Reality Matrix Effect (9781310151330) Read Free Page A

around the room, groaning and
clutching first at his back, then at his head, then at his
rump.
    “I guess your 37-year-old bones just can’t
take it anymore!” she taunted.
    He straightened abruptly and turned toward
Rayna, his deep-blue eyes tracing the contours of her slender body
from head to toe and back again. “C’m’ere, Teach,” he said, as he
took her in his arms.
    Their lips met in a kiss that melted away all
pretense.
    Rayna’s long, thin fingers played with the
curly locks of light-brown hair at the base of his neck. “I love
you, Mr. Attorney,” she told him. “I don’t think I could have
gotten through the last few days without you.”
    It was a magnificent spring day, and the
morning’s tennis match had helped divert her thoughts, but she
couldn’t put it off forever. Eventually, she was going to have to
open that box.
    “How about getting a little light in here?”
Keith suggested.
    The gloom inside the apartment reminded Rayna
once again of the awful hole Al Frederick’s sudden death had left
in her life. Wordlessly, she moved to the wall and activated an
electronic circuit to countermand the “opaque” instruction she had
last given to the sliding glass door that separated her living room
from a small patio outside.  
    “The permastore’s still on the coffee table,
I see,” Keith noted, jerking his head toward the environmentally
sealed container.
    “Right where I left it last week.”
  
    “Yeah,” Rayna nodded numbly. “I haven’t
touched it. I was going to open it half a dozen times, but
I—I....” 
    He walked over to where she stood, still
facing the wall, and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “It’s
been pretty rough on you, hasn’t it, babe?  Especially
yesterday—going through all his things like that.”
    Rayna grunted affirmatively and turned to
face him.
    “That was the first time I’d been inside Al’s
place since it happened. Even with most of his stuff sold off, it
was eerie. There were just enough of his personal things to remind
me of where I was. But it seemed so...so...so empty . I guess
I still find it hard to believe he’s dead.”
    Keith nodded. “Yeah, well, you have to expect
that sort of thing when somebody dies unexpectedly. It’s not 
like he’d been sick, so that you could have prepared yourself. Give
yourself a chance.”   
    “But it’s already been more than a month,”
she said, exasperated with herself. At 34, she should be able to
handle these things better. “Intellectually, I know Al’s dead, but
until yesterday, I still had the crazy sense that he was in his
apartment, just tending to whatever it is he’s been tending to all
these years and waiting for me to visit him again.”  She shook
her head slowly from side to side and laughed bitterly. “Funny,
isn’t it, this inclination to see the world as if it’s a piece of
theater. I’m the star of this particular little drama, and I expect
all the supporting players—including Al—to be there when I need
them.”
    She shrugged her shoulders. “Sorry, Keith,”
she said, offering a weak smile.
    He gave her a reassuring squeeze. “It’s all
right, Ray. We went through almost everything in his apartment
yesterday. I’ll just transfer the stuff you wanted to keep to a
Trans-Mat storage vault in your name. You can get it anytime you
want to.”
    Rayna gestured toward the permastore
container. “Too bad you couldn’t do the same thing with
that.”   
    Keith pointed to a label on the box:

    To be delivered in person upon my death
to
    MS. RAYNA KINGMAN
    LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

      “ Didn’t have much choice.
Executors have an obligation to carry out the terms of a will, not
argue with them. Even when the executor’s a lawyer...and special
friend of the heir.” 
    He winked at Rayna. “Maybe your friend Al
just didn’t like Trans-Mat. Even these days, I guess there are
still people who don’t much care for the idea of sending things
from one place to