Читать книгу An Affair of State - Pat Frank - Страница 14

He walked up Massachusetts to Dupont Circle, feeling empty and frustrated and baffled. Stud was listening to the eleven o'clock news. "I see you didn't make the grade," Stud greeted him. "Not even lipstick. Is she tied up with Keller?"

"No, she's tied up with herself."

"There are two girls on the floor below," Stud said, "who have been running up here all evening to borrow ice cubes, glasses, bottle openers, and cigarettes. They work in Archives, and they're having a party for the Junior Archivists, Division of Useless Executive Papers. They want us to come down when the party is over."

"Not me," Jeff said.

"They're not bad," Stud said. "They develop a lot of compression, working down there three floors below the Archives Building. They claim all the men in Archives are unburied cadavers."

"I'll skip it."

"What's the matter with you? Sick?"

"Sort of." He didn't feel too good, he told himself. He took two aspirins, and chased them with bourbon, before he went to bed.