Читаем Fall and Rise полностью

“Pigshit. Scumbags. Fistfuckers. Cocksucking. It’s a great idea, not a good one, and you have a great body, not a good one, and I want to fuck it. I want to fuck you. I want to screw you and lay you and perform the act of love with you and grab your ass with me on top of your ass and big tits with me on the bottom and I want to suck, fuck and pluck and really plow you. I want to very badly. So, that’s so bad? Fuck it and too fucking bad, for that’s what the fuck I feel and want to do.”

“Thank goodness there are no red lights on this.”

He pulls over to the right, puts the hazard lights on and starts coming to a stop.

“Don’t! That’s insane! You’ll kill us!”

“Sorry,” and he pulls into the driving lane. “And I’m a dummy and also sorry for my talk if it repulsed you.”

“It didn’t repulse. It—”

“Whatever, I’m sorry, and you know what I still want to do. We’d do it for the pure kicks of it and because we once loved and now very much like and respect one another, at least you can be assured I still do with you and even if that respect part sounds contradictory after my fuck talk. Or for no other reason but — no, no reason at all or not one we—”

“Oh—”

“Please, Helene.”

“Oh, I’ll come up. I can’t seem to — oh, I can but I don’t want to argue, because why not? — sure. But only if you promise to give me a good back massage and a glass of seltzer.”

“I’ll massage you anywhere and all night if you want and I only have club soda.”

“I thought I could always get seltzer at your place.”

“Maybe I have some. I probably do, put away for special occasions.”

“And just my back. Don’t get so enterprising. I doubt my body could take more than that tonight. Now I’m going to doze off but not so deeply where you can’t wake me when we arrive.”

“You want to have a baby badly, don’t you.”

“Whuh?” My eyes had been shut five seconds.

“Not by me, but you really still do. Just answer me, then doze.”

“Why that out of nowhere?”

“Like that. Had a feeling, had to say it. If I didn’t I would have lost it. Infantile attitude á la friend Sven, but you want to get married to someone very unlike me — someone who wants to get married but really and have a baby soon. That’s why you were so, well, sad at the balcony announcement, and later pissed off at Sven, besides what that Arthur fellow would make anyone feel.”

“My, you have quite the head on your hat, old buddy. You sure do.”

“Don’t have to get cynical.”

“Then why try to get me to say what you already know and what is probably still a sore point between us? That’s even worse turn-off behavior and talk than that turn-off talk from before. Maybe you had a change of mind about my coming up.”

“Most certainly not. I thought I was getting into something deep; I obviously wasn’t.”

“If you were saying has my attitude changed on the matter in the last year—”

“Maybe that’s what I was saying.”

“It wasn’t, but I’ll answer anyway, bluntly, not deep. It hasn’t. I still do ultimately want to have a baby with someone I care for very much, and I feel confident I will. And because of my age I should be thinking seriously about having one fairly soon, not so much because of the increasing risks of conceiving an unhealthy baby but because I want to be frisky enough to take care of it and play with it and continue to know it over a long period of time. But it’s not a serious problem with me. I’m not, in other words, if Mr. Love doesn’t come along, going to have one as a Miss Mom or jump into marriage with a loving schmuck who also wants to have a baby, just to have one. And it’s not going to stop me, your talk — at least what you’ve said so far, so this is a sincere petition not to say anymore about it — from making love tonight, if you still want to and we’re not too tired to, since right now that’s what I’d like to do. If I’ve broken your balls a little just now, I apologize, since that’s not what I wanted to do at all. Now give me my three-minute doze.”

“Granted.”

He taps my shoulder. “We’re here. Got a spot in front. Everything’s working for us. Not a mugger in sight. Even the moon can be seen and a number of meteorites knocking about in the wrong half of the hemisphere for the night. You’re not too sleepy?”

“Why, do you want me to be?”

“You harp back on that so much I think it’s you who wants me to be immediately asleep.”

“I don’t, so let’s get it over with. No, that isn’t nice or what I mean, so let’s put it this way: we’re kind of using one another tonight, but that also has to be the way it is sometimes if nothing better is around. No, that’s not nice or right either. How can I say what I have in mind to without irritating you and gumming up the goal?”

“I never heard you talk like that before.”

“You have so. Selective forgetting. Let’s go up.”

The doorman has to unlock the door to let us in. “Hey there, Helene.”

“Russell? Hi — It’s been so long I didn’t recognize you. You lost weight but it looks good.”