"Exact Revenge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Green Tim)

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THE MIND IS LIKE a screen in a water pipe. It collects the impurities of the past in random ways, a fragment of conversation, a snippet of color. A smell. I smelled like money that day in the cab when I passed through the tunnel into New Jersey to see Congressman Williamson at Valley Hospital. He smelled like death, old copper pennies, and bleached bedsheets.

I was the youngest partner at Parsons amp; Trout, with a suite at Donald Trump’s Plaza Hotel and on the verge of a multimillion-dollar deal that would save my firm. It was the height of the Reagan era. There was a war on drugs. Russia was still an evil nation, and there was no shame in wanting to be rich.

But Roger Williamson only wanted to talk about duck hunting. He talked about the first double he ever shot with those tubes coming out of his nose, coughing into the air, like somehow he was handing me a small wooden box filled with life’s secrets.

Then, I knew how to nod my head, respect my elders. But I didn’t listen. Only fragments remain.

Roger had come from Syracuse and attended Princeton like me, only about forty years earlier. He lettered in basketball. I lettered in soccer. After he graduated, he went to Albany to work for Nelson Rockefeller. I went to law school to try to be Nelson Rockefeller.

I remember looking at the lines in his face. Road maps for my own future. Yes, I saw them. I recognized them without a thought.

It took Roger thirty years of kissing other people’s asses before he was elected to Congress. At twenty-five, I hadn’t even patted an ass and people were talking about having me be his replacement. That must not have seemed fair to Roger. But that’s only if he was aware of it.

I was surprised that none of Roger’s family was there. Two men in three-piece suits were. They didn’t talk to me and I didn’t really care. Roger had other tubes besides the one coming out of his nose. There was one in his stomach and another down below, collecting his urine in a clear plastic bag that was hooked to the stainless steel rail of his bed. There was a heart monitor beeping pleasantly and clear liquid dripped from an IV bottle.

“You aren’t smiling,” Roger said. His voice was strained and it came from the far reaches of his throat. “Every day you have your health is a good day. You should smile.”

His skin had a blue cast to it and was sunken around the eye sockets and into the other depressions of his skull. His hair was wispy and gray. Only the very tips were still dark from dye. I thought I smelled the contents of the plastic bag and I cleared my throat.

“I’m fine.”

“They say you might be the one to replace me. I’m glad. I wish they asked me, but I’m glad anyway.”

I nodded and reached out to touch the back of his hand. The veins were pale and green and riddled with scabbed-over needle holes. His skin was cool, but dry. I regretted touching him anyway. The men in suits were watching.

“Hey,” I said, “this might be like the ’82 election. Remember that bounce-back?”

He started to laugh, but it ended in a painful-sounding choke that set the monitor off like a small guard dog. When he recovered, he turned his hand over and clutched my fingers in his own with an awkward grip. His nails needed a trim.

“My family left me two days after the first time I was elected,” he said. “That was my second wife.”

I nodded.

“Why?”

I shook my head.

“Duck hunting,” he said, again. “Standing in those cattails, remember? The sun not even up. The birds swarming in on us like insects. Clear your head, Raymond. As often as you can. You grow cobwebs inside you until you die. They only clear for those last few weeks? Why would He do that to us?”

His lips kept moving, but little sound came out. I leaned closer.

“… promise…”

“You want me to promise?” I asked.

He nodded and I moved even closer.

“You take this,” he said, squeezing tight. “Only you. I wrote it myself. Here. In New Jersey. Remember that. You give it to her. As soon as you get back. Right away, Raymond. No one else. You tell no one. Will you promise me that?”

In his other hand was a legal-size envelope. He held it out to me. A woman’s name and address were scrawled on the front: Celeste Oliver. I looked into his milky green eyes, red-rimmed and brimming with moisture, and took it from him. His eyes closed and his head went back into the pillow. The men in suits seemed to be oblivious to our arrangement, so I said good-bye to Roger, even though he was already asleep.