Читать книгу Smithereens - Terence Young - Страница 9

They’ve been sounding out the names of the dead: friends, relatives, this year’s crop of writers, musicians,

something to do while they are driving the long road between the last town and the next.

So many now, and those they forget hang between them like the empty spaces in a crossword.

Their route takes them high into snow country, where flurries descend and silence the game, wet, heavy flakes that slow the car’s wipers, narrow the view.

Used to be they’d tell themselves the departed were old, but they’re old now too, so they no longer mention anyone’s age.

The few who died young remain bright, as though the sun had been shining at the time, but they both know it is only their own youth that glows.

When the roster ends, they speculate on whose name may next pass their lips, but briefly, because to do so feels reckless.

Better to marvel at the list itself, how long it has grown, how death has worn thin, as if to be alive were the true miracle.

Their hotel that night is The Village Green, which they booked hoping for a peaceful place, where townspeople might gather to talk with friends and forget their hard lives,

but it is nothing like that, only a white box in a parking lot of white, and they spend the evening watching TV shows from the past, laughing again at all the actors they haven’t seen for years.