Driving Blind by Ray Bradbury Read Free Book Online Page A

were also lost, leaving irritability and muted rage.
    We buttered bread to fill the silence. We ordered coffee, which filled more time and at last settled back, watching that other stranger across a snowfield of linen, napery, and silver. Then, abomination of abominations, I heard myself say:
    "When we get home, we must have dinner some night to talk about our time here, yes? Florence, the weather, the paintings."
    "Yes." He downed his drink. "No/"
    "What?"
    "No," he said, simply. "Let's face it, Leonard, when we were home we had nothing in common. Even here we have nothing except time, distance, and travel to share. We have no talk, no interests. Hell, it's a shame, but there it is. This whole thing was impulsive, for the best, or at the worst, mysterious reasons. You're alone, I'm alone in a strange city at noon, and here tonight. But we're like a couple of gravediggers who meet and try to shake hands, but their ectoplasm falls right through each other, hmm? We've kidded ourselves all day."
    I sat there stunned. I shut my eyes, felt as if I might be angry, then gave a great gusting exhalation.
    "You're the most honest man I've ever known."
    "I hate being honest and realistic." Then he laughed. "I tried to call you all afternoon."
    "I tried to call you !"
    " I wanted to cancel dinner."
    "Me, too!"
    "I never got through."
    "I missed you ."
    "My God!"
    "Jesus Christ!"
    We both began to laugh, threw our heads back, and almost fell from our chairs.
    "This is rich !"
    "It most certainly is !" I said, imitating Oliver Hardy's way of speaking.
    "God, order another bottle of champagne!"
    "Waiter!"
    We hardly stopped laughing as the waiter poured the second bottle.
    "Well, we have one thing in common," said Harry
    Stadler.
    "What's that?"
    "This whole cockamamie silly stupid wonderful day, starting at noon, ending here. We'll tell this story to friends the rest of our lives. How I invited you, and you fell in with it not wanting to, and how we both tried to call it off before it started, and how we both came to dinner hating it, and how we blurted it out, silly, silly, and how suddenly—" He stopped. His eyes watered and his voice softened. "How suddenly it wasn't so silly anymore. But okay. Suddenly we liked each other in our foolishness. And if we don't try to make the rest of the evening too long, it won't be so bad, after all."
    I tapped my champagne glass to his. The tenderness had reached me, too, along with the stupid and silly.
    "We won't ever have any dinners back home."
    "No."
    "And we don't have to be afraid of long talks about nothing."
    "Just the weather for a few seconds, now and then."
    "And we won't meet socially."
    "Here's to that."
    "But suddenly it's a nice night, old Leonard Douglas, customer of mine."
    "Here's to Harry Stadler." I raised my glass. "Wherever he goes from here."
    "Bless me. Bless you."
    We drank and simply sat there for another five minutes, warm and comfortable as old friends who had suddenly found that a long long time ago we had loved the same beautiful librarian who had touched our books and touched our cheeks. But the memory was fading.
    "It's going to rain." I arose with my wallet.
    Stadler stared until I put the wallet back in my jacket.
    "Thanks and good night."
    "Thanks to you," he said, "I'm not so lonely now, no matter what."
    I gulped the rest of my wine, gasped with pleasure, ruffled Stadler's hair with a quick hand, and ran.
    At the door I turned. He saw this and shouted across the room.
    " Remember me?"
    I pretended to pause, scratch my head, cudgel my memory. Then I pointed at him and cried:
    "The butcher!"
    He lifted his drink.
    "Yes!" he called. "The butcher!"
    I hurried downstairs and across the parquetry floor which was too beautiful to walk on, and out into a storm.
    I walked in the rain for a long while, face up.
    Hell, I thought, I don't feel so lonely myself !
    Then, soaked through, and laughing, I ducked and ran all the way back to my hotel.

FEE FIE FOE FUM
    The postman