JК
Bag of Bones :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 130 из 425My mouth wasturned down in a grimace, my midsection tensed so tight it felt as if bullets would have bounced off. “Oh shit,” I said. “Fuck me til I cry.” Dangling from a hanger I’d hooked over the curtain rod was my old suede jacket. I’d parked it there while unpacking and had then forgotten to store it away in the closet. I tried to laugh and couldn’t. At three in the morning it just didn’t seem that funny. I turned off the light and lay back down with my eyes open, waiting for Bunter’s bell to ring or the childish sobbing to start. I was still listening when I fell asleep.
Seven hours or so later, as I was getting ready to go out to Jo’s studio and see if the plastic owls were in the storage area, where I hadn’t checked the day before, a late-model Ford rolled down my driveway and stopped nose to nose with my Chevy. I had gotten as far as the short path between the house and the studio, but now I came back. The day was hot and breathless, and I was wearing nothing but a pair of cut-off jeans and plastic flip-flops on my feet. Jo always claimed that the Cleveland style of dressing divided itself naturally into two subgenres:
Full Cleveland and Cleveland Casual. My visitor that Tuesday morning was wearing Cleveland Casual—you had your Hawaiian shirt with pineapples and monkeys, your tan slacks from Banana Republic, your white loafers.
Socks are optional, but white footgear is a necessary part of the Cleveland look, as is at least one piece of gaudy gold jewelry. This fellow was totally okay in the latter department: he had a Rolex on one wrist and a gold-link chain around his neck. The tail of his shirt was out, and there was a suspicious lump at the back. It was either a gun or a beeper and looked too big to be a beeper. I glanced at the car again.
Blackwall tires. And on the dashboard, oh look at this, a covered blue bubble. The better to creep up on you unsuspected, Gramma. “Michael Noonan?” He was handsome in a way that would be attractive to certain women—the kind who cringe when anybody in their immediate vicinity raises his voice, the kind who rarely call the police when things go wrong at home because, on some miserable secret level, they believe they deserve things to go wrong at home. Wrong things that result in black eyes, dislocated elbows, the occasional cigarette burn on the booby.
These are women who more often than not call their husbands or lovers daddy, as in “Can I bring you a beer, daddy?” or “Did you have a hard day at work, daddy?”
“Yes, I’m Michael Noonan.
Seven hours or so later, as I was getting ready to go out to Jo’s studio and see if the plastic owls were in the storage area, where I hadn’t checked the day before, a late-model Ford rolled down my driveway and stopped nose to nose with my Chevy. I had gotten as far as the short path between the house and the studio, but now I came back. The day was hot and breathless, and I was wearing nothing but a pair of cut-off jeans and plastic flip-flops on my feet. Jo always claimed that the Cleveland style of dressing divided itself naturally into two subgenres:
Full Cleveland and Cleveland Casual. My visitor that Tuesday morning was wearing Cleveland Casual—you had your Hawaiian shirt with pineapples and monkeys, your tan slacks from Banana Republic, your white loafers.
Socks are optional, but white footgear is a necessary part of the Cleveland look, as is at least one piece of gaudy gold jewelry. This fellow was totally okay in the latter department: he had a Rolex on one wrist and a gold-link chain around his neck. The tail of his shirt was out, and there was a suspicious lump at the back. It was either a gun or a beeper and looked too big to be a beeper. I glanced at the car again.
Blackwall tires. And on the dashboard, oh look at this, a covered blue bubble. The better to creep up on you unsuspected, Gramma. “Michael Noonan?” He was handsome in a way that would be attractive to certain women—the kind who cringe when anybody in their immediate vicinity raises his voice, the kind who rarely call the police when things go wrong at home because, on some miserable secret level, they believe they deserve things to go wrong at home. Wrong things that result in black eyes, dislocated elbows, the occasional cigarette burn on the booby.
These are women who more often than not call their husbands or lovers daddy, as in “Can I bring you a beer, daddy?” or “Did you have a hard day at work, daddy?”
“Yes, I’m Michael Noonan.