"Dean Ing - Flying To Pieces" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ing Dean)

in their sleep.

But Lovett hadn't done much smiling when awake lately, though the
business of trading used aircraft was going well at his hangar. When he
padlocked the big multifold hangar doors, that cloudy afternoon in late
April and climbed into his sporty silver Mazda coupe, Lovett tried to
avoid replaying the litany of downers that, he felt, would've had the
prophet Job dancing with fury.

He knew he should've kept his Ford pickup with the winch and lift gate,
because you can't shoehorn a goddamn crate full of Lycoming engine into
the trunk of a goddamn racy foreign coupe. But he'd traded up to
surprise his seventeen-year-old grandson, give the beloved elitist twirp
more reason to enjoy his summer visit, and three days ago Chip had
provided his own surprise, writing to say he wouldn't be coming after
all.

Downers Number One and Two. of Mayday, who had Number Three
was the defection checked out, "gone west" in pilot's parlance, augured
in, all right then goddamn it, died, with what the vet said was a full
cargo of kidney stones. He had raised that fool from a kitten the size
of a flea's hood ornament, a fiffiedi birthday present from a woman
whose name he'd now forgotten. That made Mayday, what was it, nearly
thirteen when he bought the farm. It had taken Wade Lovett longer to get
over Mayday, his only housemate, than seemed possible. You wouldn't
think a satisfied loner in his sixties would go all mi sly-eyed over
something with a brain the general size and usefulness of a mildewed
walnut, Lovett told himself, squirting the Mazda north on Tyler Road,
ignoring the towers of cloud to his left that were backlit by God's own
rosy runway light. And suddenly he felt guilty. it was one thing to
verbally abuse the talkative black tom to his whiskers, so to speak;
tell him that any cat who would stand meowing before a closed door for
an hour when an open one was in plain sight ten feet away, well, such a
cat was dumb as a radish and deserved his imprisonment. Mayday's gaze
had always said he understood those jibes were just male-bonding
bullshit by a man who had nobody else-barring visits by Chip and an
occasional pretty lady, needed no one else-to talk to, evenings in the
condo.

It was something else, though, to debase Mayday's currency when he was
no longer current. it wasn't fair, it was mean-spirited.

"I'm sorry, Mayday," Lovett said aloud, easing from the flow of traffic,
then toward parking slot #16.

What was worse, Wade Lovett was chiefly sorry for himself, and knew it.
He turned off the ignition and sat blinking at his windshield for a long
moment and someone pulled into slot #15, doubtless the new neighbor he
hadn't met. He didn't care to meet him now, either. Was this how you
felt when old age crept up on you? Maybe he should get another kitten,