"MacDonald, John - Travis McGee 06 - Bright Orange for the Shroud" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacDonald John D)

Heard even in its most shoddy context, as through the papery walls of a convention motel, this life-beat could be diminished not to evil but to a kind of pathos, because then it was an attempt at affirmation between strangers, a way to try to stop all the clocks, a way to try to say: I live.

The billions upon billions of lives which have come and gone, and that small fraction now walking the world, came of this life-pulse, and to deny it dignity would be to diminish the blood and need and purpose of the race, make us all bawdy clowns, thrusting and bumping away in a ludicrous heat, shamed by our own instinct.

Hearing them I felt placidly avuncular. Enjoy. Find that one time that has no shred of self or loneliness. Seal it so that from now on McGee is the third wheel, all interrelationships solidly structured from now on. Celebrate the "nowness" of it, and subside into affections.

The almost inaudible pulse hastened, then slowed, and ended. I heard the far off drone of a marine engine, fading into the distance, a commercial fisherman perhaps, heading for the grounds off East Cape. Ripples slapped the hull. What assurances, gratitudes, immediate memories were the lovers entwined whispering to each other? Did they listen to the slowing of their hearts? Were there little catches at the end of those long breaths that were deep as sighs? Was it beautiful for you too, darling?

When I awoke again it was with the sense of total well-being I had been aiming for. The pounds were gone. A few slight areas of muscle soreness were not enough to diminish that good feeling of resiliency and vitality.

The body, once you are old enough to stop taking it for granted, becomes like a separate entity. The way it will endure neglect makes you feel guilty. Having survived trauma, and being still willing to carry you around after healing itself, it deserves better. Cherishing it and toughening it is an act of appeasement for past omissions.

In my line of work, neglect was especially asinine. Like being a front-line type with a rusty rifle, or a neurosurgeon with a hangover. One half step, or one twentieth of a second lag in reaction time can make the difference. Any violent necessity is usually the result of something having gone wrong, a probable error of judgment. But the probability is always there.

Now, with just minor versions of the total torture of the days past, it would hold its edge.

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My shower serenade did not stir the drowsy lovers, nor did the banging of pots. After breakfast I broke out a small spinning rod, rigged it with a yellow jig, installed sail, rudder and cen-terboard on the dinghy, and went off to circle the edge of distant grass flats. I released a couple of small jacks, one weakfish, and then, just as I was coming about, hooked into a stranger, a stray pompano who didn't belong in that kind of area. He ran better than three pounds, and I had him split, buttered, and on foil under the broiler as the lovers came fumbling, blinking and yawning out into the daylight. Call the pompano a sacrifice on a special altar. They claimed nothing had ever tasted as good. They finished him, every crumb, while I stood smirking like a kindly old aunt in a TV commercial.

All her actions toward him that Wednesday were precisely as on the day before. But without the Charge Nurse flavor. She had a doe-eyed glow, a lazy smugness. The gestures were returned in kind. I was the outsider. Arthur had his chin up, for a change. And he risked a few of his mild, strained jokesЧ rewarded with girlish howls of glee. I tried to keep out of their way. But at times The Busted Flush can seem small. In mid-afternoon I invented an errand at Long Key, a replacement filter, and with an identical expression of repressed anticipation on their faces, they waved to me as I went putting off toward Long Key.

Friday morning I put the essential question to him. I brought the anchors in, and he helped me spread the lines at the bow to dry before stowing them. In the early gray, so silent and eerie it gave one a tendency to whisper, the Flush floated dead in the water at the high tide change, with the mist magnifying the sun image in the east to a gigantic ball, suitable to a science fiction movie.

Arthur was beginning to look fit. Scrawny, but fit.

"What about it?" I asked him.

Squatting, he stared at me. "About it?"

"You ready to help me go after the loot, Arthur?"

He stood up. "I... guess I'm ready now."

I made an appraisal. He wasn't the same fellow who'd been a part of our ever-changing group better than a year ago. He

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looked almost the same, though thinner. I guess it was the eyes. Before, he had been able to watch you with the same pleasant fixity of stare of a family beagle. Now the eyes came up, then fell away, came back, shifted away.

"Listen, Arthur. The attitude is not anger, nor indignation, nor hate. No heroics. No punishments. We go in cold and shrewd and savvy. And you stay out of contact. You are my intelligence officer. I bring you pieces of it and we work out how they fit. But if I need you for any contact, I want to know you'll do it exactly as I say, whether you understand or agree. I want to know you won't let it shake you up."

"Trav... all I can do is promise to try."

"How do you feel about it?"

He tried to smile. "Butterflies."

"You can have butterflies, but you've got to have an operational attitude too. We're going to steal meat out from under the tiger's paw. We'll divert the animal's attention. We'll keep Chook out of it. And it starts right now."