"Jerry Davis - Scuba (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Davis Jerry)

now seemed like the sickly breath of a giant, inflated menace.
"I'm so sorry, Jack," Christie said in a small voice, lost in
the dark. "I like you. I'm sorry this happened."
Jack said nothing. The pressure was returning, the air
bubbling away. He felt it like a pressure on his face, like a
diving mask being shoved into his cheeks and forehead by the
overwhelming pressure.
"The job I took when I was in Hollywood was as a pornographic
actress," Christie was saying. "I'm a very good actress, I could
have made it, but I've never had the will power to stay on that
great straight and narrow, you know? From there I began working
conventions, I was a 'escort' girl. That was three to five hundred
dollars a night, Jack. I couldn't turn that down, I was starving.
Out here in Chicago I get more, much more. I'm a star here, Jack.
Isn't that strange? I'm a star."
Jack was drowning. He was literally drowning. The air had
turned to water, and it was in his throat.
"Don't hate me," Christie said.
Jack scrambled in a panic to the bathroom, bumping into walls
and tripping. In the bathroom he closed the door and turned on the
light. He stared at himself in the mirror; naked, beaded with
water. His eyes bulged. He vomited salt water into the sink,
vomited, vomited. It kept coming out, it seemed it would never
end.
His career was dead, his car wrecked, his marriage stained.
In all these years he had never cheated on his wife. He couldn't
handle it. He couldn't believe he'd let himself do something like
this.
Christie was knocking on the door. He could hear her muffled
voice coming through. "Are you okay? Jack? Hello, Jack?"
He fell back against the wall, slid to the floor. His breath
came in raw rasps. The room was rocking with the swells of the
ocean. Clothes, he thought. Dress. He stood up, wavering, and
opened the door, pushing past Christie without a word. She had
turned on the lights and put on her clothes. He wandered
frantically from place to place gathering his together and putting
them on.
"You do hate me," she said. "Don't you."
"Did you wreck my car on purpose?"
"Yes."
"Then, yes, I do hate you."
She nodded, and turned and walked out of the room.

#

Jack reached his car and stopped, staring at the dent. It was
large and horrible, made the car look like junk. The parking place
beside his where he and Christie had pushed her car was empty. He
stood there, staring.
The rain had stopped and now it was getting bitterly cold. I