But Beautiful by Dyer Geoff

Author:Dyer, Geoff [Dyer, Geoff]
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857863355
Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd

It was daylight by the time they finally stopped for breakfast. Stiff from so many hours in the car, they walked awkwardly into the diner, the screen door slamming behind them. The place was already crowded and noisy with truckers, too busy chewing to take any notice of Ellington in his old blue sweater and crumpled trousers. Morning sun tumbled through the windows.

Yawning, Duke ordered the meal he had been living off for God knows how many years: steak and grapefruit, coffee. Harry asked for eggs and watched Duke slowly stir his coffee: there was an air of sleepiness in everything he did but it was the sleepiness of someone who has just woken up – never of someone about to go to sleep. The bags under his eyes suggested a backlog of missed sleep that would probably take ten years to clear. Instead of paying it back, though, he found the sleep debt continuing to mount up as he scraped by, night after night, on four or five hours. Perhaps it was their collective weariness that kept the core of the band together: after a while frazzled tiredness gets to be addictive, you depend on it to keep going. People kept telling Duke to ease up, to rest and relax – which was all very well, but what was he going to rest and relax at?

They ate in silence and as soon as he had finished Duke started in on his dessert: dozens of assorted vitamins washed down with water.

—Ready, Harry?

—Guess so. Let’s get the check.

They both cast around for the waitress, already looking forward to getting back in the car.

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