Читать книгу Apes and Angels онлайн

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On this night, as he sat over his coffee, Saunders Rook from time to time moistened his lips with his tongue and cleared his throat as if he were making ready to say something important, and then compressed his lips as if he had decided that it was not worth saying.

The truth was that Saunders Rook was afflicted with “cab-wit,” that he was one of those unfortunates who think of the bright things they might have said only while on their way home in a taxicab. He was oppressed by the knowledge that if he did say anything, it would probably be as colorless and unoriginal as he suspected himself to be. He was oppressed mildly, for he was mild in all things, by the certainty that he could not compete with the witty Max Skye or the sparkling Lucile Davega, who could always quote something arresting from Krafft-Ebing. He did not enjoy being ignored any more than any other man does, and he had his full share of man’s natural desire for a beam of the limelight. A craving for attention had of late been growing more insistent within him. His mind began to play with ideas, which, he reasoned, if uttered in a loud enough voice, might bring his hearers to their, and his, feet. He wanted just for once to cause a stir. Just once, he told himself, would appease him.