"Charles L. Grant - In a Dark Dream" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Charles L)

A steep narrow trail led down to the blacktop road where he had parked
his car. He took the way slowly,

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cautiously, mindful of the afternoon three years ago when he'd tried to
impress Marjory with youth no longer his and had tripped over a root and
rolled the rest of the way. Two broken ribs, scratches all over his lean
face, thick brown hair crusted with dirt, and embarrassment so broad he
could have built a house on it. Marj hadn't laughed; she'd only given
him a look.

When he reached the bottom, a jay screamed at him. A squirrel sat up on
the white center line and chattered at him. He smiled and snapped his
tongue against the roof of his mouth several times; the squirrel quieted
and stared, then wheeled and shot away, tail high and fluffed, its
passing into the underbrush as silent as the jay's flight when it darted
out of a pine tree and aimed for the water.

A check of the sky.

It was perfectly clear, and had been since dawn.

He couldn't imagine where that cloud had come from, and decided that
he'd probably dozed off for a few seconds. It wouldn't be the first
time, up here in the new sun. The rock was his thinking place, his
pouting place, the not-so-very-secret place that had heard all his
anger, all his depressions, all his occasional bouts with self-pity.

All his fears for his family, for himself.

This morning had been no exception.

The difference, however, was that talking it out to the air, the water,
the chipmunk that had taken the peanut from his hand, had done him
little good.

Old.

Getting older.

An excuse, nothing more, because Susan Leigh was coming for her first
visit in three years. His wife's

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younger sister, not so recently widowed, and the only woman he'd ever
met who could, if she tried, tempt him into another bed.