"Whitley - Strieber - The Wild" - читать интересную книгу автора (Strieber Whitley)

pheasants she had taken, her gun on her arm, her birds at her waist, dangling and beautiful, her color
high, her eyes sparkling. He had kissed her cheek, there had been wine and Steve's bobbing bald head in
the light of the kerosene lantern, the group of them with the enormous old club build-ing to themselves but
for the Brickmans from California, the deaf, smiling, ancient Brickmans, and he had thought of Monica in
the night. Over the course of the evening he had contrived a plan that would enable him to accomplish his
object without shame, or so he imagined. He had rehearsed the words, the gestures, the casual laughter if
his suggestion failed. "It's cold. Why don't we bunk up together, all four of us?"

A short silence. Steve's pate reddened. Monica crossed her legs, put her chin in her hand. He could
practically hear the phrases of her profession wallowing about in her mind: penile insecurity, death wish,
sublimation.
They all burst out laughing, so loudly that the Brickmans, who were sitting in armchairs reading Reader's
Digest Condensed Books, nodded and smiled, and Mr. Brickman went "ha-ha, a good hunt!"

It was a night of false groping. For the longest time only Steve was potent. He and Cindy had coupled
together with Monica sitting in a chair and Bob curled up under the covers at the bottom of the bed,
praying to God it would end, but it was endless, on and on, booming through the night as if an artillery
battery had opened up on his position.

At three o'clock in the morning Bob had waked up, his body quaking with lust, and made furious love to
Monica.

Only at the end did he discover that the shadowy, grappling woman beneath him was Cindy. Monica and
Steve had gone back to their own room hours before.

Should he now sit across a desk from Monica and say, "I had a hallucination that there was a wolf in my
stomach?" Well, she wouldn't charge him too much. "A professional visit," she would say, "of course."

The wind blew, and Cindy's heavy thigh rested against him, and his son went on drawing the tapir. The
crowd passed, a baby bobbing in a stroller, a couple with linked hands, a pale man who watched Cindy,
his face in an agony of longing. Cindy's eyes followed him. She carried a terrible electric stunner in her
purse. She would not hesitate to use it.

Something made Bob get up, made him stand full height. "Get me a Pepsi," Cindy said.

His mouth might as well have been sewed closed, for he could not even begin to answer. He found
himself moving toward the wolf, threading through the crowd, or so he thought until he collided with a girl
in shorts and a tie-dyed T-shirt, and smashed her orange drink against her naked midriff.

Her voice chopped at him, a wave smashing on rocks. Seeing that she could not make him hear her, she
stamped her foot and stalked off. The wolf had watched Bob until he reached the cage. Then it began to
pace back and forth, its dewlaps wet, its eyes glancing from side to side, its tongue lolling. He watched
the tongue, the black lips, the yellow, weak teeth, the eyes. The animal's tail was down, and when it
passed close to him, it growled.

Was that entirely an animal sound?

He realized that it was literally frantic to escape, that its problem, very simply, was boredom. It was
made for the woods, this creature, it belonged in secret and limitless spaces. But where were they? The
woods that weren't being logged out were dying of acid rain. It belonged nowhere, this North American