"R. A. Lafferty - Stories 2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lafferty R A)

hotel, registered, and went up to his room at once. Later, not remembering
whether he had even undressed or not (it was early afternoon), he threw
himself onto the bed and slept, as it seemed, for hours.
But he noted that it was only a half hour later that he woke,
feeling somehow deprived, as though having a great loss. He was floundering
around altogether in a daze, and was once more possessed of an irrational
hunger. He unpacked a little, put on a suit, and was surprised to find that
it hung on him quite loosely.
He went out with the feeling that he had left something on the bed
that was not quite right, and yet he had been afraid to look. He found a
hearty place and had another great meal. And then (at a different place so
that people would not be puzzled at him) he had still another one. He was
feeling better now, but mighty queer, mighty queer.
Fearing that he might be taken seriously ill, he decided to check
his bearings. He used his old trick. He found a phone and called his hotel
and asked for himself.
"We will check," said the phone girl, and a little bit later she
said, "Just a minute, he will be on the line in a minute."
"Oh, great green goat," he growled, "I wonder how they have me mixed
up this time."
And Clem was about to raise his voice unpleasantly to be sure that
they got him straight, when a voice came onto the phone.
This is the critical point.
It was his own voice.
The calling Clen Denning laughed first. And then he froze. It was no
trick. It was no freak. There was no doubt that it was his own voice. Clem
used the dictaphone a lot and he knew the sound of his own voice.
And now he heard his own voice raised higher in all its unmistakable
aspects, a great noise about open idiots who call on the phone and then
stand silent without answering.
"It's me all right," Clem grumbled silently to himself. "I sure do
talk rough when I'm irritated."
There was a law against harassment by telephone, the voice on the
phone said. By God, the voice on the phone said, he just noticed that his
room had been rifled. He was having the call monitored right now, the voice
on the phone swore. Clem knew that this was a lie, but he also recognized it
as his own particular style of lying. The voice got really wooly and
profane.
Then there was a change in the tone.
"Who are you?" the voice asked hollowly. "I hear you breathing
scared. I know your sound. Gaaah -- it's me!" And the voice on the phone was
also breathing scared.
"There has to be an answer," he told himself. "I'll just go to my
room and take a hot bath and try to sleep it off."
Then he roared back: "Go to my room! Am I crazy? I have just called
my room. I am already there. I would not go to my room for one million one
hundred and five thousand dollars."
He was trembling as though his bones were too loose for his flesh.
It was funny that he had never before noticed how bony he was. But he wasn't
too scared to think straight on one subject, however crooked other things