• Пожаловаться

Charlie Hustmyre: House of the Rising Sun

Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «Charlie Hustmyre: House of the Rising Sun» весь текст электронной книги совершенно бесплатно (целиком полную версию). В некоторых случаях присутствует краткое содержание. категория: Триллер / на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале. Библиотека «Либ Кат» — LibCat.ru создана для любителей полистать хорошую книжку и предлагает широкий выбор жанров:

любовные романы фантастика и фэнтези приключения детективы и триллеры эротика документальные научные юмористические анекдоты о бизнесе проза детские сказки о религиии новинки православные старинные про компьютеры программирование на английском домоводство поэзия

Выбрав категорию по душе Вы сможете найти действительно стоящие книги и насладиться погружением в мир воображения, прочувствовать переживания героев или узнать для себя что-то новое, совершить внутреннее открытие. Подробная информация для ознакомления по текущему запросу представлена ниже:

Charlie Hustmyre House of the Rising Sun

House of the Rising Sun: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «House of the Rising Sun»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.

Charlie Hustmyre: другие книги автора


Кто написал House of the Rising Sun? Узнайте фамилию, как зовут автора книги и список всех его произведений по сериям.

House of the Rising Sun — читать онлайн бесплатно полную книгу (весь текст) целиком

Ниже представлен текст книги, разбитый по страницам. Система сохранения места последней прочитанной страницы, позволяет с удобством читать онлайн бесплатно книгу «House of the Rising Sun», без необходимости каждый раз заново искать на чём Вы остановились. Поставьте закладку, и сможете в любой момент перейти на страницу, на которой закончили чтение.

Шрифт:

Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

She stared at him without speaking.

“I don’t think Pete cares,” Ray said. “He’s dead. Besides, it’s a fact, isn’t it? He was retarded. If you’ve got a hundred and fifty IQ, you’re a genius. If you’ve got a room-temperature IQ, you’re a retard.”

“You’re an even bigger asshole than Tony.”

“It’s touching that you stand up for your boyfriend like that. It really is.”

She stamped her foot and shouted, “He’s not my goddamn boyfriend!”

“You were fucking him the whole time I was in prison.”

She didn’t walk away, she didn’t even look pissed off, she just looked disappointed. “It wasn’t like that.”

Ray’s head throbbed. He probed his scalp with his fingertips, feeling the lump from the pistol. “I’m just going by what I heard.”

Jenny’s bottom lip quivered.

Ray was waiting on the tears, thinking if she started crying, he might feel better.

Then all of a sudden, Jenny didn’t look like she was going to cry. Instead, she looked defiant. “You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. You never did. If I were you, I wouldn’t brag about that.”

She wanted to be a bitch. Fine, he could play that game, too. He looked at her legs, eyes lingering on her smooth thighs. He did it slowly, making sure she noticed. Then, when she started to look uncomfortable, he said, “Why don’t you go back upstairs where you belong?”

She spun around on one spiked heel and stomped off. Over her shoulder, she said, “You’re an asshole, Raymond.”

“Don’t call me Raymond,” he shouted at her back as he watched her go.

Jenny Porter wasn’t about to let an asshole like Ray Shane see her cry. It took everything she had, but she kept her emotions bottled up until she made it to the bathroom. As she slammed the door shut behind her, it all came out. Six months’ worth of tears.

When she finished, she looked at herself in the mirror, at her bloodshot eyes, at the twin rivers of mascara flowing down her face, and at the snot running from her nose. She filled the sink with hot water, soaked a tissue, and began to wipe.

Ray had been home from prison for six months, and he had been working at the House for six months. But in all that time he had spoken to her only once, nothing but cruel words in the parking lot. It was like they didn’t know each other. No, it was worse than that. Men she didn’t know talked to her all the time. It was as if Ray didn’t want to know her, as if he were disgusted by her.

Every night Ray sat next to the downstairs bar, and every night she passed him a dozen times going up and down the stairs. He always looked away. When other men looked at her, it was like they were undressing her, some like they were raping her. When Ray looked at her, it was like he had coughed something up from the back of his throat and needed to spit it out.

She knew he wasn’t normally a cruel person, at least he hadn’t been before he went to prison. When he had first come back, she ran to him, wanting to explain what had happened. She needed to explain about Tony, but he had pushed her away.

“I know you need some time to sort things out,” she had told him, saying she would wait until he got adjusted to being back in the real world, then they could talk, then she could explain. But it never happened. She waited, but they never talked. When she tried, he walked away.

