"David Eddings - Losers, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eddings David)

Raphael moved on. His own supply of food was low, he knew that, and there was a Safeway store only a few blocks away. He crutched along in the direction the man on the bicycle had gone.

The store was not very large, but it was handy, and the people seemed friendly. The stout man's bicycle was parked out front when Raphael got there.

It was not particularly busy inside as Raphael had feared that it might be, and so he got a shopping cart and, nudging it along the aisles ahead of him with his crutches, he began picking up the items he knew he needed.

Back near the bread department the stout man was pawing through a large basket filled with dented cans and taped-up boxes of cereal. His florid face was intent, and his eyes brightened each time he picked up something that seemed particularly good to him. A couple of old ladies were shamefacedly loitering nearby, waiting for him to finish so that they might have their turns.

Raphael finished his shopping and got into line behind the stout man with his cartful of damaged merchandise. The man paid for his purchases with food stamps and triumphantly carried them out to his bicycle.

"Does he come in often?" Raphael asked the clerk at the cash register.

"Bennie the Bicycler?" the clerk said with an amused look. "All the time. He makes the rounds of every store in this part of town every day. If he'd spend half as much time looking for work as he does looking for bargains, his family could have gotten off welfare years ago." The clerk was a tall man in his midthirties with a constantly amused expression on his face.

"Why do you call him that?" Raphael asked, almost startled by the similarity to the little name tags he himself used to describe the people on his block.

The clerk shrugged. "It's a personal quirk," he said, starting to ring up Raphael's groceries. "There's a bunch of regulars who come in here. I don't know their names, so I just call them whatever pops into my mind." He looked around, noting that no one else was in line or standing nearby. "This place is a zoo," he said to Raphael in a confidential tone. "All the weirdos come creeping out of Welfare City over there." He gestured vaguely off in the direction of the large area of run-down housing that lay to the west of the store. "We get 'em all-all the screwballs in town. I've been trying to get a transfer out of this rattrap for two years."

"I imagine it gets depressing after a while."

"That just begins to describe it," the clerk replied, rolling his eyes comically. "Need anything else?"

"No," Raphael replied, paying for his groceries. "Is there someplace where I can call a cab?"

"I'll have the girl do it for you." The clerk turned and called down to the express lane. "Joanie, you want to call a cab?"

"Thanks," Raphael said.

"No biggie. It'll be here in a couple of minutes. Have a good one, okay?"

Raphael nudged his cart over near the door and waited. It felt good to be able to talk with people again. When he had first come out of the hospital, his entire attention had been riveted upon the missing leg, and he had naturally assumed that everyone who saw him was concentrating on the same thing. He began to realize now that after the initial reaction, people were not really that obsessed by it. The clerk had taken no particular notice of it, and the two of them had talked like normal people.

A cab pulled up, and the driver got out, wincing in obvious pain. He limped around the cab as Raphael pushed his cart out of the store. The driver's left foot was in a slipper, and there was an elastic bandage around his grotesquely swollen ankle.

"Oh, man," the driver said, looking at Raphael in obvious dismay. "I told that half-wit at dispatch that I couldn't handle any grocery-store calls today."

"What's the problem?"

"I sprained my damn ankle. I can drive okay, but there's no way I could carry your stuff in for you when we get you home. Lemme get on the radio and have 'em send another cab." He hobbled back around the cab again and picked up his microphone. After a couple minutes he came back. "What a screwed-up outfit. Everybody else is tied up. Be at least three quarters of an hour before anybody else could get here. You got stairs to climb?"

"Third floor."

"Figures. Would you believe I did this on a goddamn skateboard? Would you believe that shit? My kid was showin' me how to ride the damn thing." He shook his head and then looked across the parking lot at a group of children passing on the sidewalk. "Tell you what. School just let out. I'll knock a buck off the fare, and we'll give the buck to a kid to haul your stuff up for you."

"I could wait," Raphael offered, starting to feel ashamed of his helplessness.

"Naw, you don't wanna stand around for three quarters of an hour. Let's go see if we can find a kid."

They put Raphael's two bags of groceries in the cab and then both got in.