Lawrence Block - Ronald Rabbit Is a Dirty Old Man

Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «Lawrence Block - Ronald Rabbit Is a Dirty Old Man» весь текст электронной книги совершенно бесплатно (целиком полную версию без сокращений). В некоторых случаях можно слушать аудио, скачать через торрент в формате fb2 и присутствует краткое содержание. Город: New York, Год выпуска: 1971, ISBN: 1971, Издательство: Bernard Geis, Жанр: Эротические любовные романы, Юмористические книги, на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале библиотеки ЛибКат.

Ronald Rabbit Is a Dirty Old Man: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «Ronald Rabbit Is a Dirty Old Man»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.

You think you’ve got problems?
Well, how would you like to get a letter from your ex-wife’s lawyer threatening a lawsuit over a measly few months’ alimony? And then be fired from your job as editor of Ronald Rabbit’s Magazine for Boys and Girls simply because the magazine had ceased publication six month ago? And then go home to find your wife has run off with your best friend — and your bank account? And that you are being evicted from your apartment?
What do you do then, when you are left with nothing but your lurid memories, your itchy libido and an unemployed typewriter?
If you are Laurence Clarke, our trepid hero and the world’s most cunning linguist, you immediately plunge into not one but seven simultaneous and overlapping love affairs that would boggle a satyr. And you set into motion the most outrageous, insanely complicated and deviously horny series of interlocking plots and counterplots since Machiavelli began his nursery school.
How did these maniacal manipulations bring together the erstwhile publisher of Ronald Rabbit’s his depraved but virginal secretary, six little schoolgirls who should have had Polly Adler for a housemother, two ex-wives who were usually too prone to argue, one landlord, two law firms, various bystanders, and a partridge in a pear tree?
You’ll have to read the incredible letters of Laurence Clarke to find out, but we will admit to one thing:
We lied about the partridge.

Ronald Rabbit Is a Dirty Old Man — 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 «Ronald Rabbit Is a Dirty Old Man», без необходимости каждый раз заново искать на чём Вы остановились. Поставьте закладку, и сможете в любой момент перейти на страницу, на которой закончили чтение.

Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Must end this, fun though it is. Jennifer’s in the shower, and I have to get her dressed and out of here before the girls get down from Darien.

But before I go, I want to say that you’ve got to stop bugging me about the money. I might send it if I had it (though I’m not sure I would, to tell you the truth) but I don’t have it, and won’t have it in the foreseeable future, so you and the old bastard have got to call it quits for the time being. I really think you ought to marry Wally. But you’d better elope with him. If he meets your father before the wedding, there goes the wedding.

Be assured that I have only my own best interests at heart.

Passionately, Mad Poet

6

WHITESTONE PUBLICATIONS, INC.
67 West 44 thStreet
New York 10036

From the desk of Clayton Finch, President

June 18

Mr. Laurence Clarke

74 Bleecker Street

New York 10012

Dear Mr. Clarke:

This is to advise you that a check of our records indicates that our terminal payment to you included an improper overpayment of $75.63. We would appreciate your remitting payment in that amount at your earliest possible convenience.

We also understand that you have on several occasions since leaving Whitestone’s employ returned to our offices to avail yourself of the Xerox machine. Mr. Finch has asked me to remind you that use of the Xerox facility is restricted to company business. While it is true that employees of Whitestone habitually disregard this corporate policy, Mr. Finch feels it is ridiculous in the extreme to extend such latitude to those who are no longer with us.

Your attention to this matter will be appreciated.

Sincerely, Rozanne Gumbino Secretary to Mr. Finch

RG/s

7

Ronald Rabbit’s Magazine for Boys and Girls
67 West 44 thStreet
New York 10036
LAURENCE CLARKE, EDITOR June 19

Miss Rozanne Gumbino

Whitestone Publications, Inc.

67 West 44 thSt.

New York 10036

Dear Rozanne:

Thanks very much for your letter. I’ve been getting quite a few letters lately, and I’ve been writing more letters myself than is my usual custom, but I wanted to take the time to let you know that your letter was one of my favorites. On the off chance that you failed to keep a carbon of it, I’m enclosing herewith a Xerox copy for your files.

As far as your overpayment to me of $75.63 is concerned, I can only suggest that you contact my attorney. I am sure he will assist in sorting this matter out and seeing it through to a mutually satisfactory solution. He is Roland Davis Caulder of Muggsworth, Caulder, Travis & Beale, with offices at 437 Piper Boulevard in Richmond, Virginia.

It certainly is good hearing from you, Rozanne. At the risk of offending you, I must admit that I barely remember you, having only had contact with you on the day I severed my connection with Whitestone. I remember your voice on the telephone, rather low-pitched and throbby, and I seem to recall that you have big tits.

