Читать книгу The City Man - Howard Akler - Страница 12

In the Bowles Lunch, where empty cups and full ashtrays cover the tables and hollow-eyed men scan the want ads in a shared newspaper. Eli, waiting here three days for his first assignment, kills time with the city news. A slow reacquaintance with stickups and social programs that jangles his caffeinated nerves and gives him a full-on jag by the end of page two. He takes a sip. Chews his lip. All the bunk about three squares and regular sleep plays well out in the country, but this business is something else entirely. The news game is all about questions. Not just the ones he has to ask – the whos, whats, wheres – but the ones he’ll have to answer. How are you, Morenz? You okay, Morenz? You okay? Everyone at the paper has this scoop: the long days and late nights he needed to pound out copy, pages and pages of it that piled up until Eli couldn’t go any further and the words began to dwindle. To die. And after a while, there was nothing left to say so he said nothing. Not a word. The doctor had a bunch of names for it. Nerve strain, melancholia, depression. Back then, Eli ignored any clinical hokum. But now, when the depressed man returns to the depressed city, his smile is thinner than a vein.