"Campbell, Ramsey - The Parasite 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Campbell Ramsey)

When she returned to the bedroom they made love, which always made unfamiliar rooms more welcoming. Afterwards she couldn't steep; the room was stifling. She opened the window and padded to the edge of the balcony. Streetlamps pinned discs of light to the pavement, which glittered as though alloyed with frost. The street was deserted except for a glimpse of a figure vanishing into Amsterdam Avenue. She hurried back to bed, shivering. In her sleep she ran back and forth along the street. Every door was locked. She was scared to turn any of the corners, for she'd forgotten which corner the bald-headed figure had turned.

THREE

New York was doors in the wall of Grand Central Station which opened not into rooms but, like a childhood surprise, on to platforms. Seen from the Empire State, it was a grid of valleys, it was a launching-pad miles wide. It was a man who gave the Rebel yell at the end of a Pierre Boulez concert, a Japanese waiter performing a meal like a juggler, masochists prowling night-time streets with keys at their belts, a French pavement cafe in the basement of Carnegie Hall, the tortured explosion of Picasso's `Guernica' filling a room. It was 42nd Street, which sounded like a song and looked like dozens of childhood cinemas lined up for offers: men muttering a litany of drugs for sale, a pretty black girl asking Bill `Going out, honey?' New York was a million different impressions, one of which was David Tracy, the most insufferable man Rose had ever met.

He was staying in one room of a Brooklyn flat. Though the rest of the flat was deserted - his friend was out at work, presumably - Tracy had insisted on staying in the cramped room, amid the heaps of ragged magazines and fractured books, the stench of his cigars.

At first she had thought he was being gallant. `I can't say much more than that,' he'd said abruptly, glancing at her, in the middle of a sordid anecdote about a former star. Obviously he'd felt that wasn't clear enough, for he had ignored her questions and cut short his answers to Bill. `Well, I'm getting tired. I could talk to you again Thursday night, Bill. You'd need to stay overnight. There's only room for you.'

Before Bill could show he was as furious as she was, she'd responded `That would be fine, wouldn't it, Bill?' Their book was more important than their feelings. To have answered for Bill was a kind of triumph over Tracy.

Still, the more she thought about the incident, the angrier she grew. No wonder she felt irritably nervous. She was glad to be staying tonight with Diana: she could do with some female company. Besides, Diana could read her Tarot while Bill was out of the way.

Juggling packages of food, she let herself into the building with the key Diana had given her. Above the hunting howls of police cars, horses whinnied nearby in the Claremont Stables. Holding the door ajar with one foot, she stumbled backwards into the foyer. The door slammed, and she sat down in a yielding lap.

She'd recoiled before she saw what it was. Furniture lurked everywhere, as though a room had taken over the building: a small bare table stood in the foyer, looking robbed of a telephone; a wardrobe stood beside the lift, comparing doors. The girl who lived below Diana was leaving. Nothing sat in the chair into which Rose had fallen except cushions.

When she'd waited minutes for the lift, she toiled upstairs. The few windows resembled slices of smoke, beyond which dark walls loomed. Wallpaper the colour of old newsprint soaked up much of the brownish light, which seemed thick as gravy.

The second floor was almost indistinguishable from the first: a long, bare stone-floored corridor in which her footsteps sounded flat and harsh, as though in an empty street. A sofa sat like a public bench. A loitering chair held open the doors of the lift.

As she made for the last flight of stairs she glanced into the vacated flat. A few rolled scraps of carpet huddled against the skirting-board. Ghosts of furniture lingered on the walls, looking paler for having been exposed to light.

She'd turned away, towards the stairs, when she heard movement just beyond the door. She might have glanced back, but she had no time before the fist punched the back of her neck.

It felt more like a club, spiked with knuckles. The packages of food hit the stone floor before she did. Her knees tore. Would she be able to turn before the next blow? But the corridor imploded like a television image, a distant point of light which contained her body, and she was wrenched away into the greedy darkness.

FOUR

Rose woke with a headache of the kind that violent awakening can cause. She lay trying to quieten its rhythm. Bill's movements sounded distant; perhaps he was proof-reading in the workroom. But why did the bed feel so narrow? Why was the light tinged with red?

As soon as she forced her eyes open she was frightened, for the ceiling was too close and entirely unfamiliar. It glowed dull crimson, except for the blurred whitish disc which hovered above the lampshade. She made herself turn her head, for someone was approaching.

He was padding towards her across floorboards which looked patched with dusty rugs. His face was more than black: its blackness boiled out of his cheeks, engulfed his mouth. The congealed light helped obscure his face. She could see only his eyes, moist marbles of yellowish gelatin.

She didn't cry out, but her hands clenched within the blanket that covered her. She felt the blanket pucker in her hands, and gape like ragged mouths. Behind the man, a woman emerged from an inner room. It was Diana.

Her appearance was not reassuring. With her small pinched face, her legs wasp-striped by socks, her hair that was neither short nor long, she looked trendy, anonymous. Outlined against a fluorescent glare, her face was by no means clear enough.

But she hurried forward anxiously. `You'll be okay now, Rose. This is John who lives next door. He's a nurse.'

I

A friendly smile gleamed amid John's beard. Rose tried to sit up for him, until pain seized her by the forehead and by the scruff of the neck. `Now just relax. Just let me take a look here.' He sounded like any of her childhood doctors. `This is where he hit you, right? Now how about here - can you feel this?' His hands were gentle and firm as Uncle Wilfred's had been.

`O-kay,' he said. `You'll have a headache for a while, but you haven't got concussion. I have to go to Bellevue now, but I'll be back early in the morning if you need anything.'

She needed Bill. His presence would reassure her that everything was stable, that the everyday world wasn't full of lairs, of lurkers waiting for her to turn her back -but if she phoned him, he would only come running. Not only would that spoil their book, but she could imagine the contempt of the insufferable Tracy. That above all was a reason not to phone.