"Smith-SlowboatMan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Adam)

DEAN WESLEY SMITH

IN THE SHADE OF THE SLOWBOAT MAN

In the last year. Dean Wesley Smith has sold ten novels. Spiderman: Carnage in
New York from Ace/Boulevard is one of the first to appear in print.

He has also sold a large number of short stories. His most recent for F&SF,
"Jukebox Gifts" (January, 1995), made the preliminary Nebula ballot.

He returns with a tender tale of love abandoned, but not forgotten.

OVER THE LONG YEARS I HAD grown used to the sweet smell of blood, to the sharp
taste of disgust, to the wide-eyed look of lust. But the tight, small room of
the nursing home covered me in new sensations like a mad mother covering her
sleeping young child tenderly with a blanket before pressing a pillow hard over
the face.

I eased the heavy door closed and stood silently for a moments, my clutch purse
tight against my chest. One hospital bed, a small metal dresser, and an aluminum
walker were all the furniture. The green drapes were slightly open on the window
and I silently moved to stand in the beam of silver moonlight cutting the night.
I wanted more than anything else to run. But I calmed myself, took a deep
breath, and worked to pull in and study my surroundings as I would on any night
on any city street.

As with all of the cesspools of humanity the smell was the most overwhelming
detail. The odor of human rot filled the building and the room, not so much
different from a dead animal beside the road on a hot summer's day. Death and
nature doing their work. But in this building in this small room, the natural
work was disguised by layer after layer of biting poison antiseptic. I suppose
it was meant to clean the smell of death away so as not to disturb the sensitive
living who visited from the fresh air outside. But instead of clearing, the two
smells combined to form a thick aroma that filled my mouth with disgust.

I blocked the smell and focused my attention on the form in the bed.

John, my dear, sweet Slowboat Man, my husband once, lay under the white sheet of
the room's only bed. His frame shrunken from the robust, healthy man I
remembered from so many short years ago. He smelled of piss and decay. His face,
rough with old skin and white whiskers, seemed to fight an enemy unseen on the
battleground of this tiny room. He jerked, then moaned softly, his labored
breathing working to pull enough air to get to the next breath.

I moved to him, my ex-husband, my Slowboat Man, and lightly brushed his wrinkled
forehead to ease his sleep. I used to do that as we lay together in our
featherbed. I would need him to sleep so that I could go out and feed on the
blood of others. He never awoke while I was gone, not once in the twenty years