Читать книгу Dead Writers in Rehab - Paul Bassett Davies - Страница 34

I feel hollow sick inside and I am a damned fool.

From my doorway I heard the staccato pattering of her high-heeled shoes and my blood quickened. I felt the energy and the courage to break through the thing that stood between us and although I was her patient by God I would talk to her as a man.

I wanted to talk to her about places we could be together and the fun we would have. I would make her understand I would not drink and I was all through with that. She is a woman you can talk to and I have some stories I have told to no one, and I wanted very much to tell them to her but now I will never tell them.

When I came out of my room she was in my line of sight. She had stopped and was speaking with the new British man. I knew he had accosted her in the way that men like him will accost a woman and bring them trouble, although they may not see it at first because the man ingratiates himself in a way that women like. There was a nauseating unction in his voice and he looked at her as one who considers the utility of a thing to him, and it is the way a worthless man or a pimp regards a woman.

I stepped back into my room without thinking what I did, or why I retreated. And when I had a grip on myself I knew I had been in a funk and gone all to pieces and that is about as bad as it can be for a man.

It is all gone now.

That lousy bastard. I will know him anywhere. The hell with him. The utter complete hell with him.