"Avram Davidson - The Dive People" - читать интересную книгу автора (Davidson Avram)

girl. Pauli, who knew better, had told her mother she'd been married to
the sailor, and had sent the kid to her.

And then, even harder to bearтАФbecause it was so near the truthтАФthe
agent said, "I don't call this writing, Ed. It's a scissors and paste job. They
all are. What you've got here, you're cannibalizing your old material. No
good market would take it, and I don't bother with the others."

Well, so the hell with Tom Thompson.

The whole afternoon had resulted only in a $30 sale to that crook, Joe
Mulgar, who gave $5 in cash and the promise to pay the rest sometime
after publication. Hence the pint of gin (lemon-flavored). The piece had
netted Ed $300 the first time he sold it, five years ago.
 Five years ago was just before he had married Jinny. Had he started his
drinking and loafing and playing around because Jinny was the way she
was, or was Jinny the way she was because of his drinking and loafing and
carrying on? It was hard to say; Ed just didn't know. She had never
cheated, like Lynn (Lynn was before Jinny), he was sure of that. Nor would
she ever fight back the way Bran had, nor yield the way Pauli yielded.
Jinny had always stayed so calm and cool. It was infuriating. She never
tried to conquer him, she never even tried to conquer him.

"I'm leaving." That was all he had said to Jinny.

"I'll be here when you come back." That was all Jinny had said. Not
even "if."

"When." Well, he never would go back. Why had she said it? What did
she want with him, if she could go on without him? Pauli, with all her
faultsтАФ

Pauli!


~~oOo~~



Ed swung his feet over the side of the bed, cracking his heels on the
floor. It wasn't a bed, actually but a pad, a mattress set up on box springs.
He'd been on and off a thousand of them. Only it had been a regular bed,
not a pad, in their apartment.

And now he realized that he'd known from the first moment of his
awakening that he wasn't in their apartment. His eyes hurt and his head
throbbed and he felt his heart beating in terror. Beside the pad was an
up-ended orange crate, its top encrusted with dirty cigarette butts. The
pad was in an alcove blocked off by a torn screen, and somewhere
someone was taking a shower and whistling off-key. On the floor alongside