"Bowes-ShadowAndGunman" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bowes Richard)

"And look what he bought us." She held up the vial.

"Oh boy, vitamins! Thanks, Kevin!" Grabbing with the impulsiveness of a kid, he
washed down a couple of the pills with the contents of a huge pewter stein that
he picked up from the floor beside him. "Stacey said you were acting. What
play.?"

Self-consciousness seized me. "Henry the Fourth. It's pretty stupid. Just
school."

"It's a great play!" He put the vial in his pocket. "It's about the demimonde."
He waved his arm to indicate the house, the three of us. "About the street and
rich people slumming. Wonderful lines! Falstaff says, 'Let us be Diana's
foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon.'"

"I just have a small part. Poins, he's a. . . ."

"Poins!" Dr. X slapped his hands together. "Terrific! Poins is the knife, the
street trickster. Even Falstaff is wary of him. Poins is some kind of
disinherited son. He and Prince Hal are very young. Boys are natural street
people, powerless, disposable. Poins disappears from the play because that
happens to people like him."

Dr. X in his exuberance walked over to Stacey, put his hands on her breasts, and
kissed her. He looked at my sudden jealousy and smiled. She excused herself and
went back upstairs. It occurred to me that Dr. X may have known what play I was
in and read up. If so, that was more trouble than Petrie had ever taken.

I sat in one chair with Dr. X opposite me and we listened to distant music.
"Thelonius in San Francisco," he explained, taking out the vial and offering me
a pill. He handed me his stein and I washed it down with warm beer.

Soon, my attention to detail became more intense. The only thing on the table
was a blank prescription pad. I noticed the name Blumstein at the top. In a far
comer of the floor was a bolt lock. It took me a moment to see the outline of a
trap door. The music from upstairs changed at one point. Dr. X's mouth moved
like he was tasting the notes. "Could, playing Bach's Goldberg Variations," he
said.

That first Saturday, we talked for hours. Some of the insights which bowled me
over are true of any unhappy sixteen-year-old. "Half the time you feel like an
alien in this land. In this world."

Other things he saw were phenomenally accurate. "You have, let's see, three
uncles," he said, staring into my eyes with his intense pinned ones. "The
youngest one's a pries . . . no, a lawyer. The middle one's a cop, of course.
And the oldest one does what? Runs a bar."

Never had I discussed my mother's family with Stacey. He smiled at my surprise