All the Days and Nights Read Online Free PDF Page A

the third dream was a happy dream. I was with Cathy and we were skating together and pulling our mommies by strings.”
    W ITH his safety razor ready to begin a downward sweep, George Carrington studied the lathered face in the mirror of the medicine cabinet. He shook his head. There was a fatal flaw in his character: Nobody was ever as real to him as he was to himself. If people knew how little he cared whether they lived or died, they wouldn’t want to have anything to do with him.
    T HE dog moved back and forth between the two ends of the apartment, on good terms with everybody. She was in the dining room at mealtimes, and in the kitchen when Iris was getting dinner (when quite often something tasty fell off the edge of the kitchen table), and she was there again just after dinner, in case the plates were put on the floor for her to lick before they went into the dishwasher. In the late afternoon, for an hour before it was time for her can of beef-and-beef-byproducts, she sat with her front paws crossed, facing the kitchen clock, a reminding statue. After she had been fed, she went to the living room and lay down before the unlit log fire in the fireplace and slept until bedtime. In the morning, she followed Iris back and forth through room after room, until Iris was dressed and ready to take her out. “Must you nag me so?” Iris cried, but the dog was not intimidated. There was something they were in agreement about, though only one of them could have put it in words: It is a crime against Nature to keep a hunting dog in the city. George sometimes gave her a slap on her haunches when she picked up food in the gutter or lunged at another dog. And if she jerked on her leash he jerked back, harder. But with Iris she could do anything — she could even stand under the canopy and refuse to go anywhere because it was raining.
    Walking by the river, below Eightieth Street, it wasn’t necessary to keep her on a leash, and while Iris went on ahead Puppy sniffed at the godforsaken grass and weeds that grew between the cement walk and theEast River Drive. Then she overtook Iris, at full speed, overshot the mark, and came charging back, showing her teeth in a grin. Three or four times she did this, as a rule — with Iris applauding and congratulating her and cheering her on. It may be a crime against Nature to keep a hunting dog in the city, but this one was happy anyway.
    A FTER a series of dreams in which people started out as one person and ended up another and he found that there was no provision for getting from where he was to where he wanted to go and it grew later and later and even after the boat had left he still went on packing his clothes and what he thought was his topcoat turned out to belong to a friend he had not seen for seventeen years and naked strangers came and went, he woke and thought he heard a soft tapping on the bedroom door. But when he got up and opened it there was no one there.
    “Was that Cindy?” Iris asked as he got back into bed.
    “No. I thought I heard her, but I must have imagined it.”
    “I thought I heard her too,” Iris said, and turned over.
    At breakfast he said, “Did you have any bad dreams last night?” but Cindy was making a lake in the middle of her oatmeal and didn’t answer.
    “I thought I heard you tapping on our door,” he said. “You didn’t dream about a wolf, or a tiger, or a big black dog?”
    “I don’t remember,” she said.
    “Y OU ’ LL never guess what I just saw from the bedroom window,” Iris said.
    He put down his book.
    “A police wagon drove down Eighty-fourth Street and stopped, and two policemen with guns got out and went into a building and didn’t come out. And after a long while two more policemen came and
they
went into the building and pretty soon they all came out with a big man with black hair, handcuffed. Right there on Eighty-fourth Street, two doors from the corner.”
    “Nice neighborhood we live in,” he said.
    “D ADDY , Daddy,