"Jack Finney - The Other Wife" - читать интересную книгу автора (Finney Jack)

In the living room, coldly ignored by what had once been my radiant, laughing bride, I set the drinks on
the coffee table, reached behind Marion's magazine and gripped her chin between thumb and forefinger.
The magazine dropped, and I instantly inserted the tip of the screw driver between her front teeth, pried
open her mouth, picked up a glass and tried to pour in some booze. She started to laugh, spilling some
down her front, and I grinned, handing her the glass, and picked up mine. Sitting down beside her, I
saluted Marion with my glass, then took a delightful sip; and as it hurried to my sluggish blood stream, I
could feel the happy corpuscles dive in, laughing and shouting, and felt able to cope with the next item on
the agenda, which followed immediately.

"You don't love me any more," said Marion.

"Oh, yes, I do." I leaned over to kiss her neck, glancing around the room over her shoulder.

"Oh, no, you don't; not really."

"Oh, yes, I do; really. Honey, where's that book I was reading last night?"

"There! You see! All you want to do is read all the time! You never want to go out! The honeymoon's
certainly over around here, all right!"

"No, it isn't, Sweetknees; not at all. I feel exactly the way I did the day I proposed to you; I honestly do.
Was there any mail?"

"Just some ads and a bill. You used to listen to every word I said before we were married and you
always noticed what I wore and you complimented me and you sent me flowers and you brought me little
surprises and"-suddenly she sat bolt upright-"remember those cute little notes you used to send me! I'd
find them all the time," she said sadly, staring past my shoulder, her eyes widening wistfully. "Tucked in
my purse maybe"-she smiled mournfully- "or in a glove. Or they'd come to the office on post cards, even
in telegrams a couple times. All the other girls used to say they were just darling." She swung to face me.
"Honey, why don't you ever-"


"Help!" I said. "Help, help!"

"What do you mean?" Marion demanded coolly, and I tried to explain.

"Look, honey," I said briskly, putting an arm companionably around her shoulders, "we've been married
four years. Of course the honeymoon's over! What kind of imbeciles," I asked with complete
reasonableness, "would we be if it weren't? I love you, sure," I assured her, shrugging a shoulder. "Of
course. You bet. Always glad to see you; any wife of old Al Pullen is a wife of mine! But after four years
I walk up the stairs when I come home; I no longer run up three at a time. That's life," I said, clapping her
cheerfully on the back. "Even four-alarm fires eventually die down, you know." I smiled at her fondly.
"And as for cute little notes tucked in your purse-help, help!" I should have known better, I guess; there
are certain things you just can't seem to explain to a woman.

I had trouble getting to sleep that night-the davenport is much too short for me-and it was around two
forty-five before I finally sank into a kind of exhausted and broken-backed coma. Breakfast next
morning, you can believe me, was a glum affair at the town home of Mr. and Mrs. Alfred E. Pullen,
devoted couple.