Embarkation by J. R. Salamanca

Author:J. R. Salamanca
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0394460286
Publisher: Tantor eBooks

WHEN SYLVIE SAID THAT ABOUT WAITING ALL HER LIFE TO GET arrested I had a sudden wildly missionary impulse to bear witness to the fact that it is possible at least once even in the course of the most inconceivably undistinguished life and on such an improbable site as West Fifty-ninth Street to behold a certain jubilation in the sky, to hear for just a moment above the snarl of traffic a burst of feathery applause pealing in the blue air like a cannonade, a celebration if not of triumph at least of festival, of something that still deserves the rejoicing of doves in the bad-ass world, I wanted to tell Sylvie about that. But it is pretty hard to be convincing about it if you have no evangelical talents of any sort whatever and if you happen to have a bottle of whisky wedged between your thighs at the moment and the generally unper-suasive air of an abandoned sheepdog, so I decided to shake off the impulse before it led me into all sorts of embarrassments. I fished around for a cigarette and found one finally, but no matches, there’s always something missing, some form of ignition usually, at least in my case. I put the cigarette in my mouth anyway and sat there puffing away at it, blowing out my imaginary smoke, just like the big guys, I thought. Sylvie leaned against me with a growing heaviness and after a while she started snoring softly, she seemed to have gone into a state of hibernation. Pretty soon my shoulder got cramped from the weight of her head, I had to shift around to get myself unkinked, which woke her up.

“What’s the matter?” she mumbled.

“I’m getting a Charley horse,” I said. “It looked like you’d passed out for the rest of the summer. Is there such a thing as hibernating in the summertime?”

“Yes,” she said. “Some kinds of snails do it. Also some kinds of Linthicums. It’s called estivation.”

“What do you know about that,” I said. “It’s a great thing to have a Doctor of Philosophy in the family.”

“It’s evidence of a stubborn perversity throughout the animal world,” Sylvie said. I decided you could look at it that way or you could just say it takes all kinds to make a world. “Just wait till the glaciers come back,” she said. “I’ll be raring to go, then. I’ll be in my element, boy.” She sounded pretty well stewed, I thought I’d better get her back up to the house.

“Hey, how about hitting the sack?” I said.

“Not on your life. We’ve got half a bottle to go. I was just taking a little breather, that’s all.”

She struggled back up to a sitting position on the log and raked at her hair for a minute with her fingernails and then had another drink and shuddered. “You haven’t finished telling me about London, anyway. About what happened to Cindy and all. Where is she now?”

“Back in Stratford, I guess, handing out tea and scones in the family buttery.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.