"Goodis, David - Black Friday" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goodis David)

Then there was nothing on the floor but blood and newspapers. Charley went to the rear of the cellar, came back with a can of household cleanser. He ripped off the top of the can, threw the cleanser on top of the blood. Then he went away and came back with a bucket of hot water and a mop, and went to work. Hart took the unused newspapers back to the front of the cellar. Charley cleaned the tools, drying them as he came back.
They stood before the furnace and listened to the sound of burning.
"We better take these off," Charley said.
Hart looked at Charley, wondering what he meant, and saw that he meant the pajamas. And Hart looked at Charley's pajamas, looked at the blood all over pale blue, then he looked at the pajamas he was wearing, and he saw the pale green background and the gashes of dark bright red.
Charley opened the furnace door, threw in the pale blue pajamas, then Hart stepped over in front of the door and as he threw in the pale green pajamas he caught sight of the paper packages burning in there with a glaring purple and white flame. Then he caught a whiff of the smoke and he shut the door quickly.
"All right," Charley said, "let's go up."
They went upstairs. Coming away from the heat of the furnace area their naked bodies came into a cold living room and a colder stairway, and they moved quickly. They went into the bathroom and although there was no blood on their hands they washed their hands anyway.
Finally Hart climbed back into the cot, propped the pillows to make himself comfortable, sucked smoke into his mouth, filled himself up with the smoke and let it seep out between his teeth. He wondered why he wasn't sick. He thought maybe he was beginning to get tough. He told himself it didn't really make any difference, because he didn't give a hang, but underneath he knew he did give a hang and it made a lot of difference and no matter what he kept telling himself he was really afraid of what was happening inside him.
Hart settled back against the pillow and brought up his arms, resting flat on his back and folding his hands behind his head. Across the room he saw the glow of a lighted cigarette and he knew it came from Charley and he tried to think of what was in Charley's mind right now. Then he closed his eyes and he tried to sleep.
He worked on it for an hour. He was going toward sleep, trying to dive into it, pulled back by something and then he tried to crawl toward it, pulled back by the same something that was mostly memory and hardly any planning. He was beginning to feel tired and he made one big try, throwing everything out of his mind except one big circle on which he tried to ride as it went around in the blackness under his eyelids. He managed to get on the circle and it took him around a few times and then threw him off with violence. He opened his eyes and sat up and he could hear the steady breathing of Charley and the heavy, distorted breathing of Rizzio. He wondered where Rizzio kept the cigarettes.
He left the cot, moved quietly across the room and pulled on the chocolate flannel trousers over the fresh pajamas. Then as he worked himself into the chocolate flannel jacket he was facing the window and he could see the black out there without any lights in it. He put on socks and started to put on shoes and changed his mind. Then he was going out of the room and closing the door delicately. Then he was going down the dark hall, so dark that at first he had to guide himself by the wall, then getting lighter because of a thin and vague glow that came from downstairs. And it was confusing, because he remembered Charley putting out all lights downstairs before they came upstairs.
He was going down the stairway. The light remained vague, and it wasn't doing much against the darkness, but he was coming closer to it and for a moment he had the unaccountable feeling that the light had drawn him out of the cot and out of the room. Halfway down the stairway he knew that he could see the source of the light if he turned his head, and he didn't know why he didn't want to turn his head. But he had to turn his head when he reached the foot of the stairs, and when he did he saw the light coming from a small lamp with a blue velvety shade, dark blue to give the light that odd vagueness. The lamp was on a small table and next to the table someone was sitting in a highbacked chair. The entire arrangement, lamp and pale blue light and figure in white and the brown top of the chair, topping the white, amounted to a face, and it was the face of his dead brother, Haskell.
Hart wondered if he would cut himself to ribbons if he went headfirst through one of the front windows.
From the chair a feminine voice said, "Who is that?"
Hart took in what felt like a quart of air and let it out with his mouth wide open. He said, "It's Al."
"This is Myrna."
Her voice wasn't a whisper. It was lower than a whisper.
Hart said, "What bothers you?"
She said, "Paul was my brother."
The space between them was a block of quiet freezing with immeasurable speed.
It was that way for more than a minute, then she said, "What brought you downstairs?"
"I don't know. I couldn't sleep."
