Night Things: A Novel of Supernatural Terror Read Free

contact with her father. Perhaps because it was a moment she had looked forward to for so long, she just didn’t want to rush into it. Or perhaps she wanted to wait until she had a more impressive job (and she did, for by that time she had become a staff writer at People Beat). Whatever the case, it was with both joy and profound nervousness that she visited her father’s spacious home in Westchester.
    The meeting was anticlimactic to say the least. Far from being the luminous and larger-than-life figure she remembered, her father was short and paunchy. In fact, he was exactly the sort of man she usually detested—perfectly coiffed hair (stiff with hair spray and carefully combed in a large wavy sheet to conceal a burgeoning bald spot), shiny and manicured nails, oppressive cologne. And of course there was the cigar, a Dunhill Montecristo No. 1.
    Nor was he even the warm and affectionate man she remembered, let alone the knight to wipe clean all the ruinous memories of her childhood. He was stiff and ill at ease. Rather than being impressed at her successes, he seemed resentful of them. They spent an uncomfortable afternoon together, and when it was over Lauren was appalled to realize that she had felt more relaxed with his wife, a darkly tanned and vaguely blowsy redhead named Tiffany, than she had with him.
    Her father was not the only man with whom she had had an ill-fated relationship. About six months after the Westchester fiasco a girlfriend invited her to go to a gallery opening, and there, while looking at sculptures created by placing bundles of multicolored wire beneath the wheels of subways and while drinking white wine out of a clear plastic wine goblet, she met the the man who was to become the second significant male figure in her life, a Hungarian painter named Miklos.
    As with Stephen, her attraction to Miklos had been immediate. Miklos was not as handsome as Stephen was, but he possessed a certain panache. Tall, thin, and given to wearing only the newest Italian fashions, he cut a most striking figure. He was also one of the best-read human beings she had ever met, and what with his intoxicating accent and her discovery that he was a staggeringly talented painter, her heart was quickly lost to him.
    For the better part of a year their relationship proceeded without a hitch. Although she had had several boyfriends in college, he was the first man to bring her regularly to orgasm. He was also the first man she had ever met who was sensitive to every one of her foibles, and they quickly developed such a rapport they both started remarking that it seemed almost as if they could read each other’s minds.
    That Christmas they were married, and two months later she found out she was pregnant. It was, however, the beginning of the end. Despite Miklos’s initial excitement at the prospect of having a child, as her pregnancy advanced he became increasingly irritable. Although they had both agreed on having a baby, he fought bitterly when she tried to convert a portion of their loft to a nursery, and by the time the baby was born he had become totally convinced that being a successful father and a successful painter were two mutually incompatible things.
    They toughed it out for another few months before Lauren took their son, Garrett, and moved into an apartment of her own. Although it wasn’t until another year had passed that she filed for divorce, she never really saw Miklos again.
    Throughout Garrett’s childhood, her bad luck with men continued. After Miklos she met Peter. Peter worked for a rival magazine, and her relationship with him ran smoothly until he stole a story idea from her that she thought she had discussed with him in confidence. After Peter she met Julian, who turned out to be one of the worst hypochondriacs she had ever met. And after Julian, Stan, a stockbroker who seemed perfect in every way, until he was indicted on an insider-trading charge.
    And after that things continued pretty much