"Oates, Joyce Carol - Broke Heart Blues" - читать интересную книгу автора (Oates Joyce Carol)

"D. Heart", took cab to the first, on Paradise Street, a commercial street behind the Hotel & Casino, and was stunned to see that the entire block was now a lowrental Days Inn motel, a parking garage, and a Taco Bell, took the cab to the second, El Dorado, behind the shimmering Mirage Hotel & Casino, d, isappointed to see a car wash where a dwelling of some sort had once stood, in a bustling Latino neighborhood, took a cab to the third, on a more distant street near the dissolving edge of the city, and here, at 837 Arroyo Seco, Scottie discovered an adobe bungalow. He wasn't prepared for the impact of such a sight. "I thought, Jesus. Why didn't I have a camera.

Dahlia Heart and John Reddy lived here." Years--as many as thirty--had passed since the Hearts hadlllived in this modest bungalow that looked as if rust-corroded, but it seemed clear that the residence, like the neighborhood, couldn't have changed much. Single-story dwellings with postage-stamp front one-car garages like doghouses--built in the forties, or earlier.

At 837 Arroyo Seco, the facade appeared to be cracking even as Scottie stared.

The oncegarish, now dulled orangish-red paint had peeled in patches, the s small windowpanes had the milky lustre of glaucous eyes, the windows were further obscured, from the inside, by what appeared to be strips aluminum foil. Yet there was a miniature, crumbling porch upon Scottie eagerly hypothesized) the lovely young mother Dahlia Heart might have sat, cradling an infant John Reddy in her arms. "I could see it, almost!" Scottie told us, with a look of pain. "And me, Dr..

Baskett, kidded by the girls on my staff I'm always so overprepared, with no camera." Next door at 839 Arroyo Seco, on the crumbling adobe porch of a smudged custard-yellow bungalow, a replica of the Hearts' old bungalow, sat a grizzled old man with a bare, sunken chest and flaccid breasts, Scottie and sipping beer from a can. So Scottie called over cheerfully to inquire if the man had lived in this neighborhood for very long, and the man said sourly, with the deadpan air of a stand-up comedian, "Long?

Only half my fuckin life, doc." Scottie asked if the man could remember a resident of 837 Arroyo Seco who'd lived there years ago, as many as thirty, more--"A really beautiful, gorgeous woman named Dahlia Heart. She had children, two boys and a girl, a father who lived with her, a white-haired old fellow with some strange name of antiquity--Leander, I think." Seeing bare-chested man's look of disdain, Scottie added, "It's likely that this woman, Mrs.. Heart, worked at Caesar's Palace, or some other casino." Scowling, the man scratched both his breasts with spiteful vigor.

He said, "For prostate cancer the fuckers give you fuckin hormones that grow tits like a woman. Kindly explain to me, doc, you make a million a year can't you figure out the fuckin dosage?" Scottie said, startled, "How--do I'm a doctor?" and the man snorted with laughter, saying, "What?

You gotta be kidding, doc." Scottie tried to steer the subject back to Heart. He was convinced this old man had known her. Of course this old man have known Dahlia Heart." Then it happened my life was sort of passing before my eyes. I tasted panic, the way that guy was looking at me.

He's seen the Hearts, now he's seeing me. Soon I'll be gone, too. It was unnaturally hot for November--the sun was wrongly positioned in the sky. A winter sun, you're thinking, but summer heat. My hair's thinning and I should've worn a hat. I'm so old--almost forty-five. Did you ever dream you'd get so-old? I weigh thirty pounds more than I did in high school. I was such a skinny, hopeful kid in high school. Just four ballots short of Most Likely to Succeed. After taxes and insurance I pull in about five thousand a year.

This practice in Westchester. I've got four kids I'm proud of--more or less.

I'm an officer of this plastic surgeons' association and I'm giving a talk the next morning at the Hilton. My marriage is O. K. I married a Cornell who was looking to marry, I guess, a doctor. But it's O. K. But here my life's passing before my eyes in Vegas, in this old lost neighborhood-'Arroyo Seco. I mean I really was panicking, like going under anesthesia. I felt like crying--I'd never been friends with John Reddy Heart but I'd lost him. The girls I'd wanted to date, Pattianne Groves, Verrie Myers, knew I existed. It came over me--nobody's happy anymore. Nobody's with their bodies, or with their spouse's body. We're too old too fast. We aren't ready to be so old. We're our parents for Christ's sake!

was thinking it might've been better for him--John Reddy--if the state troopers had shot him down in the mountains. It might've been better for all of us.

surgery! Sure I do pro bono work, birth defects mainly, but the bread-andbutter is droopy breasts, hooter breasts, Dixie-cup breasts, bags under eyes, crow's-feet, jowls, turkey necks, liver spots, varicose veins, warts, acne scars, ripple thighs, love handles, hook noses, porky noses, double triple chins, sagging eyelids, sagging upper arms, sagging potbellies, sagging butts. It's about stopping the clock--no, turning it back. Unwinding it. It isn't what I was anticipating going into med school but it's what I got.

Actually I wanted to be a musician. I played trombone, remember? And Blake Wells, clarinet.

Pete Marsh fooled around with drums--not bad. We'd smoke pretending it was marijuana and we were high and that's where the came from. Mr.. Larsen said, I quote, we were as good as any band' and maybe he was being sarcastic but I believe he was correct. But, hell. I'm one of the happy graduates of our class. I'm one of the lucky ones.

There's guys like Bozer who've basically bottomed out. Dwayne Hewson was me Bo calls him at midnight sometimes, wants to talk about the old days, certain of the games, and what's there to say? He won't hang up.

He makes me hang up. It's like killing him. I hate it, Dwayne says.

He's doing pretty well, old Dwayne. Running for mayor of Willowsville--man! But there's guys in our class who've killed themselves. I don't mean with cars--Smoke Filer, Steve Lunt. Or even Pete Marsh--that was a long time ago, was just a kid. I mean a guy like Bert Fox. Remember Bert? Just a regular guy, one of us in the math, science' major, not a jock and not a geek and he's married, three kids, living in Batavia selling insurance and one day he's dead.

You'd have thought--Hell, Bert Fox doesn't have the depth to kill himself.

Why's Bert Fox who used to screw around in Dunleddy's class taking so seriously, killing himself? Like he's impatient, can't wait nature to do it for him? Tha*,'s what you'd have thought but you'd be wrong. Now Fischer's the latest. You heard? Jesus. Ken Fischer.

Best-Looking Boy. King of the Senior Prom. He'd gone with Verrie Myers since seventh grade-Veronica Myers. In Europe, someone said. In a hotel room where he was all alone. Or maybe wasn't alone. Who could predict--Ken Fischer?

was saying that Mary Louise Schultz was in the hospital. Maybe a overdose. That terrific-looking girl--those breasts. Why'd a like that want to kill herself? Her husband's some big deal in Albany.

of the Governor's. I tried to date her, and no luck. Bibi Arhardt--remember that cool chick? Husband decides he's gay, divorces her and she winds in a detox place in Minnesota. So I was thinking how happy I am--basically.

How much I love my wife, my kids. Basically. It was like my life, my soul, was a substance thin as smoke that might dissolve into nothing if my will weakened. I stood there trembling in the sun that's like a furnace in Nevada on the sidewalk in front of a rundown shit-stained bungalow trying to explain to a cancer-riddled old man what the Hearts meant to me.

I was saying, almost begging, I went to high school with Dahlia Heart's son, John Reddy. Do you maybe remember him? No, he doesn't. I tried to Dahlia Heart to the old man--but how do you describe Dahlia Heart?