"Bukowski, Charles - Short Stories Collection" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bukowski Charles)

looked cute, but she was so god damned fat. Well, anyhow, I wasn't sleeping
on a park bench.
"You want me to cook, Marie?"
"No, it's all right. I'm not so tired now."
She began preparing the food. When I got up for the next beer, I kissed
her behind the ear.
"You're a good sport, Marie."
"You got enough drink for the rest of the night?" she asked.
"Sure, kid. And there's still that 5thy. Everything's fine. I just want
to sit here and look at the set and listen to you talk. O.k?"
"Sure, Charley."
I sat down. She had something going. It smelled good. She was evidently
a fine cook. The whole walls crawled with this warm smell of cooking. No
wonder she was so fat: good cook, good eater. Marie was making a pot of
stew. Every now and then she'd get up and add something to the pot. An
onion. A piece of cabbage. A few carrots. She knew. And I drank and looked
at that big sloppy old gal and she sat there making these most magic hats,
her hands working into a basket, picking up first the color, then that, this
length of ribbon, then that, and then twisting it so, sewing it so, placing
it against the hat, and that 2 bit straw was just more magic. Marie created
masterpieces that would never be discovered --- walking down the street on
top of bitches' heads.
As she worked and tended stew, she talked.
"It's not like it used to be. People don't have any money. Everything's
Traveler's checks and checkbooks and credit cards. People just don't have
money. They don't carry it. Credit's everything. A guy gets a paycheck and
it's already taken. They mortgage their whole lives away to buy one house.
And then they've got to fill that house with shit and have a car. They're
hooked on house and the legislators know this and tax them to death with
property taxes. Nobody has any money. Small businesses just can't last."
We sat down to the stew and it was perfect. After dinner we brought out
the whiskey and she brought me two cigars and we looked at tv and didn't
talk much. I felt as if I had been there for years. She kept working on the
hats, talking now and then, and I'd say, yeh, that's right, or, is that so?
And the hats kept flying off of her hands, masterpieces.
"Marie," I told her, "I'm tired. Got to go to bed."
She told me to take the whiskey with me, so I did. But instead of going
down to my bed, I threw back the cover of Marie's bed and crawled in. After
undressing, of course. It was a fine mattress. It was a fine bed. It was one
of those old-fashioned highpost jobs with a wooden roof, or whatever they
call them. I guess if you fucked until the roof came down, you made it. I'd
never bring that roof down without help from the gods.
Marie kept looking at tv and making hats. Then I heard her turn off the
set, switch out the kitchen light and she came into the bedroom, right past
the bedroom and she didn't see me, she went right n down to the crapper. She
was in there a while and then I watched her switch out of her clothes and
into this big pink nightie. She fucked with her face a bit, gave up, put on
a couple of curlers, then turned around and walked toward the bed and saw
me.
"My god, Charley, you're in the wrong bed."