"Mary Rosenblum - Afterimage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rosenblum Mary)

"She left." He doesn't look up from that blood red bass of his. The chords
change, hitting me like big hands now, shoving me toward the door. I stumble
over a cushion. "What's wrong man?" I say, really scared now. "What'd I do?"

"Ask Keri," Dicey snickers. He's sprawled on his back, the tequila bottle
balanced on his skinny chest. "Hey," he says as I open the door. "I want to know
what it's like."

"What about Keri?" I'm asking Hammer, but the music is a wall between me and
him, and he doesn't hear me. "What's what like?" I say to Dicey.

"Being dead." He swigs from the bottle and cheap tequila dribbles from the
comers of his mouth. "What's it like being dead, man?"

I slam the door behind me, and I wonder if this is a dream, because nothing
makes sense right now. I look at my arms under the one bulb that still works in
the fancy ceiling fixture. The old tracks are there--knotted strings counting
off a bunch of days I don't remember all that well. Heaven, sometimes. Hell the
rest of the time. Not much in between. The scars are white and old. Nothing
fresh. I didn't do it long enough that I was shooting anywhere else, so...I
didn't do a shot.

Hammer's music comes after me through the door, dark and angry like claws at my
back, so that I run down the stairs to the street. No wonder they're so hot--
with an album out already. Hammer can hurt you with that music, man.

I go to Daniel's.

I guess I always go to Daniel. Sometimes -- in the bad days -- I crawled. He's
doing a degree in architecture because he says you can achieve God in a
building. I wouldn't know.

The stoplights are bleeding into the empty puddled streets, and I'm shivering
hard by the time I get to Daniel's place. He lives over this storefront down by
the rail yard and the river. This old guy -- Chinese I guess-- has a shop where
he sells herbs and paints scrolls for people. If you don't have a key, you got
to pound on the front door, and the old guy wakes up, cause he sleeps in his
shop. So I always go up the fire escape.

I make a hell of a racket going up, but Daniel's light is on and I don't really
care. Hammer's angry music is chasing me like a bunch of ugly crows, and I still
can't remember, and I'm really spooked. I clatter up onto the landing outside
his window. It's open. The curtains are wet and water's dripping in onto the
floor because it's still raining. Daniel's asleep at the huge old dining room
table that is most of his furniture. And there's a vodka bottle by his elbow.
Mostly empty. And the hair stands up on my neck because Daniel doesn't drink.
Not even beer. Bad history, I guess. His dad was a drunk. He doesn't talk about
it much.
Dead, Dicey's voice whispers in my ear and I realize I've been hearing it all
the way over here, backed by Hammer's bass line. I climb through the window and