Thus, a police scanner played out its truncated cop-speak ten-code and laconic locality identifiers, and it suggested no police presence here in the immediate Federal Hill area.
ROUND COMMAND FOR BULLET POINT GMAIL PROFESSIONAL
He’d been stalking for three days now, in his patient, professional way, and part of his talent lay in understanding exactly when the arrangements favored him and when they did not. The Russian watched from the stolen black Camaro parked on Light. He’d cross Light Street here, and only the narrow alley called Churchill lay between himself and horizontality in bed, his destination. The transaction worked out well for both of them, in fact, and at the bottom of V.3, a pause in the praise gave Aptapton the time to gracefully excuse himself, bid Tom? maybe Jack? possibly Sam? good-bye and make his exit. The young man sat and gushed Aptapton love for a bit, and Aptapton tried to give him a meaningful Aptapton experience. “Well,” said Aptapton, “say, thanks so much.” “I just wanted to say, I’ve read all your books. Halfway through V.3, he’d looked up to see an earnest young fellow, possibly the assistant manager. Rare, but not without precedent for your minor-league non-qual-lit celeb. The mood, like the geography, chemically amplified by red potato crushed by kulak descendants, was quite good. It shook, it rattled, it coiled, it double-bubbled, boiled, and troubled.ĭo you find yourself amusing? his wife always asked, and the truth was, yes, he did find himself amusing.
Ahead, it humped up, then dipped down to permit a view of the valley. Fortunately, there’d been no V.4, or he’d be asleep in the men’s room. She was at some newsroom woman thing, birthday party, maybe – why did women take birthdays so seriously, by the way? – and so he’d wandered on his own to the nearby bistro, had a burger with a Bud and then V.1, which weakened his resolve to resist V.2, which shattered his resolve to resist V.3. His wife was absent, ha ha ha, too bad for her. The reason for the three vodka martinis was liberation, not celebration. He had it all: beautiful wife, a couple of mil, a nice house in a fabulous part of town, a minor reputation (enough to take some pleasure in), a grand future, a munificent multibook contract, a really cool project ahead, and a lot of guns. Yes, he was that James Aptapton, minor local journo celeb who’d gone on to minor fame as a writer for money of hardcover books about gunfights and the stoic heroes who won them, and now he found himself at sixty-five improbably successful (in a small way) and awkwardly pleased to be himself. But also: Light as in Light for All, as a famous newspaper, located a mile or so up the very same Light Street, had proclaimed on a daily basis for 175 years or so, twenty-six of which he’d spent in its employ and where his wife to this day toiled. Light as in light of heart, light of spirit, light at end of tunnel, light as in amusing, fey, witty, light as symbol of hope and life. The street was called Light, and that suggested a kind of hopeful conclusion to the evening.
One thing suggests another, and in this case the suggestion is appropriate. After all, he had to walk only another few feet, cross the street, and then–ĭigression. He was one sheet to the wind, you might say, happyhappyhappyhappy, as three vodka martinis will do to a fellow with only moderate capacity for drink, and what lay ahead, although slightly challenging, didn’t really seem insurmountable.
ROUND COMMAND FOR BULLET POINT GMAIL FULL
They were zephyrs of vodka, and they’d substantially loosened his grip on the solidity of the little chunk of earth that lay between the bar he’d just exited and the house where he lived, a few hundred yards ahead.Īptapton: alcoholic, writer, success, melancholiac, and gun guy, was in a zone that might be called greater than a buzz but less than a full staggering drunk. It just seemed so to Aptapton, because the winds that toyed with the stability of the sidewalk blew-“howled”-only through his own mind. Ditto with the “blown askew” and the “high winds howling through the night.” The sidewalk before him bucked and heaved, blown askew by high winds howling through the night. “There’s something happening here” CHAPTER 1 –“FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH,” BUFFALO SPRINGFIELD I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound?Įverybody look what’s going down.
0 kommentar(er)
