Doctor Sleep by Madison Smartt Bell

Author:Madison Smartt Bell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 1991-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

“Do you,” I said.

“I’m staying at Fleming’s Hotel. Room one-eighty-six. It’s just near Green Park.”

“I know the place,” I said. “Half Moon Street.”

“So maybe we could meet later,” Nicole said. “You know, and really talk things over. That was the point of the arrangement, wasn’t it? That eventually we’d have to think things through?”

“But you’ve got a late dinner,” I said. “And probably an early flight.”

“I hear,” Nicole smiled slyly, “you can’t sleep anyway. Don’t worry about me.”

I leaned across the table and put my two hands on her shoulders and kissed the point of cream off of her nose. Nicole blinked, but didn’t withdraw.

“Cream on your nose,” I explained.

“Oh,” Nicole murmured. “Thanks.” She made some slight movement and my hands slipped down and flattened onto the bare skin between her collar and her chains. Her chin was square, her wide mouth slightly open. I could hear my breath passing out of my body and into hers.

“I’ll see you,” Nicole breathed back to me. “Later on.”

Then she was gone. Snap, just like that. I shook myself. Such a ghostly departure, as if I had only imagined her, after all. Perhaps it was just me. My hands still tingled with her warmth. For something to do, I finished the tart, though it felt like it was taking me to the edge of a diabetic coma.

The sun was failing rapidly and it was turning twilight in the greenhouse. Time to be off for the Tooth and Claw, I recollected, and I called the waiter to bring the bill. Higher than a cat’s back too; it needed all my ready cash to pay it. I had to go through all my pockets for coins to make up a decent tip.

Then I got up and walked groggily off into the bowels of the store, all that sugar fouling my blood. There was a smacking sound behind me and I felt my jacket pocket suddenly lighten. When I turned, there was the copy of Attar lying on the floor behind me. I stooped woozily to pick it up and went on through the lower floors of the store clutching it in my hand.

Harrods was even more crowded than it had been when I came in, everyone packing in to capitalize on the short interval between the closing of their offices and the store. Everyone dragged forward by his scrabbling, snuffling dog of desire. … I struggled to the front of the store and spun through a revolving door out onto Brompton Road. The rapidly cooling air freshened my mind a little. Whatever else you might think of the Sufis, it was clever of them to understand how love is fundamentally terrifying. Because … an ignorant person will ask, “What connection is there between belief or unbelief, and love?” But I say, “Do lovers regard their lives? The lover sets fire to all hope of harvest, he puts the blade to his neck, he pierces his body. With love comes sorrow and the heart’s blood. Love loves the difficult things.

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