"Eddings, David - High Hunt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eddings David)

"I've just never met anybody named Clydine before."

"Is anything wrong with it?" she demanded. She was very short, and she glared up at me belligerently. "I'm not here for a pickup, fella."

"Neither am I, girlie," I told her. I dislike being called "fella." I always have.

"Then you approve of what the government's doing in Vietnam?" She got right to the point, old Clydine. No sidetracks for her.

"They didn't ask me."

"Why don't you desert then?"

Her chum pitched in, too. "Don't you want to get out of the country?"

"I've just been out of the country," I objected.

"We're just wasting our time on this one, Joan," Clydine said. "He isn't even politically aware."

"It's been real," I told them. "I'll always remember you both fondly."

They turned their backs on me and went on handing out pamphlets.

Farther up the street another young lady stopped me, but she wasn't offering politics. She was surprisingly direct about what she was offering.

Next a dirty-looking little guy wanted to give me a "real artistic" tattoo. I turned him down, too.

Farther along, a GI with wasted-looking eyeballs tried to sell me a lid of grass.

I went into another bar  a fairly quiet one  and mulled it around over a beer. I decided that I must have had the look of somebody who wanted something. I couldn't really make up my mind why.

I went back on down the street. It was a sad, grubby street with sad, grubby people on it, all hysterically afraid that some GI with money on him might get past them.

That thought stopped me. The four hundred I'd won was in my blouse pocket, and I sure didn't want to get rolled. It was close enough after payday to make a lone GI a pretty good target, so I decided that I'd better get off Pacific Avenue.

But what the hell does a guy do with himself on his first night back in the States? I ticked off the possibilities. I could get drunk, get laid, get rolled, or go to a movie. None of those sounded very interesting. I could walk around, but my feet hurt. I could pick a fight with somebody and get thrown in jail  that one didn't sound like much fun at all. Maybe I could get a hamburger-to-go and jump off a bridge.

Most of the guys I'd come back with were hip-deep in family by now, but I hadn't even bothered to let my Old Lady know I was coming back. The less I saw of her, the better we'd both feel. That left Jack. I finally got around to him. Probably it was inevitable. I suppose it had been in the back of my mind all along.

I knew that Jack was probably still in Tacoma someplace. He always came back here. It was his home base. He and I hadn't been particularly close since we'd been kids, and I'd only seen him about three times since the Old Man died. But this was family night, and he was it. Ordinarily, I wouldn't have driven a mile out of my way to see him.

"Piss on it," I said and went into a drugstore to use the phone.

"Hello?" His voice sounded the same as I remembered.

"Jack? This is Dan."

"Dan? Dan who?"

Now there's a great start for you. Gives you a real warm glow right in the gut. I almost hung up.