"Pat Murphy - Departure" - читать интересную книгу автора (Murphy Pat)

PAT MURPHY

POINTS OF DEPARTURE

Jan first heard wolves howling in the streets of Manhattan on the night of the
blackout.

It was two in the morning, but Jan was awake. She had been lying in bed
watching
the all-news cable station on TV. For the third time that night, a
well-dressed
newscaster was telling her about a sniper in a Miami shopping mall. Distraught
over his divorce, the man had opened fire with a rifle, picking off six women
shoppers and a saleslady before the police apprehended him. The blackout cut
the
announcer off in mid-sentence.

Just before the lights went out, Jan had been crying. A month before, Dennis,
her husband, had said that he wanted a divorce, and that unexpected event had
shattered the rhythms of her life. "I'm leaving," he had said. And then he
said
many other things -- about finding himself, about feeling trapped, about being
confused, about love. But of that storm of words only two had stayed with her:
"I'm leaving."

In the end, since the condominium that they shared belonged to him, she had
been
the one to leave, subletting an apartment in the Village from a friend who was
vacationing in Florida. Jan lived out of a suitcase and fed her friend's two
cats, who regarded her as a convenient source of food and no more. The cats
prowled around her bed and on her bed, pouncing on her feet when she shifted
position and staring at her in the flickering light of the television.

After Jan had left her husband, she realized that she had forgotten how to
sleep. She found herself sitting up late at night, watching TV. Sometimes she
drank brandy to put herself in a drifting hazy state from which she could nod
off. Sometimes the murmur of the television lulled her to sleep. But she
always
slept badly.

On the night that the lights went out, Jan sat for a moment in the darkness,
then got out of bed and went to the window to see if the lights were out
across
the street. That was when she heard the wolves.

First, the sound of distant barking -- maybe someone's dog disturbed by the
sudden darkness. Then the animal began to howl, starting low and rising slowly
to a high-pitched wailing note. Others joined in with wavering voices, each on
a
slightly different pitch.