The Losers by David Eddings

Author:David Eddings [Eddings, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-007-39561-3
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2010-03-26T16:00:00+00:00

In taberna quando sumus

i

Toward the end of May the weather broke, and there were five or six days of sunshine. Raphael moved outside to luxuriate in the warmth, coming in off his rooftop only to eat and sleep or to go to work.

Quite early one morning he saw Crazy Charlie coming furtively out of the house next door. Charlie always tried to attend to those things that required him to leave the safety of his apartment early in the day when there were few people on the streets and in the stores. He avoided contact with people as much as possible, even crossing the street when he saw someone coming up the sidewalk toward him in order to make chance meetings or the possibility of conversation impossible.

This morning, however, Flood was waiting for him. The small red car came down the street a moment or so after Charlie emerged, pulled into its usual parking place behind Raphael’s car, and Flood bounded out. Without any preliminary word, he came around the back of his car and placed himself on the sidewalk directly in front of Crazy Charlie. “ ‘Morning, friend,” he said with a breezy cheerfulness.

Charlie mumbled something, his head down, and tried to cringe back off the sidewalk onto the grass.

“I wonder if you could give me some information,” Floodpressed. “I seem to be lost. Could you tell me how to get back to Interstate 90?”

Charlie pointed south mutely.

“I go that way?” Flood assumed an expression of enormous perplexity. “Man, I’m completely turned around. I could have sworn that I had to go that way.” He pointed north.

Charlie shook his head and gave more specific directions in a nasal, almost trembling voice.

“Man,” Flood said with an ingenuousness so obviously faked that Raphael, watching from his rooftop, cringed. “I sure do want to thank you.” Without warning, he reached out, grabbed Charlie’s hand, and shook it vigorously.

Charlie looked as if he were ready to faint. Having someone talk to him was bad enough, but to have someone actually touch him—

“Beautiful morning, isn’t it?” Flood went on in the same breezy tone, releasing Charlie’s hand.

Charlie looked around, confused. In all probability he had not paid any attention to the weather for several years now. “Yes,” he said in the same hesitant voice, “it seems pretty … nice.”

“All that rain was starting to destroy me.”

Charlie had begun sidling away, moving up the sidewalk away from Flood’s car, but Flood kept talking, walking along beside him.

Raphael watched the two of them move slowly up toward the end of the block, Flood talking animatedly and Charlie appearing to grow less apprehensive as they went. By the time they reached the corner they were talking and laughing together like old friends.

They stood on the comer for almost ten minutes in the slanting, golden light of the early-morning sun, and when they parted, they shook hands again. Charlie seemed almost wistful as he looked at Flood’s retreating back, then his shoulders slumped again into their usual slouch, and he crossed the street to pursue his early-morning errand.

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