"Edward Bryant - Flirting With Death" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bryant Edward)

air tonight were easy-listening stations with mushy ballads. She aimed the TV
remote. Like Water for Chocolate was on HBO. Encore had Zeffirelli's Romeo and
Juliet. And so it went. Love Story on TBS. She slapped the remote. The TV image
dwindled into a dot and then vanished all too slowly.

If this was a message from God, it was a grotesque one.

And if it was divine punishment for even mulling the thought of suicide, then
God was even more of a thug than Mark Twain had mocked.

Linda slipped a Nick Cave album into the CD player, cranked the volume only on
the headphones out of deference to her downstairs neighbors, and lay back
against the couch pillows. * * *

-- and woke as she felt the bullet, rising toward her on a hot cushion of flame,
starting to push toward the softest part of her eye, the membrane distending,
the optic nerve shrieking, the pain and the sound rising to a crescendo. Linda
blinked furiously, rubbed her eye, only half-noted the staccato reflections of
rotating emergency lights crossing the faded rose plaster of her bedroom walls.
An ambulance, she realized, orienting herself, the wail of a siren diminishing
in the distance. She wondered who had died?

Certainly not her. Maybe no one.

She sat up, swinging her legs off the side of the bed, wincing at the sharp pain
by the base of her skull. She must have slept completely wrong the crick in her
neck was evidence of that. Linda realized she didn't recall moving from the
couch to her bedroom. Now her whole head was aching. The vial waited in the
bathroom.

But when she went into the harsh fluorescent light of the lavatory, she let the
faucet run for a whole minute, then used half a glass of the tepid water to wash
down three aspirin.

In the living room she looked at the clock on the VCR. Half past nine. She had a
long, long time until morning, and she didn't want to spend all those hours
dreaming. That's why she put on a light cotton top, her denim skirt, and decided
to take a walk. It was an atypically hot early October night and this early
there should be plenty of people on the streets.

Although, whispered a small voice, maybe the darkness would hold a truly
unexpected surprise. Perhaps a car would suddenly jump the curb, a wall would
collapse, a hideously off-course airliner would try to use her street as an
emergency landing strip. Maybe a man with a knife or a pistol would step from a
dark alley. "Are you talking yourself out of this, or into it?" she muttered to
herself.

Linda took her keys and a twenty dollar bill. She hesitated, then took the
half-empty pack of Marlboros and a book of matches. When she swung open the door
to leave, Mr. Claws screamed from the railing outside and bounded into her