"Lisa Tuttle - Ghosts and Other Lovers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tuttle Lisa)

other.

No longer frightened of Jane, no longer in danger of seeing her ghost, I spent every night in his flat, even
staying there by myself that endless evening when he went out to meet Vanessa for the last time. I was
there, waiting for him, when he came back and cried in my arms. We drank Vodka and orange until we
fell over.

The next two weeks were curiously flat. It was supposed to be a time of healing, and we were especially
kind to each other, devising little treats. Yet we couldnтАЩt go on spending quite so much time together as
we had been; we both had our work, which we had let slide recently. Love could not be our whole
existence, which was a relief.

Things went on feeling flat, and I began to feel sour and impatient and angry with David. I knew it wasnтАЩt
fair. IтАЩd got what I wanted. Vanessa and Jane had been vanquished. He loved me the best. I had no
more reason to be jealous. I also had no more reason for wanting him.

We dragged on together for a few more months. It was a hard thing to realize, harder still to confess. It
was easier just to let things go on, and to think up excuses to avoid seeing him when I could. Finally I
realized how absurd it was, and how unfair to both of us, and I broke things off.

It was more difficult, more painful, and much more protracted than that sounds. David took it much
harder than I expected. I donтАЩt know whether that was egotism on my part, expecting his feelings to
mirror mine, or whether it was a fatal lack of ego, that self-denigrating certainty that no one could really
love me all that much. At any rate, his response, his hurt astonishment, his pain, his tears, took me
completely by surprise. I had hoped I could just stop seeing him, but he let me know how cruel that was,
and I had to agree to the occasional evening together, the meeting in some neutral London pub or caf├й
for тАЬa quick drink,тАЭ followed by dragging, relentless hours in which he tried to talk me back into love with
him.

When I refused to see him again, he kept phoning. I got an answering machine, and so he turned to
letters. It has always been hard for me to resist words on paper, and the chance to create a neat
justification of myself without risk of interruption. Writing seems like the way to truth. If we could each
tell our stories unhindered, in our own good time, in our own words, eventually a complete and final
understanding would be reached, and weтАЩd be beyond guilt and hurt. Maybe weтАЩd become the friends he
said he wanted us to be. But it didnтАЩt work. After a while his letters began to seem as much an intrusion
as the phone calls had been, and although I still answered them, my replies became shorter.

Then I was invited to spend three months teaching in America. It was only a summer stint, in Seattle, but
the money was good and I had friends in California, Texas, and New Mexico, and I figured I could spin
it out, with visits, to six months at least. I gave up my bedsit, stored the few possessions I couldnтАЩt take
with me and didnтАЩt care to sell, and I was off, leaving no forwarding address for David.

I stayed away for nearly a year. I canтАЩt say I completely forgot about David, but he seldom crossed my
mind. My affair with him had taken place in another country, and, it began to seem to me, in another era,
in a different existence altogether.

Much happened to me in that year, but the only thing it seems pertinent to mention here is that I began to
have a recurring dream. It wasnтАЩt an interesting dream, it was just me in a house which wasnтАЩt mine and
in which I felt I didnтАЩt belong. I didnтАЩt know why I was there but I wasnтАЩt worrying about it, my one
concern was simply to find a way out. The dream seldom lasted long, and I always woke up before I