"Фредерик Браун. Night of the Jabberwock (англ) " - читать интересную книгу автора

But I'll settle, on any given evening, for my books. Two walls of my
living room are lined with them and they overflow into bookcases in my
bedroom and I even have a shelf of them in the bathroom. What do I mean,
even? I think a bathroom without a bookshelf is as incomplete as would be
one without a toilet.
And they're good books, too. No, I wouldn't be lonely tonight, even if
Al Grainger didn't come around for that game of chess. How could I be
lonesome with a bottle in my pocket and good company waiting for me? Why,
reading a book is almost as good as listening to the man who wrote it
talking to you. Better, in one way, because you don't have to be polite to
him. You can shut him up any moment you feel so inclined and pick someone
else instead. And you can take off your shoes and put your feet on the
table. You can drink and read until you forget everything but what you're
reading; you can forget who you are and the fact that there's a newspaper
that hangs around your neck like a millstone, all day and every day, until
you get home to sanctuary and forgetfulness.
The walk home.
And so to the corner of Campbell Street and my turning.
A June evening, but cool, and the night air had almost completely
sobered me in the nine blocks I'd walked from Smiley's.
My turning, and I saw that the light was on in the front room of my
house. I started walking a little faster, mildly puzzled. I knew I hadn't
left it on when I'd left for the office that morning. And if I had left it
on, Mrs. Carr, the cleaning woman who comes in for about two hours every
afternoon to keep my place in order, would have turned it off.
Maybe, I thought, Al Grainger had finished whatever he was doing and
had come early and had but no, Al wouldn't have come without his car and
there wasn't any car parked in front.
It might have been a mystery, but it wasn't.
Mrs. Carr was there, putting on her hat in front of the panel mirror in
the closet door as I went in.
She said, "I'm just leaving, Mr. Stoeger. I wasn't able to get here
this afternoon, so I came to clean up this evening instead; I just
finished."
"Fine," I said. "By the way, there's a blizzard out."
"A what?"
"Blizzard. Snowstorm." I held up the wrapped bottle. "So maybe you'd
better have a little nip with me before you start home, don't you think?"
She laughed. "Thanks, Mr. Stoeger. I will. I've had a pretty rough day,
and it sounds like a good idea. I'll get glasses for us."
I put my hat in the closet and followed her out into the kitchen.
"A rough day?" I asked her. "I hope nothing went wrong."
"Well nothing too serious. My husband he works, you know, out at
Bonney's fireworks factory got burned in a little accident they had out
there this afternoon, and they brought him home. It's nothing serious, a
second degree burn the doctor said, but it was pretty painful and I thought
I'd better stay with him until after supper, and then he finally got to
sleep so I ran over here and I'm afraid I straightened up your place pretty
fast and didn't do a very good job."
"Looks spotless to me," I said. I'd been opening the bottle while she'd