"Eddings, David - High Hunt" - читать интересную книгу автора (High Hunt)

"She hasn't got too much upstairs," Jack agreed, "even when she's sober."

"Anyway, about every month, one of her barroom Romeos would break it off in her for a couple of hundred and split out on her. She'd cry and blubber and threaten to turn on the gas or some damned thing. Then after a day or so she'd get all gussied up in one of those whorehouse dresses she's partial to and go out and find true love again."

"Sounds like a real bad scene."

"A bummer. A two-year bummer. I cut out right after high school Ч knocked around for a year or so and then wound up in college. It's a good place to hide out."

"You seen her since you split?"

"Couple times," I said. "Once I had to bail her out of jail, and once she came to where I was staying to mooch some money for booze. Gave me that 'After all, I am your mother' routine. I told her to stick it in her ear. I think that kind of withered things."

"She hardly ever mentions you when I see her," Jack said.

"Maybe if I'm lucky she'll forget me altogether," I said. "I need her about like I need leprosy."

"You know something, little brother?" Jack said, grinning at me, "you can be an awful cold-blooded bastard when you want to be."

"Comes from my gentle upbringing," I told him. "Have another belt." I waved at the whiskey bottle.

"I don't want to drink up all your booze," Jack said, taking the pint. "Remember, I know how much a GI makes."

"Go ahead, man," I said. "Take a goddamn drink. I hit it big in a stud-poker game on the troopship. I'm fat city." I knew that would impress him.

"Won yourself a bundle, huh?"

"Shit. I was fifteen hundred ahead for a while, but there was this old master sergeant in the game Ч Riker his name was Ч and he gave me poker lessons till who laid the last chunk."

"How much you come out with?"

"Couple hundred," I said cautiously. I didn't want to encourage the idea that I was rich.

"Walkin' around money anyway," he said, taking a drink from the pint. He passed it back to me, and I noticed that his hands weren't really clean. Jack had always wanted a job where his hands wouldn't get dirty, but I saw that he hadn't made it yet. I suddenly felt sorry for him. He was smart and worked hard and tried his damnedest to make it, but things always turned to shit on him. I could see him twenty years from now, still hustling, still scurrying around trying to hit just the right deal.

"You got a girl?" he asked.

"Had one," I said. "She sent me one of those letters about six months ago."

"Rough."

I shrugged. "It wouldn't have worked out anyway." I got a little twinge when I said it. I thought I'd pretty well drowned that particular cat, but it still managed to get a claw in my guts now and men. I'd catch myself remembering things or wondering what she was doing. I took a quick blast of bourbon.

"Lotsa women," Jack said, emptying his beer. "Just like streetcars."

"Sure," I said. I looked around. The furniture was a bit kid-scarred, and the TV set was small and fluttered a lot, but it was someplace. I hadn't had any place for so long that I'd forgotten how it felt. From where I was sitting, I could see a mirror hanging at a slant on the wall of the little passage leading back to the bedrooms. The angle was just right, and I could see the rumpled, unmade bed where I assumed he and his wife slept. I thought of telling him that he might be making a public spectacle of his love life, but I decided that was his business.

"What'd you take in college anyway?" Jack demanded. "I never could get the straight of it out of the Old Lady."

"English, mostly," I said. "Literature."