Hunter and the Trap Read Online Free Page B

the morning, the party was over, and except for Andy’s entourage, only the red-headed belly dancer remained. She was stretched out on the couch in the living room, out cold and snoring softly. Somehow you never connect snoring with a big, sexy kid like that. Jane Pierce had kicked her way out of the debris about a half hour before, leaving me with one final look of alcoholic hostility. She had everything that a woman could want—figure, looks, brains and success—but she loved no one. Jose Peretz was beginning to clean up.
    â€œThe hell with that,” Andy said. “Let the chambermaids clean up. Get yourself a nightcap and turn in.”
    â€œI am no pig to wallow in litter.”
    Andy said something in quick Spanish, and then they both laughed.
    â€œAnd keep your hands off that kid,” Andy said, nodding at the belly dancer. “She’s twenty years old and a silly little bitch, so just let her sleep it off in peace.”
    He had been drinking since he opened his eyes the day before; but he wasn’t drunk, and his voice was steady and easy, and he didn’t appear very tired. I was tired. I was as tired as death itself, and I had the taste of death in my mouth and in my heart. I went out onto the terrace to breathe a little fresh air. Diva was there. Over in Queens, there was a bluish-pink edge in the sky. The smell of the air was clean and damp, the way it is on a New York morning.
    â€œWell?” Diva said to me. “You have good time at the party, Monte?”
    I shrugged, and she said, “What kind of a man are you?”
    â€œYour guess is as good as mine.”
    She spat over the terrace in a very expressive and Spanish gesture. Andy came onto the terrace and told her, “Leave him alone and go to bed, Diva. Haven’t you any brains? Haven’t you any goddamn brains at all?”
    â€œJust be careful, hey, Andy,” she whispered. “Just be careful and don’t ever talk to me like this again.”
    Then she swirled off the terrace and we heard the door of her bedroom crash behind her. Andy looked at me and smiled thinly.
    â€œWhat the hell, Monte.”
    I shrugged.
    â€œSo we don’t do things very good. We don’t write so good and we don’t hunt so good and maybe we don’t love so good either, and what the hell’s the difference anyway! It was a hell of a party, wasn’t it?”
    â€œIt was a good party.”
    â€œBut you say hello too much. You give too much. You don’t remember what you are—or maybe you never know. I begin to feel small and choked. Then I am lost. I want to sit down and cry. You know?”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œThen why did you do it?” Andy asked me gently. “You didn’t have to have her here tonight.”
    â€œI’m a masochist.”
    â€œLeave her, Monte.”
    â€œThen it hurts her and she cries and goes into a depression. I suppose I love her or something like that.”
    â€œMonte—I’m getting out of here. Tomorrow, the next day. I can choke here. Tell you what—I have a standing invitation from the Earl of Dornoch. He has seven thousand acres in the Highlands, high north—north enough so that at this time of the year there is no real night. Black Angus cattle and deer—the old English deer. Over a thousand deer run on his land. Have you ever been to Scotland?”
    I shook my head.
    â€œYou can’t imagine it—a tiny land with the widest vistas in the world. You stand on a mountaintop in the Highlands, and there’s a kind of freedom wherever you look, an illusion of vastness. It’s an old and wild and empty land, and you hunt there with a sense of others hunting before you, and it’s a feeling you don’t have anywhere else. It’s something valid.”
    I shook my head.
    â€œNo. I thought not. You never hunted, did you, Monte?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œNever wanted to?”
    â€œNo, I