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

 "No she doesn't, Joe. I'm afraid of it. I haven't touched a woman
since Veronica."
"Damn it, Clem, this is Veronica that we're talking about. It isn't
as though you weren't still married to her."
"I'm still afraid of it, Joe. I've become something unnatural now.
Where am I supposed to meet her? Oh, oh you son of a snake! I can feel her
presence. She was already in the place when 1 came in. No, no, Veronica, I'm
not the proper one. It's all a case of mistaken identity."
"It sure is, Clem Clam," said the strong-minded Veronica as she came
to their table. "Come along now. You're going to have more explaining to do
than any man I ever heard of."
But I can't explain it, Veronica. I can't explain any of it."
"You will try real hard, Clem. We both will. Thank you, Mr.
Zabotsky, for your discretion in an odd situation."
Well, it went pretty well, so well in fact there had to be a catch
to it. Veronica was an unusual and desirable woman, and Clem had missed her.
They did the town mildly. They used to do it once a year, but they had been
apart in their present persons for several years. And yet Veronica would
want to revisit "that little place we were last year, oh, but that wasn't
you, was it, Clem? -- that was Clem," and that kind of talk was confusing.
They dined grandly, and they talked intimately but nervously. There
was real love between them, or among them, or around them somehow. They
didn't understand how it had turned grotesque.
"He never quite forgave you for clearing out the accounts," Veronica
said.
"But it was my money, Veronica," Clem insisted. "I earned it by the
sweat of my tongue and my brain. He had nothing to do with it."
"But you're wrong, dear Clem. You worked equally for it when you
were one. You should have taken only half of it."
They came back to Veronica's hotel, and one of the clerks looked at
Clem suspiciously.
"Didn't you just go up, and then come down, and then go up again?"
he asked.
"I have my ups and downs, but you may mean some thing else," Clem
said.
"Now don't be nervous, dear," Veronica said. They were up in
Veronica's room now, and Clem was looking around very nervously. He had
jumped at a mirror, not being sure that it was.
"I am still your wife," Veronica said, "and nothing has changed,
except everything. I don't know how, but I'm going to put things together
again. You have to have missed me! Give now!" And she swept him off his feet
as though he were a child. Clem had always loved her for her sudden
strength. If you haven't been up in Veronica's arms, then you haven't been
anywhere.
"Get your pumpkin-picking hands off my wife, you filthy oaf!" a
voice cracked out like a bullwhip, and Veronica dropped Clem thuddingly from
the surprise of it.
"Oh, Clem!" she said with exasperation, "you shouldn't have come
here when I was with Clem. Now you've spoiled everything. You can't be
jealous of each other. You're the same man. Let's all pack up and go home