"C M Kornbluth - Everybody Knows Joe" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)

Everybody Knows Joe



C. M.Kornbluth




Everybody Knows Joe



JOB HAD QUITE A DAY for himself Thursday, and as usual I had to tag along. If I had a right arm to
give, I'd give it for a day off now and then. Like on Thursday. On Thursday he really outdid himself.



He woke up in the hotel room and had a shower. Hewasnt going to shave until I told him be looked like
a bum. So he shaved and then he stood for a whole minute admiring his beauty in the mirror, forgetting
whose idea it was in the first place.



So down to the coffee shop for breakfast A hard-working man needs a good breakfast So getting ready
for abackbreak-ing day of copying references at the library, he had tomato juice, two fried eggs, three
sausages, a sugared doughnut, and coffeeтАФwith cream and sugar.
 He couldn't work that off his pot in a week of ditch-digging under a July sun, but a hard-working man
needs a good breakfast. I was too disgusted to argue with him. He's hopeless when he smells that
short-order smell of smoking grease, frying bacon and coffee.



He wanted to take a taxi to the libraryтАФeight blocks!



"Walk, you jerk!" I told him. He started to mumble about



pullingdown six hundred bucks for this week's work and then he must have thought I was going to
mention the high-calorybreakfast.To him that's hitting below the belt. He thinks he's an unfortunate man
with an afflictionтАФabout twenty pounds of it. He walked and arrived at the library glowing with virtue.



Making out his slip at the newspaper room he blandly put down next to firmтАФThe Griffin Press,
Inc.тАФwhen he knew as well as I did that he was a free lance and hadn't even got a definite assignment
fromGriffin.