Archiwum
- Index
- Chalker Jack L W Świecie Studni 5 Zmierzch przy Studni Dusz (pdf)
- Ian Rankin [Jack Harvey 03] Blood Hunt (v4.0) (pdf)
- Jack L. Chalker Watchers at the Well 03 Gods at the Well of Souls
- James Fenimore Cooper Jack Tier, Volume 2
- Chalker Jack L W Świecie Studni 3 Poszukiwanie (pdf)
- Jack McKinney RoboTech 14 Dark Powers
- Jack McKinney RoboTech 05 Force of Arms
- Jack L. Chalker Dancing Gods 3 Vengance of the Dance
- Jack L. Chalker Three Kings 3 Kaspars Box
- Jack McKinney RoboTech 01 Genesis
- zanotowane.pl
- doc.pisz.pl
- pdf.pisz.pl
- docucrime.xlx.pl
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
as we go along
. . . He forgot about that in an instant and looked around blankly. I was
Page 220
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
glad I had come,
he needed me now.
Why did Camille throw you out? What are you going to do?
Eh? he said. Eh? Eh? We racked our brains for where to go and what to do.
I realized
it was up to me. Poor, poor Dean the devil himself had never fallen farther;
in idiocy,
with infected thumb, surrounded by the battered suitcases of his motherless
feverish life
across America and back numberless times, an undone bird. Let s walk to New
York,
he said, and as we do so let s take stock of everything along the way
yass. I took out
my money and counted it; I showed it to him.
I have here, I said, the sum of eighty-three dollars and change, and if
you come with
me let s go to New York and after that let s go to Italy.
Italy? he said. His eyes lit up. Italy, yass how shall we get there, dear
Sal?
I pondered this. I ll make some money, I ll get a thousand dollars from the
publishers.
We ll go dig all the crazy women in Rome, Paris, all those places; we ll sit
at sidewalk
cafes; we ll live in whorehouses. Why not go to Italy?
Why yass, said Dean, and then realized I was serious and looked at me out
of the
corner of his eye for the first time, for I d never committed myself before
with regard to
his burdensome existence, and that look was the look of a man weighing his
chances at
the last moment before the bet. There were triumph and insolence in his eyes,
a devilish
look, and he never took his eyes off mine for a long time. I looked back at
him and
blushed.
I said, What s the matter? I felt wretched when I asked it. He made no
answer but
continued looking at me with the same wary insolent side-eye.
Page 221
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
I tried to remember everything he d done in his life and if there wasn t
something back
there to make him suspicious of something now. Resolutely and firmly I
repeated what I
said
Come to New York with me; I ve got the money. I looked at him; my eyes
were
watering with embarrassment and tears. Still he stared at me. Now his eyes
were blank
and looking through me. It was probably the pivotal point of our friend ship
when he
realized I had actually spent some hours thinking about him and his troubles,
and he was
trying to place that in his tremendously involved and tormented mental
categories.
Something clicked in both of us. In me it was suddenly concern for a man who
was years
younger than I, five years, and whose fate was wound with mine across the
passage of the
recent years; in him it was a matter that I can ascertain only from what he
did afterward.
He became extremely joyful and said everything was settled. What was that
look? I
asked. He was pained to hear me say that. He frowned. It was rarely that Dean
frowned.
We both felt perplexed and uncertain of something. We were standing on top of
a hill on
a beautiful sunny day in San Francisco; our shadows fell across the sidewalk.
Out of the
tenement next to Camille s house filed eleven Greek men and women who
instantly lined
themselves up on the sunny pavement while another backed up across the narrow
street
and smiled at them over a camera. We gaped at these ancient people who were
having a
wedding party for one of their daughters, probably the thousandth in an
unbroken dark
generation of smiling in the sun. They were well dressed, and they were
strange. Dean
Page 222
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
and I might have been in Cyprus for all of that. Gulls flew overhead in the
sparkling air.
Well, said Dean in a very shy and sweet voice, shall we go?
Yes, I said, let s go to Italy. And so we picked up our bags, he the
trunk with his one
good arm and I the rest, and staggered to the cable-car stop; in a moment
rolled down the
hill with our legs dangling to the sidewalk from the jiggling shelf, two
broken-down
heroes of the Western night.
3
First thing, we went to a bar down on Market Street and decided
everything that we
would stick together and be buddies till we died. Dean was very quiet and
preoccupied,
looking at the old bums in the saloon that reminded him of his father. I
think he s in
Denver this time we mustabsolutely find him, he may be in County Jail, he may
be
around Larimer Street again, but he s to be found. Agreed?
Yes, it was agreed; we were going to do everything we d never done and had
been too
silly to do in the past. Then we promised ourselves two days of kicks in San
Francisco
before starting off, and of course the agreement was to go by travel bureau
in share-thegas
cars and save as much money as possible. Dean claimed he no longer needed
Marylou though he still loved her. We both agreed he would make out in New
York.
Dean put on his pin-stripe suit with a sports shirt, we stashed our gear in a
Greyhound bus
locker for ten cents, and we took off to meet Roy Johnson who was going to be
our
chauffeur for two-day Frisco kicks. Roy agreed over the phone to do so. He
arrived at the
corner of Market and Third shortly thereafter and picked us up. Roy was now
living in
Frisco, working as a clerk and married to a pretty little blonde called
Dorothy. Dean
Page 223
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
confided that her nose was too long this was his big point of contention
about her, for
some strange reason but her nose wasn t too long at all. Roy Johnson is a
thin, dark,
handsome kid with a pin-sharp face and combed hair that he keeps shoving back
from the
sides of his head. He had an extremely earnest approach and a big smile.
Evidently his
wife, Dorothy, had wrangled with him over the chauffeuring idea and,
determined to
make a stand as the man of the house (they lived in a little room), he
nevertheless stuck
by his promise to us, but with consequences; his mental dilemma resolved
itself in a bitter
silence. He drove Dean and me all over Frisco at all hours of day and night
and never
said a word; all he did was go through red lights and make sharp turns on two
wheels,
and this was telling us the shifts to which we d put him. He was midway
between the
challenge of his new wife and the challenge of his old Denver poolhall gang
leader. Dean
was pleased, and of course unperturbed by the driving. We paid absolutely no
attention to
Roy and sat in the back and yakked.
The next thing was to go to Mill City to see if we could find Remi Bonc oeur.
I noticed
with some wonder that the old ship Admiral Freebee was no longer in the bay;
and then
of course Remi was no longer in the second-to- last compartment of the shack
in the
canyon. A beautiful colored girl opened the door instead; Dean and I talked
to her a great
deal. Roy Johnson waited in the car, reading Eugene Sue s Mysteries of Paris.
I took one
last look at Mill City and knew there was no sense trying to dig up the
involved past;
instead we decided to go see Galatea Dunkel about sleeping accommodations. Ed
had left
Page 224
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
her again, was in Denver, and damned if she still didn t plot to get him
back. We found
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]