Читать книгу The Hawkline Monster - Richard Brautigan - Страница 9

· Back to San Francisco ·

Cameron was a counter. He vomited nineteen times to San Francisco. He liked to count everything that he did. This had made Greer a little nervous when he first met up with Cameron years ago, but he’d gotten used to it by now. He had to or it might have driven him crazy.

People would sometimes wonder what Cameron was doing and Greer would say, “He’s counting something,” and people would ask, “What’s he counting?” and Greer would say, “What difference does it make?” and the people would say, “Oh.”

People usually wouldn’t go into it any further because Greer and Cameron were very self-assured in that big relaxed casual kind of way that makes people nervous.

Greer and Cameron had an aura about them that they could handle any situation that came up with a minimum amount of effort resulting in a maximum amount of effect.

They did not look tough or mean. They looked like a relaxed essence distilled from these two qualities. They acted as if they were very intimate with something going on that nobody else could see.

In other words, they had the goods. You didn’t want to fuck with them, even if Cameron was always counting things and he counted nineteen vomits back to San Francisco. Their living was killing people.

And one time during the voyage, Greer asked, “How many times is that?”

And Cameron said, “I2.”

“How many times coming over?”

“20.”

“How’s it working out?” Greer said.

“About even.”