Читаем Gould полностью

He’s sleeping with her the morning after they first made love when Brons wedges himself between them, finally pushes him apart from his mother — he’s been holding her from behind with one arm, other’s back in the shoulder sling — and curls up to her with his arm over her shoulder and falls asleep. She has her nightgown on — must have got up sometime after they first fell asleep to do it — and Brons is in diapers and rubber pants and T-shirt. Gould doesn’t like the feel or smell of him in bed — the kid must have peed in his diapers — and gets up, dresses, shoulder’s killing him and he takes aspirins, wants to make coffee but doesn’t see any grounds or a pot (turns out she only drinks herbal tea; for guests: instant coffee or Sanka, both of which he can’t stand), wants some toast (only bread here is packaged sliced white; rolls he brought for dinner they finished last night), has a cracker and glass of water (juice in the fridge is apple and much too sweet and he hasn’t drunk milk for twenty years) and sits in the kitchen reading a book (would have liked starting the day with a paper; she’d said she has one delivered and he went outside to look for it; turns out it’s the local afternoon daily she gets) and waiting for them to get up. He doesn’t know how she lives like this: sliced white, instant coffee or tasteless tea, kid in her bed (turns out Brons has been coming into her bed almost every morning for months and despite Gould complaining about it, continues for another half year) stinking of piss. Two Siamese, looking like twins, both crosseyed and with dark coloring and skinny sinister faces, meow at him, probably for food. He finds a box of cat Kibble, replenishes their food bowl and gives them fresh water and they hiss at him and don’t eat or drink and one swipes at his ankles with its claws out. He wants to toss what water’s left in the glass at them but she might later ask how’d they get wet and if he told her — oh, he could make up an excuse but he thinks she’d see through it — bad things could start between them and he wants to stay the two weeks. House is nice, sex good and she’s lively and bright in her way and funny sometimes and good-looking.