"Wilhelm,_Kate_-_The_Hounds(1)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)
The Hounds
by Kate Wilhelm
======================
Copyright (c)1974 Kate Wilhelm
First published in A Shocking Thing, ed. Damon Knight, 1974
Fictionwise Contemporary
Science Fiction and Fantasy
---------------------------------
NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the purchaser. If you did not purchase this ebook directly from Fictionwise.com then you are in violation of copyright law and are subject to severe fines. Please visit www.fictionwise.com to purchase a legal copy. Fictionwise.com offers a reward for information leading to the conviction of copyright violators of Fictionwise ebooks.
---------------------------------
ROSE ELLEN KNEW that Martin had been laid off, had known it for over a week, but she had waited for him to tell her. She watched him get out of the car on Friday, and she said to herself, "Now he's ready. He's got a plan and he'll tell me what we're going to do, and it'll be all right." There was more relief in her voice, that was in her mind only, than she had thought possible. Why, I've been scared, she thought, in wonder, savoring the feeling now that there was no longer any need to deny it. She knew Martin was ready by the way he left the car. He was a thin intense man, not very tall, five nine. When worried, or preoccupied, or under pressure, he seemed to lose all his coordination. He bumped into furniture, moved jerkily, upsetting things within reach, knocked over coffee cups, glasses. And he forgot to turn things off: water, lights, the car engine once. He had a high domed forehead, thin hair the color of wet sand, and now, after twelve years at the cape, a very deep burned-in suntan. He was driven by a nervous energy that sought release through constant motion. He always had a dozen projects under way: refinishing furniture, assembling a stereo system, designing a space lab model, breeding toy poodles, raising hydroponic vegetables. All his projects turned out well. All were one-man efforts. This afternoon his motion was fluid as he swung his legs out of the car, followed through with a smooth movement, then slammed the door hard. His walk was jaunty as he came up the drive and around the canary date palm to where she waited at the poolside bar. Rose Ellen was in a bikini, although the air was a bit too cool, and she wouldn't dream of swimming yet. But the sun felt good when the wind died down, and she knew she looked as good in the brief red strips as she had looked fifteen or even twenty years ago. She saw herself reflected in his eyes, not actually, but his expression told her that he was seeing her again. He hadn't for the whole week.
He didn't kiss her; they never kissed until they were going to make love. He patted her bottom and reached for the cocktail shaker. He shook it once, then poured and sat down, still looking at her approvingly.
"You know," he said.
"What, honey? I know what?" Her relief put a lilt in her voice, made her want to sing.
"And you've known all along. Well, okay, here's to us."
"Are you going to tell me what it is that I've known all along, or are you just going to sit there looking enigmatic as hell and pleased, and slightly sousled?" She leaned over him, looking into his eyes, sniffing. "And how long ago did you leave the office?"
"Noon. Little after. I didn't go back after lunch. I got the can, last Thursday." He put his glass down and pulled her to his lap. "And I don't care."
"May they all rot in hell," Rose Ellen said. "You! You've been there longer than almost anyone. And when they come to you beggin' you to come back, tell them to go to hell. Right?"
"Anyway, you can get a job up in Jacksonville tomorrow. They know that, don't they? That you'll not be available if they let you go."
"Honey, they aren't Machiavellian, you know. The agency doesn't want to break up our team, but they had no choice, no money, no appropriation for more money. We did what they hired us to do. Now it's over. Let's go to bed."
"Uh-uh! Not until you tell me what's making you grin like that. "
"Right. Look, doll, I'm forty-nine. And laid off. You know what the story is for the other guys who've had this happen. No luck. No job. Nothing. It wouldn't be any different with me, honey. You have to accept that."
She kissed his nose and stood up, hands on hips, studying him. "You! You're better than all the others put together. You know you are. You told me yourself a hundred times."
"Honey, I'm forty-nine. No one hires men who are forty-nine."
"Martin, stop this! I won't have it. You're a young man. Educated! My God, you've got degrees nobody ever even heard of. You've got education you've never even used yet."
