"Hansen, Michael - Sleeping Hornet" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hansen Michael)

A woman appears in the room with them. She has frizzy blonde hair with black roots, wearing tight jeans and a tube top that leaves her pale midriff bare. It looks like she put her makeup on with a trowel, but that's still not enough to conceal the deep lines in her face from too many years of hard living. She's holding a pipe and a baggy of weed.

She glances once at Joel before staring at Ray; she stands there for several seconds not looking away from him until the Baron shouts at her. "Bring it here, woman!" Deb stares at Ray one long moment more before finally obeying her old man.

The Baron has finished tamping down the bowl, and offers it to Ray. Ray shakes his head; he'd never liked getting stoned, getting out of control in any way. Maybe the Baron wanted everyone to be buddies now that business was concluded, but Ray wants nothing more than to get out of this dump now that he has the Thompson.

Joel leans forward out of the couch, reaching for the pipe. "I'll take that hit," he says, and the Baron grins as he hands over the pipe. Ray curses inwardly, resigning himself to waiting while Joel cops his buzz; they'd come in Joel's car, and Ray wasn't about to walk home carrying an automatic weapon.

Joel hits the bowl, holding his lighter to the weed and sucking it down in a long hissing inhalation before passing it to Deb with a leering smile. "Here you go, babe," he says, voice tight as he holds in his burning lungful of smoke. She takes the pipe, but if she notices Joel's look or hears his words, she doesn't let on; she stares at Ray over the pipe as she inhales, then lets out an explosive series of repressed coughs as she tries to keep her hit in. She passes it on to her old man.

The Baron sits on his stool, tattooed muscles rippling as his chest expands to contain the smoke. He sits for a moment, eyes closed, the smoke trickling dragon-like from his nostrils to frame his skull face in a tracery cloud. Ray hears a furtive rustling from around the corner through the same doorway Deb appeared from. The Baron opens his smoke reddened eyes to look at something back there out of Ray's field of vision. He smiles.

"C'mere, baby," he says, pot smoke billowing from his lips with each word. "Come to daddy."

A baby totters into the room. It's a little girl; she's maybe two years old, with her wispy copper colored hair drawn into two pig tails, one on each side. She's naked except for one of those huge lunar excursion diapers, the kind Ray has seen some mothers leave on their kids for a day and more. She walks unsteadily up to the Baron, her eyes wide in excitement and grinning toothlessly. No one else exists in the room for her; she only has eyes for her daddy.

She comes to a halt directly in front of the Baron and stares adoringly up at him as he smiles back down at her. The Baron takes a deep drag from the pipe, removes it from his mouth, and purses his lips as he leans over and slowly exhales, breathing a thin stream of marijuana smoke into his daughter's face.

Something inside Ray cringes as he watches the little face, eyes half closed, toothless mouth gleaming wetly as she sucks the smoke down, slobbering as if she was nursing at her mama's tit. Ray is suddenly dizzy, there's a roaring in his head and his whole body feels engulfed in a million little electric shocks. Without thinking, he rockets to his feet, the blanket dropping to the floor as he slams the drum magazine into the Tommy gun and works the bolt, chambering the first round. Deb evaporates from the room with cockroach instinct, and Ray finds himself hovering over the Baron, the Tommy gun's barrel poised in his face, ready to rock and roll.

"What is it, man?" he can dimly hear Joel yelling next to him. "What is it?" Ray flicks a red-hazed glance at his partner, dancing nervously to his left. Joel is bouncing up and down like he couldn't decide whether to take a leak or grab Ray and wrestle the gun away from him. Ray waits until he's sure Joel will do neither. Smart, a dim rational part of his brain says silently. Smart boy.

Ray looks back down at the Baron, sitting splay legged on the stool leaning back against the wall, as far away from the insistent muzzle of the Tommy gun as he could get. His sweaty face is gray but carefully blank.

Something slaps against Ray's leg, then again, and he looks down in surprise. The little girl is hitting him, swatting at his pants leg again and again with her pudgy little hand. "Dada!" she screams. "Dada!" She's crying, the sticky tears streaming down her fat red terrified face.

Ray turns abruptly away and picks up the wool blanket with shaking hands. He deliberately keeps his back turned on the Baron as he wraps up the Tommy gun, praying he'd try something. But he doesn't. Then he faces Joel, his hand outstretched. "Give me the fucking keys," he orders.

Joel digs deep in his pocket and produces the keys to the car, eager to please. Ray snatches them from him and stalks to the door, Joel right on his heels. He doesn't look at the Baron as he leaves, but he can feel Deb's eyes burning into his back as he walks out, and he can still hear the baby's anguished wails as he reaches the sidewalk and turns toward where the car's parked. Behind them, somebody quietly shuts the front door and throws the bolt.

Ray walks fast down the sidewalk with Joel bobbing along behind him like a dog on a leash. Neither man says a word until they reach the car, when Ray finally turns to face his friend. "What kind of idiot sells a piece with rounds in it?" His eyes search Joel's face.

Joel won't meet his gaze, his eyes looking now here, now there, anywhere but at Ray. "You been away a long time, man. I got no more connections for that kind of hardware." He looks away, back down the street to the Baron's house. "He was the best I could do."

Ray realizes that's as close to an answer as he's going to get. He nods, gives the keys back to Joel, and they drive the hell away from there.


Michael Hansen returns to the pages of PWG after a previous appearence in the March/April issue with "Speedy's Big Moving Day." A new Speedy story will appear in the September issue.
He writes, "When I was young, my life was a runaway freight rain: I was raised by bikers, and taught the intricacies of the Streets by gypsies & pimps, dealers, gangbangers and Nam vets. I've been a psychic friend, flea market vendor, kick boxer, door-to-door salesman, bouncer, taxi driver & jarhead -- as well as a homeless bum, and other professions less mentionable. Then I met my wife, had my son, and discovered writing (not necessarily in that order) -- now I'm almost functional!"