Читать книгу The King is Dead - Jim Lewis - Страница 20

He waited that night until nine, and then he found her name in the phone book again, took the telephone receiver from its base and quickly dialed the number, already beginning to pace the floor before the rotary had returned to its resting place from the last digit. There was a pause, within which he could have planted an oak tree. Then the line began to ring,—rang again,—and rang seven times before he reluctantly hung up. Having made the effort, he found it almost unacceptable that it should have no effect, and for several minutes afterward he was unable to sit down; instead, he walked the length of his living room and then returned to the telephone and dialed her number again, with the same result. He was needled and stung, now. A police car passed outside his window, siren whooping into the darkness—not a common occurrence in that neighborhood—but by the time he got to his front porch it was gone. There in the driveway sat his car, big-shouldered and black. He considered driving over to her house. And what would he do there? Wait outside. In anticipation of what? He couldn’t say, he wouldn’t have been brazen enough to try to approach her whenever she finally came home. Where was she? There was nothing for a man to be, but lonely.

At last he went to bed, if only to close his eyes. Through the sleepless hours he saw her telephone number, he saw her friends, he saw the car they had ridden in. He saw everything but her face; she was so beautiful that her features had disappeared, as if in a blindness begotten by the brightness of her smile. He spoke out loud. You are a fool, he said. Go to sleep. And he went to sleep.