the main lodge and faced those assembled. Although he claimed to have been sleeping when he was summoned from “quiet time,” he now looked alert, competent, with a sad-but-of-course-I’ll-cope-someone-has-to-lead-the-troops tightness around his perfect mouth. Jane had never seen anyone in person who looked and sounded more like a model, and she had been in advertising for over fifteen years. Still, she shook her head and whispered to Tim that she had never even seen a head shot as perfect looking as Blake Campbell in the flesh.
    â€œHe’s always reminded me of a sketch—no flesh and blood. Like those Hamilton cartoons in the New Yorker . The rich, naïve narcissists,” said Tim, adding, “he’s a nice guy, though. I’ve always liked Blake. His looks have worked against him actually. And his name. And his money. No one takes him seriously.”
    â€œMy favorite was when the man and woman are in this barn looking at a hen and the guy is holding an egg up and saying, ‘Nature never ceases to blow my mind,’” said Jane.
    Tim looked at her.
    â€œMy favorite Hamilton cartoon,” Jane said. “Who’s the reality check?”
    Jane gestured toward another man who walked in and stood next to Blake Campbell. For every impeccable cashmere strand woven into Blake Campbell’s Missoni sweater, this man had an answering unraveled acrylic thread dangling from his generic V-neck. The unshaven scruff that added just the right touch of