"Joyce Carol Oates - Give Me Your Heart" - читать интересную книгу автора (Oates Joyce Carol)

you’ve taken to combing slantwise over the shiny dome of your head;
imagining that, since you can’t see this ploy in the mirror, it can’t be seen by
others. But I can see.

Fumbling, you turn to the last page of this letter to see my
signature-”Angel”-and you’re forced to remember, sud-denly… With a pang
of guilt.

Her! She’s still… alive?

That’s right, Dr. K——! More alive now than ever.

Naturally you’d come to imagine I had vanished. I had ceased to exist.
Since you’d long ago ceased to think of me.

You’re frightened. Your heart, that guilty organ, has begun to pound.
At a second-floor window of your house on Rich-mond Street (expensively
restored Victorian, pale gray shingles with dark blue trim,
“quaint”-”dignified”-among others of its type in the exclusive old residential
neighborhood east of the Theological Seminary) you stare out anxiously
at-what?

Not me, obviously. I’m not there.

At any rate, I’m not in sight.

Yet, how the pale-glowering sky seems to throb with a sin-ister
intensity! Like a great eye staring.

Dr. K——, I mean you no harm! Truly. This letter is in no way a
demand for your (posthumous) heart, nor even a “ver-bal threat.” If you
decide, foolishly, to show it to police, they will assure you it’s harmless, it
isn’t illegal, it’s only a request for information: should I, the “love-of-your-life”
you have not seen in twenty-three years, apply to be the recipient of your
heart? What are Angel’s chances?

I only wish to collect what’s mine. What was promised to me, so long
ago. I’ve been faithful to our love, Dr. K——!

You laugh, harshly. Incredulously. How can you reply to “Angel,” when
“Angel” has included no last name, and no ad-dress? You will have to
seek me. To save yourself, seek me.

You crumple this letter in your fist, throw it onto the floor.

You walk away, stumble away, you mean to forget, obvi-ously you
can’t forget, the crumpled pages of my handwritten letter on the floor of-is it
your study?-on the second floor of the dignified old Victorian house at 119
Richmond Street?- where someone might discover them, and pick them up
to read what you wouldn’t wish another living person to read, es-pecially not