Читать книгу Love's Last Number - Christopher Howell - Страница 18

2. The After Hours Afterlife

The drummer sets down his tools

and the lights come up.

Four men hop in circles to describe their joy.

The hostess is secretly aflame with a grapelike fullness

I can’t bear to watch. Perhaps the sky is not, as we have been told,

the province of gods, but of spaniels.

I think of Henry Ford and the Pyramid Society

as the drummer lights a foot-long cigarette and places his wig on

a stand.

Tolstoy is the barman and refuses all payment

in the name of virtue.

Usual women slide between the chairs.

When someone shouts “Fire,” everyone laughs

but Tolstoy

who is busy pouring crème de menthe into a whiskey bottle

as I tell him I’m a big fan, that I’ve read Crime and Peace six times.

He says, “The butler did it,

or the drummer.” He hasn’t decided.

The four men are now hopping in squares

and their barking falls like a dark blue snow of sound.

The cigarette girl wants to have the drummer’s baby.

Tolstoy hands me money and a horrible drink

and says, “I died in a train station. I’ll bet you didn’t know that.”

Then he throws back his head and screams, “Last call!

All aboard!”