Читать книгу Five Quarters of the Orange / Пять четвертинок апельсина онлайн

53 страница из 226

He was wearing shorts and sandals, and held his dog, Malabar, on a leash made of string.

I gave him a look of indifference and turned back to the water. Paul sat down next to me. Malabar flopped onto the path, panting. I ignored them both. At last Paul spoke.

“Wh-what’s wrong?”

I shrugged. “Nothing. I’m just fishing, that’s all.”

Another silence.

“For’s-snakes.” His voice was carefully uninflected.

I nodded, rather defiantly.

“So?”

“So nothing.” He patted Malabar’s head. “You can do what you like.”

A pause that crawled between us like a racing snail.

“I wonder if it hurts,” I said at last.

He considered it for a moment as if he knew what I meant, then shook his head.

“Dunno.”

“They say the poison gets into your blood and makes you go numb. Just like going to sleep.”

He watched me noncommittally, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

“C–Cassis sez that Jeannette Gaudin musta seen Old Mother,” he said at last. “You know. That’s why the snake b-bit her. Old Mother’s curse.”

I shook my head. Cassis, the avid storyteller and reader of lurid adventure magazines (with titles like The Mummy’s Curse or Barbarian Swarm), was always saying things like that.