Читать книгу Koko - Peter Straub - Страница 21

Poole awoke with a fading memory of smoke and noise, of artillery fire and uniformed men running in a cartoonish lockstep through a burning village. He pushed this vision into forgetfulness with unconscious expertise. His first real thought was that he would stop off at Walden Books in Westerholm and buy a book for a twelve-year-old patient named Stacy Talbot before visiting her in St Bartholomew’s Hospital. Then he remembered that he was in Washington. His second fully formed thought was to wonder if Tim Underhill was really still alive. He had a brief vision of himself standing in a neat graveyard in Singapore, looking down with both loss and relief at Underbill’s headstone.

Or was Underhill simmering in craziness, still back in the war?

Conor Linklater seemed to have vanished and left behind a crushed pillow and a wildly wrinkled counterpane. Poole crawled across the bed and peered over the far edge. Curled up into himself like a cabbage leaf, his mouth lax and his eyelids stretched unmoving across his eyes, Conor lay asleep on the floor.

Michael pushed himself back across the bed and went quietly into the bathroom to shower.

‘Jeez,’ Conor said when Michael came out of the bathroom. He was sitting in one of the chairs and holding his head in both hands. ‘What time is it, anyhow?’

‘About ten-thirty.’ Poole took underwear and socks from his bag and began dressing.

‘Blackout, man,’ Conor said. ‘Total hangover.’ He peeked out through his fingers at Poole. ‘How’d I end up here, anyhow?’

‘I sort of assisted you.’

‘Thanks, man,’ Linklater groaned. His head sank again into his hands. ‘I gotta turn over a new lease on life. I been partying too much lately, getting old, gotta slow down. Whoo.’ He straightened up and looked around the room as if he were lost. ‘Where’s my clothes?’

‘Pumo’s room,’ Michael said, buttoning his shirt.

‘Well, I don’t know. I left all my shit up there. I sure wish he’d come along with us, man, don’t you? Pumo the Puma. He oughta come along. Hey, Mikey, can I use your bathroom and your shower before I go back upstairs?’

‘Oh dear,’ Poole said. ‘I just got it all cleaned up for the maid.’

Conor left the couch and moved across the room in a fashion that Poole associated with recovering stroke victims in geriatric wards. When Conor got to the bathroom he leaned on the door-knob and coughed. His hair was standing up in little orange spikes. ‘Am I crazy, or did Beans say he’d loan me a couple thousand bucks?’

Poole nodded.

‘Do you think he meant it?’

Poole nodded again.

‘I’ll never figure that guy out, I guess,’ Conor said, and slammed the bathroom door behind him.

After he pushed his feet into his loafers, Poole went to the telephone and dialed Judy’s number. She did not answer, nor did her machine. Poole hung up.

A few minutes later Beevers called down to inform Michael and Conor that he was offering room-service breakfast for everybody in his suite (en suite), commencing in thirty minutes at eleven hundred hours, and that Michael had better get hopping if he wanted more than one Bloody Mary.

‘More than one?’

‘I guess you didn’t get the kind of exercise I had last night.’ Beevers gloated. ‘A lovely lady, the kind I was telling you about, left about an hour or two ago, and I’m as mellow as a month in the country. Michael – try to persuade Pumo that there are more important things in the world than his restaurant, will you?’ He hung up before Poole could respond.