The Bookman's Wake
“I leaped out on the rim, running along the edge of a dark gulf. She was somewhere down in the street: I couldn’t see her, but I heard her scream as I skidded down the slope. I had a long clear look at the street running back downtown: she hadn’t gone that way, so she had to have ducked under the freeway to the east. This led me into a dreary neighborhood of shabby storefronts and dark flophouses. The rain had kept people off the street and the hour was late…the block was as dead as an old grave...yard. The wet clop of my feet punctured the steady hiss of the rain, but I was chasing a ghost. She was gone.
I reached a cross street still clinging to a shred of hope. She could be blocks away by now, going in any direction. Guess wrong and kiss her good-bye: the next time she stuck her head up, she’d be scouting books in Florida. She could make a pauper’s living forever in that anonymous subculture, never pay taxes, never have her name recorded on any official docket, never be seen again by friend or foe.MoreLess
I reached a cross street still clinging to a shred of hope. She could be blocks away by now, going in any direction. Guess wrong and kiss her good-bye: the next time she stuck her head up, she’d be scouting books in Florida. She could make a pauper’s living forever in that anonymous subculture, never pay taxes, never have her name recorded on any official docket, never be seen again by friend or foe.MoreLess
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