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are no more miracles for the commonest among common men. As he handed her the money, wondering why in God s name, why! the beast in the comer by the linen closet took its final shape, and substantiality, reality was its future. It had been called up by a series of contemporary incantations melded out of the sounds of passion and the stink of despair. The girl snapped her bra, covered herself with dacron and decorum, and left Paul sitting stunned, inarticulate with terror in the presence of his new roommate. It stared at him, and though he tried to avert his eyes (screams were useless), he stared back. Georgette, he whispered huskily into the mouthpiece, listen...lis, listen to me, willya, for Christ s sake...st, stop blabbering for a second, willya, just, just SHUT UP FOR ONE GODDAM SECOND! willya... she finally subsided, and his words, no longer forced to slip themselves piecemeal between hers, left standing naked and alone with nothing but silence confronting them, ducked back within him, shy and trembly. Well, he said, reflexively. go on, She said she had nothing further to say; what was he calling her for, she had to get ready to go out. Georgette, I ve got, well, I ve got this uh this problem, and I had to talk to someone, you were the one I figured would understand, y see, I ve uh- She said she didn t know an abortionist, and if he had knocked up one of his bummy-girls, he could use a goddam coat-hanger, a rusty coat-hanger, for all she cared. No! No, you stupid ass, that isn t anything like what I m scared about. That isn t it, and who the hell do you care who I date, you tramp...you re out on the turf enough for both of us... and he stopped. This was how all their arguments had started. From subject to subject, like mountain goats from rock to rock, forgetting the original discussion, veering off to rip and tear with their teeth at each other s trivialities. Georgette, Listen to me. There s a, there s a thing, some kind of please! thing living here in the apartment. She thought he was crazy, what did he mean? I don t know. I don t know what it is. Was it like a spider, or a cat, or what? It s like a bear, Georgette, only it s something else, I don t know what. It doesn t say anything, just stares at me- What was he, cracking up or somedamnthing? Bears don t talk, except the ones on TV, and what was he, trying to pull off a nut stunt so he wouldn t have to pony up the payments the court set? And why was he calling her in the first Page 178 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html place, closing with: I think you re flipping, Paul. I always said you were a whack, and now you re proving it. Then the phone clicked, and he was alone. Together. He looked at it from the corner of his eye as he lit a cigarette. Hunkered down in the far corner of the room, near the linen closet, the huge soft-brown furry thing that had come to watch him, sat silently, paws folded across its massive chest. Like some great Kodiak bear, yet totally unlike it in shape, the truncated triangle of its bloated form could not be avoided-by glance or thought. The wild, mad golden discs of its eyes never turned, never flickered, while it watched him. (This description. Forget it. The creature was nothing like that. Not a thing like that at all.) And he could sense the reproach, even when he had locked himself in the bathroom. He sat on the edge of the tub and ran the hot water till steam had obscured the cabinet mirror over the sink and he could no longer see his own face, the insane light in his eyes so familiar, so similar to the blind stares of the creature in the other room. His thoughts flowed, ran, lavalike, then congealed. At which point he realized he had never seen the faces of any of the women who had been in the apartment. Not one of them. Faceless, all of them. Not even Georgette s face came to him. None of them. They were all without expression or recall. He had been to seed with so many angular corpses. The sickness welled up in him, and he knew he had to get out of there, out of the apartment, away from the creature in the corner. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |