fresh and sweet and clean

Ethan knew the birds still gathered on the walls, watching him die. He could feel the tension of their wings frozen in flight. He heard a dicelike rattle again. Not rain against the window this time. His breath rattling in a broken throat. No Christmas. Chapter 3 ETHAN OPENED HIS EYES. Traveling far too fast for a residential street, a cherry-red Ferrari Testarossa exploded past, casting up a plume of dirty water from the puddled pavement. Through the side window of the Expedition, the apartment house blurred and tweaked into strange geometry, like a place in a nightmare. As if he’d sustained an electrical shock, he twitched violently, and inhaled with the desperation of a drowning man. The air tasted sweet, fresh and sweet and clean. He exhaled explosively. No gut wound. No chest wound. His hair wasn’t wet with rain. His heart knocked, knocked like a lunatic fist on the padded door of a padded room. Never in his life had Ethan Truman experienced a dream of such clarity, such intensity, nor any nightmare so crisply detailed as the experience in Reynerd’s apartment. He consulted his wristwatch. If he’d been asleep, he had been dreaming for no more than a minute. He couldn’t have explored the convolutions of such an elaborate dream in a mere minute. Impossible. [32] Rain washed the last of the murky residue off the glass. Beyond the dripping fronds of the phoenix palms, the apartment house waited, no longer distorted, but now forever strange. When he’d leaned back against the headrest and closed his eyes, the better to formulate his approach to Rolf Reynerd, Ethan had not been in the least sleepy. Or even tired.