"Steven Gould - Jumper" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gould Stephen Jay)

I took a small cross street to get over to the avenue the hotel was on. The street was narrow,
making it even darker, and there were plastic bags of garbage piled on the sidewalks, up against the
stoops of old brownstone buildings. I didn't know why they called these row houses brownstones;
most of them were painted green or red or yellow. The garbage was piled so high before one building
I had to step out into the street to pass. When I stepped back on the sidewalk, a man stepped out
from a doorway and came toward me.

"You got a subway token to spare? Any change?"

I'd seen lots of panhandlers that day, mostly around the subway stations. They made me
nervous, but those hungry days hitching away from Dad were still fresh in my memory. I remembered
people walking past me as if I didn't exist. I dug into my pocket for the sixth time that day while I said,
"Sure."

My hand was coming out of the pocket when I heard a noise behind me. I started to look
around and my head exploded.



There was something sticky between my cheek and the cold, gritty surface I was lying on. My
right knee hurt and there was something about the way I was lying that didn't seem right, like I'd been
especially careless in going to bed. I tried to open my eyes but my left one seemed stuck shut. The
right one looked at a rough concrete surface.

A sidewalk.

Memory and pain returned at the same time. I groaned.
 There was the sound of footsteps on the sidewalk and I thought about the muggers. I jerked
heavily up onto all fours, my head throbbing like the dickens, my sore knee becoming even more so
as I put weight on it. The sticky stuff on the sidewalk was blood.

Standing seemed impossible so I turned over and sat, my back to a row of garbage cans. I
looked up and saw a woman carrying two grocery bags slowing down as she walked around the giant
pile of garbage bags and saw me.

"My gawd! Are you okay? What happened to you?"

I blinked my open eye and put my head in my hands. The effort of sitting up made a sharp,
throbbing pain stab at the back of my head.

"I think I was hit from behind." I felt for my front pocket, where I'd been carrying my money.
"And robbed."

I pulled the lids of my left eye apart with my fingers. My eye was okay, just stuck shut with
blood. I carefully touched the back of my head. There was a large lump there, wet. My fingers came
away red.

Great. I was in a strange city with no money, no job, no family, and no prospects. That stabbing
pain at the back of my head didn't compare with the hurt of somehow feeling I deserved this.