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.Two blocks down Third she turned in at Lothario’s.There was something different in her step now.Lothario’s was a quiet complex of rooms hung with ferns and Art Deco mirrors.There were fake Tiffany lamps hanging from the ceiling, alternating with wooden-bladed fans that rotated too slowly to stir the wisps of smoke drifting through the consciously mellow drone of conversation.After the disco, Lothario’s was familiar and comforting.A jazz pianist in pinstriped shirt sleeves and loosely knotted tie competed softly with talk and laughter from a dozen tables.She was at the bar; the stools were only half taken, but Coretti chose a wall table, in the shadow of a miniature palm, and ordered bourbon.He drank the bourbon and ordered another.He couldn’t feel the alcohol much tonight.She sat beside a young man, yet another young man with the usual set of bland, regular features.He wore a yellow golf shirt and pressed jeans.Her hip was touching his, just a little.They didn’t seem to be speaking, but Coretti felt they were somehow communing.They were leaning toward one another slightly, silent.Coretti felt odd.He went to the rest room and splashed his face with water.Coining back, he managed to pass within three feet of them.Their lips didn’t move till he was within earshot.They took turns murmuring realistic palaver: saw his earlier films, but ""But he’s rather self-indulgent, don’t you think?""Sure, but in the sense that.And for the first time, Coretti knew what they were, what they must be.They were the kind you see in bars who seem to have grown there, who seem genuinely at home there.Not drunks, but human fixtures.Functions of the bar.The belonging kind.Something in him yearned for a confrontation.He reached his table, but found himself unable to sit down.He turned, took a deep breath, and walked woodenly toward the bar.He wanted to tap her on her smooth shoulder and ask who she was, and exactly what she was, and point out the cold irony of the fact that it was he, Coretti, the Martian dresser, the eavesdropper, the outsider, the one whose clothes and conversation never fit, who had at last guessed their secret.But his nerve broke and he merely took a seat beside her and ordered bourbon."But don’t you think," she asked her companion, "that it’s all relative?"The two seats beyond her companion were quickly taken by a couple who were talking politics.Antoinette and Golf Shirt took up the political theme seamlessly.Recycling, speaking just loudly enough to be overheard.Her face, as she spoke, was expressionless.A bird trilling on a limb.She sat so easily on her stool, as if it were a nest.Golf Shirt paid for the drinks.He always had the exact change, unless he wanted to leave a tip.Coretti watched them work their way methodically through six cocktails each, like insects feeding on nectar.But their voices never grew louder, their cheeks didn’t redden, and when at last they stood, they moved without a trace of drunkenness a weakness, thought Coretti, a gap in their camouflage.They paid him absolutely no attention while he followed them through three successive bars.As they entered Waylon’s, they metamorphosed so quickly that Coretti had trouble following the stages of the change.It was one of those places with toilet doors marked Pointers and Setters, and a little imitation pine plaque over the jars of beef jerky and pickled sausages:We’ve got a deal with the bank.They don’t serve beer and we don’t cash checks.She was plump in Waylon’s, and there were dark hollows under her eyes.There were coffee stains on her polyester pantsuit.Her companion wore jeans, a T-shirt, and a red baseball cap with a red-and-white Peterbilt patch.Coretti risked losing them when he spent a frantic minute in "Pointers," blinking in confusion at a hand-lettered cardboard sign that said, We aim to please.You aim too, please.Third Avenue lost itself near the waterfront in a petrified snarl of brickwork.In the last block, bright vomit marked the pavement at intervals, and old men dozed in front of black-and-white TVs, sealed forever behind the fogged plate glass of faded hotels.The bar they found there had no name [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]