Robert B. Parker by Love & Glory

Author:Love & Glory [Love & Glory]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery & Detective, Political, Hard-Boiled, Fiction, Literary, Suspense, Authors, General, Love Stories
ISBN: 9780440146292
Publisher: Dell
Published: 1983-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

A fly woke me. It buzzed and hummed as it circled my face, and then was silent when it landed. I could feel it walking along my cheek toward the flare of my right nostril. I brushed it away. The fly buzzed again and hummed as it flew. As I became conscious I could feel how hot I was, and how wet I was with sweat. I opened my eyes stiffly and saw a strange place. My head ached, I was thirsty, and as I shifted slightly, my whole body felt trembly. I rubbed my forehead with the back of my hand. I looked at my hand. The fingernails were dirty and there was a scratch along the back of it that had a ragged scab on it. The fly came back and walked on my face again. I brushed at it and it flew a short distance away, and someone next to me slapped at it. I looked around. I was lying on a cement floor against a cinder block wall in the corner of a room with ten or twelve other men in it. Across the front wall were bars. I was in the drunk tank; I knew what a drunk tank looked like. I’d been in one before. How about this one? Had I been in this one before? No. I had never seen this one before. I didn’t know where I was. Across the room somebody was having the dry heaves in the single seatless hopper. I edged my way upright against the wall. A Mexican-looking guy next to me was smoking. I tapped my two fingers against my lips in a smoking gesture. The Mexican looked at me and looked away. The smell of his smoke made me want a cigarette badly. I felt in my pockets. There were no cigarettes. In fact there was nothing at all in my pockets. After a while a guard came and let us all out. They gave me back the tattered mass of notebooks that I kept, and we trooped down a long corridor and out onto a hot sunny street. It was a street I’d never seen. I didn’t know where I was. I walked down the hill in the heat. At a newsstand I saw the Los Angeles Times for sale, and the Herald Examiner. I was in L.A. and my last memory was a thousand miles north and five days ago. I felt shaky and sick. In a store window I saw my reflection. My hair was stringy and long; my face was half covered with a scruffy beard. One sleeve of my shirt was gone and the zipper on my fly was broken. My pants gaped. There were no laces in my shoes, which made it harder to walk, and as I moved away from the window I shuffled. I needed a drink. I needed cigarettes. I panhandled. By evening I’d gotten nearly a dollar and a half’s worth of change. I bought a pack of Camels and a bottle of port wine, and sat on a bench in a park off Broadway in downtown L.

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