He laughed and poured his second martini. She knew it pleased him for her to get indignant on his behalf. "I know what I'm talking about, honey. Simmer down, and listen. Okay?" She sat down again, on a stool on the other side of the bar, facing him. A tight feeling had come across her stomach, like the feeling she used to get just before the roller coaster started to go down the last, wildest drop. "I don't want another job, Rose. I've had it with jobs. I want to buy a farm."
She stared at him. He said it again, "We could do it, honey. We could sell the house and with the money left after we pay off the mortgage, the car, the other things, there'd be enough for a small farm. Ten, twenty acres. Not on the coast. Inland. West Virginia. Or Kentucky. I could get a job teaching. I wouldn't mind that.
"Martin? Martin! Stop. It's not funny. It isn't funny at all. Don't go on like this." Her playfulness evaporated leaving only the tight feeling.
"You bet your sweet ass it isn't funny. And I'm serious, Rose. Dead serious."
"A farm! What on earth would I do on the farm? What about the kids?"
"We can work out all those things ...."
"Not now, Martin. I have to go get Juliette. Later, later." She ran into the house without looking back at him. Bad strategy, she thought at herself dressing. She should have gone to bed with him, and then talked him out of his crazy notion. That's all it was, a crazy notion. He was as scared as she was. He could get a job in Jacksonville. He could. It wasn't a bad drive. He could come home weekends, if he didn't want to drive it every day, although some people did. She thought about the house payments, and the insurance, and the pool maintenance, and the yard people, and the housecleaning woman who came twice a week. And the lessons: piano, ballet, scuba, sailing. The clubs. The marina where they left the ketch. She thought of her dressmaker and her hairdresser, and his tailor, and the special shoes for Annamarie, and the kennel fees when they went away for the weekend and had to leave the three toy poodles. She thought of two thousand dollars worth of braces for Juliette in another two years.
She thought about the others it had happened to. Out of six close friends only one, Burdorf, had another job, advisor to an ad agency. But Burdorf had an in with them; his wife's father owned it.
Rose Ellen tried to stop thinking of the others who had been laid off. But Martin was different, she thought again. Really different. He had so many degrees, for one thing. She shook her head. That didn't matter. It hadn't mattered for any of the others.
She thought about being without him. She and the children without him. She shivered and hugged herself hard. She could go to work. She hadn't because neither of them had wanted her to before. But she could. She could teach, actually, easier than Martin could. He didn't have any of the education courses that were required now. So, she pursued it further, she would teach, at about seven thousand a year, and Martin would have to pay, oh, say four hundred a month ... And if he didn't, or couldn't? If he was on a farm somewhere without any money at all? Seven thousand. Braces, two thousand. House, two thousand. Some extras, not many, but some, like a car. In another year Annamarie would be driving, and junior insurance, and then Jeffrey would be wanting a car ....
More important, they wouldn't mind her. She knew it. Martin could control them with a word, a glower. She was easy and soft with them. It had always been impossible to tell them no, to tell them she wouldn't take them here or there, do this or that for them. They'd run all over her, she knew.
* * * *
Martin bought a farm in May and they moved as soon as school was out. The farm was twelve acres, with a small orchard and a deep well and barn. The house was modern and good, and the children, surprisingly, accepted the move unquestioningly and even liked it all. They held a family council the day after moving into the house and took a vote on whether to buy a pool table for the basement rec room, or a horse. It would be the only luxury they could afford for a long time. Only Rose Ellen voted for the pool table.
Martin had to take three courses at the university in the fall semester, then he would teach, starting in mid-term, not his own field of mathematics, because they had a very good teacher already, he was told, but if he could brush up on high school general science ....
Rose Ellen signed up as a substitute teacher for the fall semester. The school was only a mile and a half from their house, she could walk there when the weather was pleasant.
"It's going to be all right, honey," Martin said one night in early September. Everyone had started school, the whole move to the country had been so without trauma that it was suspicious. Rose Ellen nodded, staring at him. "What's wrong?" he asked. "Dirt on my face?"
"No. It's strange how much you looked like my father there for a moment. A passing expression, there and gone so fast that I probably imagined it."
| © 2025 Библиотека RealLib.org (support [a t] reallib.org) |