"A. R. Morlan - Dear DB" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morlan A R)

picked up the phone on the second ring, the _BQ_ editor asked _me_ if _I_ was
home! I didn't know if he bought my line about a bad connection, but I kept
crinkling the wrapper from the boys' Gaines Burgers (even Lorne Green would
gag on Alpo day after day) next to the receiver, so I think that maybe I
fooled him and doing something like that to him made me feel like week-old
fishbowl scum. The call was about the novella he'd bought some time ago would
I mind if he split it into three parts, and ran it in three issues? I was so
rattled by then I almost made the suggestion that I'd be happy if he ran it a
line at a time until kingdom come, but then reason shut my mouth for me,
warning, _Why blame this mess on your editor?_ So far he hadn't called me
"Sir" or _gringo!_ However, once he hung up, I dug out my old cassette
recorder from under the bed and taped my voice, then played it back. It
sounded fine and feminine to me, but it made the boys howl ... and the sound
of Mr. "Night Job Sleeping" banging on the wall was sweet music to me, but by
the following day nothing could have made me smile.
****
That day, what went on went beyond _wrong,_ bypassed _strange_ and entered
_bizarre_ at full tilt. And all I did was go down the hall to the _bath_room,
something I've done hundreds of times since moving to the city, to this
apartment-cum-tenement. And while I wasn't actually friends (or even very




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friendly) with the people on my floor, things were non-hostile enough to allow
for a bit of overlapping when it came to using bathroom stalls; after all,
total strangers use the same restroom at the same time in all sorts of public
places with no hassle. At least I knew the other tenants by sight and
occasionally by name (from matching bodies with name plates on mail slots),
and they likewise "knew" me. Or so I had assumed. And I thought that Mrs.
Pendelton (Miss? Ms? All I knew was that she always took the Social Security
checks out of the box labeled "Pendelton, S.") was one of the friendlier souls
on my floor, at least she'd grunt "'Lo" as she passed by a person in the
hallway, hunched over her walker. Even the boom-box babes on the corner didn't
bother her. But that day you could have heard her clear into the Bronx, the
way she carried on when she lurched out of the stall and found me at the sink
washing my hands. Goggling at me from behind her trifocals, chins quivering,
papery white lips working in indignation, and then yelling: "Ain't you got no
decency? Getcha kicks outta _listening? Pre-_vert! Raised in a _baaarn?_ No
sense of _shame,_ young man? Terrible, just _terrible!_ Listenin' in on old
ladies! Pig!" And she tread on my instep with her walker as she passed me for
good measure. (And it hurt like nobody's business! She came on like some sort
of Hell's Grandma!)
I thought I could hear Mr. "Night Job Sleeping" laughing at me all the
way from the bathroom to my room. When I got in, locked the door and sank on
to a kitchen chair, the boys wouldn't even lick my hands.
No doubt they thought I was a "_pre-_vert" too.
****
Venturing out only when nature's call couldn't be ignored, I worked in