"Laymon, Richard - Bite" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laymon Richard)

"Is that all right?"
"Sure," I said.
"Do you have a job, or anything?"
"No. Yeah. But it's summer vacation. I teach. So I'm off till September."
"Great. This'll work out great. If you'd like, you could pack some things and maybe stay for a few days."
I nodded.
And just stood there, gaping at her.
Nothing seemed quite real.
But real enough. Even though the past three or four minutes seemed like a wish-fulfillment fantasy, I wasn't dreaming. I was awake. Only a lunatic can't tell the difference.
"What's going on?" I asked, surprising myself that I was able to come up, at last, with a sensible question.
"I need your help," Cat said.
All I needed to hear.
Hell, I didn't _need_ to hear that. I would've gone with her, no matter what her answer had been.
"You aren't in some sort of danger, are you?" I asked.
"You might say that. I'll tell you about it on the way over."
"Okay. I'll go get a few things."
When I left the living room, Cat was still leaning back against my door. My first stop was the bathroom. Instead of just grabbing my toothbrush, I used it. I couldn't avoid the mirror; it was straight in front of my face while I scrubbed my teeth. My hair was shaggy and mussed. I had a two-day growth of whiskers. My T-shirt was coming apart at the seam in front of my left shoulder, and its faded front showed a turkey vulture looking dour. The caption under the vulture read, "Patience, my ass. I'm gonna kill something."
I looked like a bum.
The last thing I had expected, that night, was-a surprise visit from the only girl I'd ever loved.
Sprucing myself up would've taken too long, so I only brushed my teeth. Then I took my toilet kit into my bedroom, dragged an overnight bag out of my closet, and started to throw things in.
"Don't bother to change," Cat called from the living room. "You're fine the way you are."
I wasn't so sure about that. But maybe a nasty old vulture T-shirt and ragged blue jeans were appropriate attire for whatever brand of "help" she required. Socks were not, so I put sneakers on over them. Then I pocketed my wallet and keys, and hauled my bag into the living room.
Cat was standing in front of my bookshelves, her back to me. She didn't look around. "I see you're still a reader," she said.
"Yeah."
"I remember that. You never went anywhere without a paperback." Turning her head, she smiled and gave her right buttock a smack through the clinging robe. "Here in your pocket. Even when you took me out. You wrote such beautiful poetry."
"I've mostly switched to prose."
She turned around. "Do you still have that old copy of _Dracula_?"
"Sure. Somewhere. I never get rid of a book."
"It got all wrecked by the rain."
"I still have it," I said. There was a tightness in my throat. Because she remembered.
"We got soaked, too," she said. She tilted her head to one side. "Remember?" she asked.
"Sure. The Santa Monica Pier."
"We ate fried clams."
"And got caught in a downpour."
"Drenched." Head still tilted, she smiled a little sadly. "And then we went under the pier to get out of the rain. Do you remember that?"
"Yeah. I do."
"It was the first time we ever kissed," she said. "Standing in the sand under the Santa Monica Pier. It was cold under there. And scary." Her smile suddenly lost its sadness, and she laughed softly. "You kept telling me the trolls were gonna get us."
I had to smile, too. "Did I?"
"I guess that's why I'm here."
"Huh? Trolls?"
Shaking her head slightly from side to side, she walked toward me. "Because I felt safe with you. I always felt safe with you, Sam. But especially that night under the pier when we were drenched and the rain was coming down and . . . the trolls were all around us. And we kissed."
Stopping just inches in front of me, she stared up into my eyes. She smelled the same as when she was a teenager: like cotton candy and Wrigley's Spearmint Chewing Gum.
"And you had _Dracula_ in your back pocket," she whispered.
"Yeah," I said. My heart was thundering. I put my bag down on the floor.
"I want to feel safe again," she told me.
By the look in her eyes, I thought she wanted me to kiss her. I wondered if her lips would feel the way I remembered them.
They were slightly parted, the lower lip full and pursed out a little.
I was about to kiss them.
But she said, "Take a look at this, okay?"
And fingered open the front of her robe, sliding the glossy blue silk sideways to the left, exposing a sliver of bare skin all the way down to the sash around her waist. Just as her left breast started to show, she cupped it with her right hand to hold the robe in place. Her other hand slid the fabric almost to her shoulder.