What You Make It: Selected Short Stories. Michael Marshall Smith

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ eyes followed his hand, I saw the clock. It was a little after five a.m.

      I stood up, shakily thanked him for his good offices on my behalf, and walked very slowly out into the street.

      I don't remember getting back to the hotel, but I guess I must have done. That, at any rate, is where I found myself at ten the next morning, after a few hours of molten sleep. As I stood pasty-faced and stricken under the harsh light of the bathroom, I waited in horror while wave after wave of The Fear washed over me. I'd passed out. Obviously. Though uncommon with me, it's not unknown. The conventioneers, rat-finks that they were, had pissed off and left me there, doubtless sniggering into their beards. Fair enough. I'd have done the same for them.

      But what had happened to Rita-May?

      While I endured an appalling ten minutes on the toilet, a soothing fifteen minutes under the shower, and a despairing, tearful battle with my trousers, I tried to work this out. On the one hand, I couldn't blame her for abandoning an unconscious tourist. But when I thought back to before the point where blackness and The Fear took over, I thought we'd been getting on very well. She didn't seem the type to abandon anyone.

      When I was more or less dressed I hauled myself onto the bed and sat on the edge. I needed coffee, and needed it very urgently. I also had to smoke about seventy cigarettes, but seemed to have lost my packet. The way forward was clear. I had to leave the hotel room and sort these things out. But for that I needed shoes.

      So where were they?

      They weren't on the floor, or in the bathroom. They weren't out on the balcony, where the light hurt my eyes so badly I retreated back into the gloom with a yelp. I shuffled around the room again, even getting down onto my hands and knees to look under the bed. They weren't there. They weren't even in the bed.

      They were entirely absent, which was a disaster. I hate shoes, because they're boring, and consequently I own very few pairs. Apart from some elderly flip-flops which were left in the suitcase from a previous trip, the ones I'd been wearing were the only pair I had with me. I made another exhausting search, conducting as much of it as possible without leaving the bed, with no success. Instead of just getting to a café and sorting out my immediate needs, I was going to have to put on the flip-flops and go find a fucking shoe store. Once there I would have to spend money which I'd rather commit to American-priced CDs and good food on a pair of fucking shoes. As a punishment from God for drunkenness this felt a bit harsh, and for a few minutes the walls of the hotel room rang with rasped profanities.

      Eventually, I hauled myself over to the suitcase and bad-temperedly dug through the archaeological layers of socks and shirts until I found something shoe-shaped. The flip-flop was, of course, right at the bottom of the case. I tugged irritably at it, unmindful of the damage I was doing to my carefully stacked shorts and ties. Up came two pairs of trousers I hadn't worn yet – one of which I'd forgotten I'd brought – along with a shirt, and then finally I had the flip-flop in my hand.

      Except it wasn't a flip-flop. It was one of my shoes.

      Luckily I was standing near the end of the bed, because my legs gave way. I sat down suddenly, staring at the shoe in my hand. It wasn't hard to recognize. It was a black lace-up, in reasonably good condition but wearing on the outside of the heel. As I turned it slowly over in my hands like some holy relic, I realized it even smelled slightly of margaritas. Salt had dried on the toe, where I'd spilt a mouthful laughing at something Rita-May had said in Jimmy Buffett's.

      Still holding it in one hand, I reached tentatively into the bowels of my suitcase, rootling through the lower layers until I found the other one. It was underneath the towel I'd packed right at the bottom, on the reasoning that I was unlikely to need it because all hotels had towels. I pulled the shoe out, and stared at it.

      Without a doubt, it was the other shoe. There was something inside. I carefully pulled it out, aware of little more than a rushing sound in my ears.

      It was a red rose, attached to about four inches of stem.

      The first thing that strikes you about the Café du Monde is that it isn't quite what you're expecting. It isn't nestled right in the heart of the old town, on Royal or Dauphin, but squats on Decatur opposite the square. And it isn't some dinky little café, but a large awning-covered space where rows of tables are intermittently served by waiters of spectacular moroseness. On subsequent visits, however, you come to realize that the café au lait really is good and that the beignet are the best in New Orleans; that the café is about as bijou as it can be given that it's open 24 hours a day, every day of the year; and that anyone wandering through New Orleans is going to pass the Decatur corner of Jackson Square at some point, so it is actually pretty central.

      Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

      Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

      Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

      Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAgEASABIAAD/4QwDRXhpZgAATU0AKgAAAAgABwESAAMAAAABAAEAAAEaAAUA AAABAAAAYgEbAAUAAAABAAAAagEoAAMAAAABAAIAAAExAAIAAAAcAAAAcgEyAAIAAAAUAAAAjodp AAQAAAABAAAApAAAANAACvzaAAAnEAAK/NoAACcQQWRvYmUgUGhvdG9zaG9wIENTMyBXaW5kb3dz ADIwMDk6MTA6MDkgMTE6MjM6MTAAAAAAA6ABAAMAAAAB//8AAKACAAQAAAABAAACSKADAAQAAAAB AAAC8gAAAAAAAAAGAQMAAwAAAAEABgAAARoABQAAAAEAAAEeARsABQAAAAEAAAEmASgAAwAAAAEA AgAAAgEABAAAAAEAAAEuAgIABAAAAAEAAArNAAAAAAAAAEgAAAABAAAASAAAAAH/2P/gABBKRklG AAECAABIAEgAAP/tAAxBZG9iZV9DTQAB/+4ADkFkb2JlAGSAAAAAAf/bAIQADAgICAkIDAkJDBEL CgsRFQ8MDA8VGBMTFRMTGBEMDAwMDAwRDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAENCwsN Dg0QDg4QFA4ODhQUDg4ODhQRDAwMDAwREQwMDAwMDBEMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwM DAwM/8AAEQgAoAB8AwEiAAIRAQMRAf/dAAQACP/EAT8AAAEFAQEBAQEBAAAAAAAAAAMAAQIEBQYH CAkKCwEAAQUBAQEBAQEAAAAAAAAAAQACAwQFBgcICQoLEAABBAEDAgQCBQcGCAUDDDMBAAIRAwQh EjEFQVFhEyJxgTIGFJGhsUIjJBVSwWIzNHKC0UMHJZJT8OHxY3M1FqKygyZEk1RkRcKjdDYX0lXi ZfKzhMPTdePzRieUpIW0lcTU5PSltcXV5fVWZnaGlqa2xtbm9jdHV2d3h5ent8fX5/cRAAICAQIE BAMEBQYHBwYFNQEAAhEDITESBEFRYXEiEwUygZEUobFCI8FS0fAzJGLhcoKSQ1MVY3M08SUGFqKy gwcmNcLSRJNUoxdkRVU2dGXi8rOEw9N14/NGlKSFtJXE1OT0pbXF1eX1VmZ2hpamtsbW5vYnN0dX Z3e

СКАЧАТЬ