Placebo by Steven James Read Free Book Online Page A

and at thirty-four she’d been told that she was still striking, and she was used to eyes following her wherever she went.
    Long ago, Riah had learned that sex was the way to please men. And when they’re pleased they trust you, and when they trust you they share their secrets with you. As she’d overheard a female co-worker say one time, “If you can’t tell someone your secrets, you make intimacy off-limits.”
    So, it seems, sharing secrets leads to intimacy.
    Riah wasn’t sure yet if intimacy would lead to the one thing she wanted to feel most—love—but she held out hope that in time it would.
    She knew Cyrus’s office well: the wide windows overlooking central Philly, his framed degrees and awards hanging prominently on the walls, bookshelves that were neatly lined with medical textbooksand packed with paraphernalia from his travels around the world. In the center of the room sat his imposing mahogany desk that she and Cyrus would clear off sometimes when they decided not to use the leather couch in the corner.
    And of course, at the far side of the room, the two aquariums: one filled with buzzing emerald jewel wasps, the other with inch-and-a-half-long cockroaches. It was a curious thing. Riah had asked him about that, but he’d never explained why he kept them.
    She went to the shelf and picked up the voodoo—or, more accurately, vodou —doll that he’d brought back from his medical humanitarian visit to Haiti after the earthquake. In one sense, it was oddly appropriate that he’d brought it here to Philly. After all, there was a large Haitian population in the city, and some people said there were between five hundred and one thousand houses where people practiced voodoo in their basements. With estimates of twenty to fifty people participating in the services, that meant there might be as many as 50,000 serious voodoo worshipers in Philadelphia, putting it on par with Miami and even New Orleans.
    The cloth doll had a painted-on face with pin marks through the eyes and in the groin area. Most of Cyrus’s visitors found the doll disturbing, and he seemed to enjoy using it as a conversation piece and a chance to offhandedly mention his volunteer work in developing countries. Personally, Riah wasn’t bothered by the doll, just wondered who, if anyone, the pins had been intended to harm.
    Holding the doll, she stood beside the window and looked at central Philadelphia’s streets spreading out before her like spokes from a wheel. She’d always thought that there were too many one-way streets in downtown Philly, probably caused by the disrupted traffic patterns around the monolithic city hall.
    A proud city.
    The city of the nation’s birth.
    And, historically, a good place to base a medical center or a pharmaceutical firm.
    While studying medicine at Drexel, she’d learned that Philadelphia was the home of the first public hospital in 1751, the first school of pharmacy in 1812, the first private biomedical research institute in 1892.
    In addition, the greater Philadelphia area was the home of eleven other pharmaceutical firms’ corporate headquarters. RixoTray, though the smallest of the twelve, actually had the second-highest profit margin. Due, in large part, to having Dr. Cyrus Arlington at the helm.
    Riah stared out the window at Philadelphia’s nighttime skyline while she waited for Cyrus to finish his call. Tonight she would ask him for the first time to come over to her place after work, and when they got there she would see how he responded to the surprises she had waiting for him.
    Perhaps it would lead to love, she wasn’t sure, but if nothing else, seeing his reaction would give her more information on how men respond to shared secrets.

Twilight
    I hear the shower running in the bathroom.
    Charlene had asked me to fill her in, so now I look over a two-sentence summary of quantum physics: “The observer’s