"Dean Wesley Smith - Slowboat Man" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Dean Wesley)

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,