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Bullet Park :: Cheever John
Страница: 7 из 131I'll sell you the rug for half of what I gave for it. All wool. If your wife wants the curtains I'm sure we can work something out. Do you have a daughter? This hallway would be a beautiful place for a wedding. I mean when the bride throws down her bouquet. Now the dining room…"
The dinner table was set for twelve with soup plates, wine glasses, candlesticks and wax flowers. "I always keep my table set," said Mrs. Heathcup. "I haven't entertained for months but Mr. Heathcup hated to see an empty table and so I always keep it set, sort of in memory. An empty table depressed him. I change the setting once or twice a week. There are four churches in the village. I suppose you know about the Gorey Brook Country Club. It has a good eighteen-hole course designed by Pete Ellison, four en tout cas courts and a pool. I hope you're not Jewish. They're very strict about that. I don't have a pool myself and frankly it's something of a limitation. When people start talking about pool chemicals and so forth you'll find yourself left out of the conversation. I've had an estimate made and you can have one put in the back garden for
eight thousand. Maintenance comes to around twenty-five a week and they charge a hundred to open and close it. The neighbors, as I've said, are wonderful people, although they take some knowing. You might think Harry Plutarch, who lives across the street, a little odd unless you knew the whole story. His wife ran off with Howie Jones. What she did was to have a moving van come to the house one morning and take everything out of the place except a chair, a single bed and a parrot cage. When he came home from work he found an empty house and he's been living with a chair, a bed and a parrot ever since. Here's a copy of the evening paper. It might give you some idea of what the place is like…"
As Mrs. Heathcup flushed toilets, opened and shut doors, the stranger, whose name was Hammer, felt a lack of interest in her house increase until it seemed like a kind of melancholy, but the tragic and brightly lighted place was commodious and efficient and one lived in such places. There was the ghost of poor Heathcup, but every house has a ghost. "I think it's what we want," he said. I'll bring Mrs. Hammer out tomorrow and let her decide."
Hazzard drove him back to the railroad station then and left him there. Suburban waiting rooms are not maintained and the place had been sacked. Broken windows let in the night wind. The clock face was smashed. The hands of the clock were gone.
The dinner table was set for twelve with soup plates, wine glasses, candlesticks and wax flowers. "I always keep my table set," said Mrs. Heathcup. "I haven't entertained for months but Mr. Heathcup hated to see an empty table and so I always keep it set, sort of in memory. An empty table depressed him. I change the setting once or twice a week. There are four churches in the village. I suppose you know about the Gorey Brook Country Club. It has a good eighteen-hole course designed by Pete Ellison, four en tout cas courts and a pool. I hope you're not Jewish. They're very strict about that. I don't have a pool myself and frankly it's something of a limitation. When people start talking about pool chemicals and so forth you'll find yourself left out of the conversation. I've had an estimate made and you can have one put in the back garden for
eight thousand. Maintenance comes to around twenty-five a week and they charge a hundred to open and close it. The neighbors, as I've said, are wonderful people, although they take some knowing. You might think Harry Plutarch, who lives across the street, a little odd unless you knew the whole story. His wife ran off with Howie Jones. What she did was to have a moving van come to the house one morning and take everything out of the place except a chair, a single bed and a parrot cage. When he came home from work he found an empty house and he's been living with a chair, a bed and a parrot ever since. Here's a copy of the evening paper. It might give you some idea of what the place is like…"
As Mrs. Heathcup flushed toilets, opened and shut doors, the stranger, whose name was Hammer, felt a lack of interest in her house increase until it seemed like a kind of melancholy, but the tragic and brightly lighted place was commodious and efficient and one lived in such places. There was the ghost of poor Heathcup, but every house has a ghost. "I think it's what we want," he said. I'll bring Mrs. Hammer out tomorrow and let her decide."
Hazzard drove him back to the railroad station then and left him there. Suburban waiting rooms are not maintained and the place had been sacked. Broken windows let in the night wind. The clock face was smashed. The hands of the clock were gone.