She said, "Paul was twenty-eight. He had a lot of trouble with his insides. It was a bad condition and he had no business getting in fights. But he was always fighting. He never had any friends, because he was so hard to get along with. He was sick inside all the time, and he was always irritable and always as nasty as he could be. But I guess that isn't the point. The point is, he always took care of me."
Hart said, "How old are you, Myrna?"
"I'm twenty-six. Paul always treated me as if I was much younger and he was much older. I've been sitting here most of the night thinking of all the things he did for me. He did all those things without ever smiling. When he gave me things or when he did things for me he never smiled and he acted as if he didn't really want to do it. I never knew that was put on. My father used to drink anything he could get his hands on, hair tonic and furniture polish and all that. One night he doubled up and dropped dead. My mother packed up her things and walked out and left us there. Charley came and took care of us. Then Charley had to do a five-year stretch and me and Paul, we had to go to a home. Then Charley was out and one night he came to the home and gave somebody some cash and he took Paul and me away. To look at Charley you'd never think he was past fifty, except for the white hair. Did you ever get so you just wanted to sit alone all by yourself and try to think what's going to happen to you?"
"I get that way once in a while," Hart said. "Not often."
"I looked in the back room," Myrna said, "but Paul wasn't there. What did they do with Paul?"
"I don't know," Hart said.
"I'll find out in the morning," Myrna said. She came out of the chair, toward Hart. The pale blue light rolled over her head and showed her face. In a frail sort of way it was an out-of-the-ordinary face. The eyes were pearly violet. The eyes were ninety-nine percent of her.
She went past Hart and up the stairway. Hart turned off the lamp, groped his way to the stairway, groped his way up and down the hall and into the middle room. A few minutes after he hit the cot he was asleep.


Hart was awake at half past nine. He saw Rizzio moving around the room. He saw Charley still asleep in the wide bed. He turned over and went back to sleep, and at halfpast eleven Charley was talking to him, asking him if he wanted to get up. He got out of bed, sat on the edge of the cot until Charley came out of the bathroom. As Charley took off the bathrobe, Hart took a good look at him.
Charley was about five-nine and on the thin side. The silver hair was thick, coming up from a low, unworried forehead, parted in the middle, combed back obliquely, then brushed smooth without benefit of water or oil. The eyes were light blue, nicely spaced above a short, firm nose. The lips were a puzzle, firm and at the same time relaxed, and the skin of the face was beige remaining from a summer's deep tanning.
Charley said, "Why are you sizing me up?"
"I'm curious to see if I can wear your clothes," Hart said.
"What's wrong with your clothes?"
"The suit will do," Hart said, "but I like to wear fresh linen every day."
"Look in the bureau," Charley said. "The three top drawers are mine. You're welcome to whatever you find that fits. You can throw the dirty clothes in the laundry box in the bathroom. I'm going to make you a gift of something I got in the bureau. My skin's too tender and I never got the knack of it, but maybe you'll like it."
Charley opened the top drawer and took out a tan calfskin case, opening it to show a foreign-make hollow ground safety razor. There was an intricate stropping arrangement where the blade was, and Hart picked up the gadget and said, "Much obliged."
He walked into the bathroom, carrying the tan calfskin case.
Forty minutes later Frieda knocked on the bathroom door and said, "What are your plans?"
Hart had a towel around his middle and the bathroom was filled with steam from very hot water going out of the tub. He said, "I'll be out in a few minutes."
"There's breakfast for you when you come down," Frieda said.
"I'll be right down," Hart said.
Twenty minutes later he came downstairs wearing the chocolate brown suit and his own shoes. He wore Charley's white two-piece underwear and Charley's black silk hose with a green clock, Charley's white shirt, Charley's white starched collar, Charley's black tie with small green polka dots, Charley's white handkerchief in the breast pocket, and Charley's silver cuff links with jade facing.
Rizzio looked up from the sports section and looked at Hart. Then Rizzio, wearing a bathrobe and slippers, extended a flat palm toward Hart while looking at Charley and Mattone, who were reading other sections of the paper in other sections of the living room. And Rizzio said, "Look at this, look at this."
Mattone raised his head from Ed Sullivan's column, glanced at Hart and went back to Sullivan.
Charley looked up from the fourth page and examined Hart and nodded slowly. "I thought it was about the right fit," he said. "Where did you find the cuff links?"
"In the second drawer, way in the back, under some handkerchiefs."