Why don’t you come down to Bleecker Street and I’ll eat your box.

Sincerely yourself, Laurence Clarke Editor (Ret.)

8

American Express

Cuernavaca, Mexico

Dear Larry—

I promised Fran I wouldn’t write to you. But she went down to the market to shop for dinner and there are a couple of things I wanted to say.

I’m glad you’re taking this well. I don’t suppose I have to tell you that we certainly didn’t plan for everything to happen at once this way. I mean your losing your job the same day you lost Fran. Although if you think about it, Larry, you lost Fran a long time before the 12 thof June. And I’m not talking about when she and I first fell in love, either. Your marriage went sour, Larry, and after that it was just a question of time before someone stepped in. You know that yourself.

Believe me, I didn’t want to be the one. I resisted it for a long time, as a matter of fact. But there was always this very strong current of attraction existing between Frances and myself, not merely a physical thing but emotional as well. If you’ll forgive me for pointing it out, Fran and I were always closer in this respect than were she and you. Even long before there was anything between us in any sense. It was just the way we responded to one another, a matter of human rapport.

Then one day we just sort of looked at each other and something happened. It’s that kind of situation where the words in the stupid pop tunes all seem to not only make sense but to have a private and personal message just for the two of us. As your friend — and I still consider myself your friend, and hope you consider me that way too, well — as your friend I can wish you nothing more than that you yourself find this kind of love someday with somebody, perhaps somebody you’ve always known, perhaps someone you have not even met yet.

Larry, as far as the fifteen hundred is concerned, Frances feels that it’s her fair share of what the two of you owned in common. In other words, not to cloud this up with any legal bullshit, she says you can keep all the furniture and kitchen utensils and odds and ends, and in return she’ll keep the money she took out of the checking account. If you want to be technical, it came to a little less than fifteen hundred. Frances has the exact figure, which I think ran somewhere in the neighborhood of $1475 or $1480.

The point is that on the one hand you don’t have to worry about me sending Frances back to you, since no power on earth could make me give up what the two of us have together, but I guess you can’t count on me sending the $1500 either, I mean the $1475, because in the first place I don’t have it and in the second Fran says it’s rightfully hers, and I have to go along with her on that.

Another thing I have to mention is the letter you sent me, which I got in Cuernavaca. Of course I showed it to Fran, although I can’t honestly say it was something I wanted to show her. But in the kind of relationship the two of us have, well, we just don’t keep secrets from one another, not even in small matters and certainly not in big ones, and so I showed it to her.

She found it a little unsettling, and speaking frankly, old buddy, so did I. My first reaction, actually, was that I was glad you were taking everything almost too well. But on second reading, or what you might call reading between the lines, I found myself changing my mind. For one thing I sensed a very definite undercurrent of hostility throughout the letter, and without going into a lot of Freudian bullshit I would be less worried if the hostility were right out there in the open than the way it is in your letter, sort of hiding behind the bushes and lurking.

And that whole fantasy about the teenage girls. To tell you the truth, I did think it was amusing and imaginative on your part to invent that routine, but Frances made me realize that it was also pretty sick, and I do mean sick. According to her, you always had a tendency to live a fantasy life that was more real to you than your real life. I would not go that far, although I always felt you may have had your feet planted a little less firmly on the ground than some of the rest of us. I always just figured that this was part of being a poet, the sensitivity bit.

But Fran says that it’s almost as if you actually believe the bit with the girls from the convent school. I didn’t think that was possible but on rereading the section, I have to agree with her. If that’s the case, or whatever’s the case, maybe you’re wasting your talents as a poet, fella. Maybe you ought to write dirty books or something.

Читать дальше
Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Похожие книги на «Ronald Rabbit Is a Dirty Old Man»

Представляем Вашему вниманию похожие книги на «Ronald Rabbit Is a Dirty Old Man» списком для выбора. Мы отобрали схожую по названию и смыслу литературу в надежде предоставить читателям больше вариантов отыскать новые, интересные, ещё непрочитанные произведения.


Lawrence Block - The Ehrengraf Nostrum
Lawrence Block
Lawrence Block - The Ehrengraf Reverse
Lawrence Block
Lawrence Block - A Stab in the Dark
Lawrence Block
Lawrence Block - Killing Castro
Lawrence Block
Lawrence Block - Manhattan Noir
Lawrence Block
Lawrence Block - A Long Line of Dead Men
Lawrence Block
Lawrence Block - Hit Parade
Lawrence Block
Lawrence Block - Hit Man
Lawrence Block
Отзывы о книге «Ronald Rabbit Is a Dirty Old Man»

Обсуждение, отзывы о книге «Ronald Rabbit Is a Dirty Old Man» 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.

x