Читать книгу An Unfortunate Woman - Richard Brautigan - Страница 7

N . . .

Pine Creek, MontanaJuly 13, 1982

Dear N,

After I got the telephone call from your friend, I was of course deeply shocked, stunned would be a better word. I just sat beside the telephone for a few moments, staring at it, and then I called a close neighbor M and asked her if she wanted some watermelon. I had bought a watermelon a few days ago for some company, and we didn’t get around to eating it, so there I was, a bachelor stuck with too much watermelon.

My neighbor said she would like some watermelon. Why didn’t I bring it over in half an hour and have dinner with her and a friend T who was visiting.

I said, I think because of your friend’s telephone call, “I’ll just bring it over now.” I think I probably just wanted to see somebody at that exact moment.

“OK,” my neighbor said.

“I’ll be right over,” I said.

I went to the icebox and got the watermelon and walked over to my neighbor’s house, which is just a short distance down the road. I knocked on her kitchen screen door. It took a minute or so for her to answer it. She came downstairs from her bedroom.

“Here’s the watermelon,” I said, putting it on the kitchen counter.

“Yes,” she said, her voice obviously very distant and her physical presence hesitant.

There was something I wanted to show her about the watermelon that required her to get a knife and cut into the melon. It’s not important what I wanted to show her about the watermelon, which after doing so, she continued to be hesitant, as if she were someplace else, not actually there in the kitchen with me.

I wanted to talk to her for a few moments about the telephone call that I had gotten from your friend, but then suddenly her hesitancy and growing uncomfortableness made me feel hesitant and uncomfortable.

Finally, I guess, only a couple of minutes had passed and then she said, looking down at the floor, “I left T upstairs writhing around on the bed.”

T was a man.

My bringing over the watermelon had just interrupted their lovemaking. My first thoughts were: Why had she answered the telephone while she was making love to somebody and then why didn’t she think up some excuse for me not to come over at that time? I mean, she could have said anything and I would have come over later, but instead she had said yes to my coming over.

Anyway, I apologized and went back home.

Then I thought about the humor in the situation and wanted to call you on the telephone and tell you what had just happened because you have the perfect sense of humor to understand it. It’s just the kind of story you would have enjoyed and responded to with your musically screeching laughter and said something like “Oh, no!” while still laughing.

I sat there staring at the telephone, wanting very much to call you, but I was completely unable to do so because the telephone call I had gotten from your friend a little while before told me that you had died Thursday.

I had gone over to my friend’s house to talk about it when I interrupted her lovemaking. The watermelon was just some kind of funny excuse to talk about my grief and try to get some perspective on the fact that I can never call you again on the telephone and tell you something like I’ve just done that basically only your sense of humor could appreciate.

Love,

NIKKI ARAI DIED OF A HEART ATTACK

ON JULY 8, 1982, IN SAN FRANCISCO

AFTER STRUGGLING AGAINST CANCER

UNTIL HER HEART JUST STOPPED

BEATING. SHE WAS THIRTY-EIGHT.

I SURE AM GOING TO MISS HER.