Six o’clock one morning, two months after Ray was released. The Rising Sun had just closed. She waited for him in the parking lot on Decatur, two blocks from the House, determined to have it out with him. She had only seen him once that night. Around midnight he had been standing by the counting room when she walked down from the third floor. He had looked at her, giving her nothing but a hard, hateful stare. She could tell from that stare that he knew she had been upstairs with a customer.

In the parking lot she tried to tell him what had happened after he got sent to prison. She told him how her mother got sick. How the cancer got so bad she had needed a nurse twenty-four hours a day and $2,000 worth of prescription medications a month. Then finally-before the end came-how her mother had spent eight weeks in the hospital. There was no insurance. Did he know how much that kind of medical care cost?

“Did you get a lot of use out of my apartment?” Ray had asked, his blue eyes so cold they made her shiver. “Was that where you and Tony shacked up? Or did you go to his place? Maybe slip into his bed while his wife was out shopping?”

They had ended up screaming at each other. What the hell did he expect? she asked him. Instead of being there for her when she really needed him, he was serving five years in fucking prison. There had been no way to earn the kind of money her mother needed by serving drinks at a French Quarter tourist bar. So she quit and went to work at the House, knowing what that job meant, but also knowing it meant she could take care of her mother.

“She’s dead, so why are you still here?” he had asked.

Looking in the mirror now, Jenny remembered that early morning argument so clearly, so vividly, like it had just happened yesterday instead of four months ago. She had tears in her eyes then, too. Debts, she had told him. Her mom died but her debts lived on. Jenny had made her mother as comfortable as possible, but she was still paying for that comfort.

As they got louder, the parking lot attendant came over. Ray didn’t say anything, just glared at him. The little old man shuffled off.

In the end, Ray had balled up his fist like he was going to hit her, but Ray had never hit her before, and he didn’t hit her that night. Instead he did something worse. “You’re a whore,” he said. Then he got in his car and drove away. They hadn’t spoken since, until tonight, and he had come close to saying the same thing.

Ray stood at the edge of the roof, facing east. The first pink rays of the morning sun were visible coming up over the treetops on Esplanade Avenue. He liked it up here. It made him feel clean. He didn’t know why, didn’t know if it was the crisp morning air, the sunrise, or something else. Whatever it was, he liked it, and because he liked it, he climbed up here almost every morning.

He tapped a Lucky Strike from his nearly empty pack and stuck it between his lips. Then he flicked his beat-up Zippo a couple of times. Damn thing wouldn’t work. He had to flick it half a dozen more times before finally getting a dribble of flame.

The smoke he sucked into his lungs triggered a coughing fit that almost pitched him over the foot-high parapet at the edge of the roof. A lucky grab at one of the guy wires for the satellite dish was all that kept him from doing a four-story nosedive. Fucking smoking. They say it’ll kill you.

Looking down to where he had almost fallen, Ray saw the filthy alley that ran between the House and the building next door. Two bums lay on cardboard pallets beside a Dumpster. He took a deep breath and smelled the stink rising from the alley. It reminded him that the brief feeling of cleanliness he had up here was nothing but an illusion, because even up here, he was still surrounded by shit.

Illusion or not, this brief moment of solitude was something he looked forward to each morning, and in order to enjoy it on this really fucked-up morning, he pushed everything out of his mind-Pete Messina, Tony Zello, Carl Landry, Jenny Porter, the two bums lying on the ground four stories below-and let the crisp air wash over him as the sun peeked over the treetops and painted the clouds crimson. The scene before him brought back a childhood memory, back before his mother died, before his father sank into a bottle. It reminded him of something his dad told him one morning. How did that go… mornings red sky… No, that wasn’t it. He thought hard for a minute. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Yeah, that was it. Red sky at morning, sailor take warning. With the sun halfway above the trees, the sky was bloodred. Rain was coming.

Читать дальше

Шрифт:

Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Похожие книги на «House of the Rising Sun»

Представляем Вашему вниманию похожие книги на «House of the Rising Sun» списком для выбора. Мы отобрали схожую по названию и смыслу литературу в надежде предоставить читателям больше вариантов отыскать новые, интересные, ещё не прочитанные произведения.


Отзывы о книге «House of the Rising Sun»

Обсуждение, отзывы о книге «House of the Rising Sun» и просто собственные мнения читателей. Оставьте ваши комментарии, напишите, что Вы думаете о произведении, его смысле или главных героях. Укажите что конкретно понравилось, а что нет, и почему Вы так считаете.