"Edward Bryant - The Transfer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bryant Edward)

my old apartment for a month to pick up my mail. Finally Cody convinced me
to tell my parents I'd moved to a nicer place. I got a post office box and
hoped my folks wouldn't come visit Chicago. I told them I would come home
for Christmas.
I quit my job. I wore the same kind of clothing Cody did. I let my hair
grow long and straight. I started learning guitar. I used the same drugs
he did. I sold the same things he did. We finished each other's sentences.
We got along all right.
Cody took real delight in being special, different. It was his name, his
clothes, everything. But we were both alike in so many ways now. He
noticed it too.
"It's so freakin' weird," he said one night. "You and I. It's almost like
looking in a mirror, except that a mirror image's reversed. You're me,
darlin'." He shook his head.
I couldn't contradict him. Only a portion of it was wanting to be what he
wished me to be. Part of it too was being him. I didn't know what it
meantjust that it had always been so. And it worked both inside and out.
Cody had an ulcer. I had an ulcer.
"I don't want you to be me," he said.
"Don't you?"
He shook his head again. "We're all free," Cody said. "It's the time of
liberation."
I just stared at him. He looked back at me and finally kissed me long and
hard. The gaze from his blue eyes fixed me.
"I like what I see," said Cody.
But a week later he died. I never was sure what all he took. The hardest
thing I've ever done was to avoid following Cody into the abyss. It wasn't
easy, but I tried to absorb the compulsion within myself.
I still had the clothing I'd brought to Chicago. I resumed my colorless,
invisible presence. No more beads. No more fringe. The ulcer went away.

My name is Dorrie MacKenzie and I'm older than that now. There are songs I
can almost remember, images I can nearly recall. The portrait of Jim on my
dresser at home swims into focus. But it isn't Jim. It's something I look
at in my mind and then discard. Whatever it is, it can't be him. He is a
pleasant, attractive man. And this thing on the dresser is, isI don't
know. It could be anything. It reminds me of the skinned head of a rabbit.
I throw the image away. I will not think of it.
The dresser and the picture on it evaporate. Our house in Kansas City
dissolves into fragments and then to blackness.
I see nothing. But I can listen. What I hear sounds like a man stripping
away a stubborn Velcro panel.
Probably I think of that because of Jim. There is an inflatable
leg-setting sleeve with Velcro seams in his bag. He's a doctor, a GP, and
he even still makes occasional house calls. Takes his bag wherever he
goes, even on vacation.
Vacation . . . see the wild beasts. Don't think about it. Red beasts.
Scarlet. Dripping scarlet, shining
Wet.
I can feel the high-pressure area all through me. My skull wants to