Long After Midnight by Ray Bradbury

Author:Ray Bradbury [Bradbury, Ray]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2013-12-04T23:00:00+00:00

They slept until one in the afternoon. She was dressed and sitting on the bed waiting for him to waken for half an hour before he stirred and rolled over, needing a shave, very pale with tiredness.

“I’ve got a sore throat,” was the first thing he said.

She didn’t speak.

“You shouldn’t have thrown water on me,” he said.

She got up and walked to the door and put her hand on the knob.

“I want you to stay here,” he said. “We’re going to stay here in Uruapan three or four more days.”

At last she said, “I thought we were going on to Guadalajara.”

“Don’t be a tourist. You ruined that trip to the volcano for us. I want to go back up tomorrow or the next day. Go look at the sky.”

She went out to look at the sky. It was clear and blue. She reported this. “The volcano dies down, sometimes for a week. We can’t afford to wait a week for it to boom again.”

“Yes, we can. We will. And you’ll pay for the taxi to take us up there and do the trip over and do it right and enjoy it.”

“Do you think we can ever enjoy it now?” she asked .

“If it’s the last thing we do, we’ll enjoy it.”

“You insist, do you?”

“We’ll wait until the sky is full of smoke and go back up.”

“I’m going out to buy a paper.” She shut the door and walked into the town.

She walked down the fresh-washed streets and looked in the shining windows and smelled that amazingly clear air and felt very good, except for the tremoring, the continual tremoring in her stomach. At last, with a hollowness roaring in her chest, she went to a man standing beside a taxi.

“Señor,” she said.

“Yes?” said the man.

She felt her heart stop beating. Then it began to thump again and she went on: “How much would you charge to drive me to Morelia?”

“Ninety pesos, señora.”

“And I can get the train in Morelia?”

“There is a train here, señora.”

“Yes, but there are reasons why I don’t want to wait for it here.”

“I will drive you, then, to Morelia.”

“Come along, there are a few things I must do.”

The taxi was left in front of the the Hotel de Las Flores. She walked in, alone, and once more looked at the lovely garden with its many flowers, and listened to the girl playing the strange blue-colored piano, and this time the song was the “Moonlight Sonata.” She smelled the sharp crystalline air and shook her head, eyes closed, hands at her sides. She put her hand to the door, opened it softly.

Why today? she wondered. Why not some other day in the last five years? Why have I waited, why have I hung around? Because. A thousand becauses. Because you always hoped things would start again the way they were the first year. Because there were times, less frequent now, when he was splendid for days, even weeks, when you were both feeling well and the world was green and bright blue.

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.