Hammered

Titel: Hammered Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Kevin Hearne

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still look forward to living at least another fifty years. «

    » No, it wouldn’t. People would start asking questions. Everyone would want to know how she did it. Her friends and relatives especially. She’s told you about her kids and grandkids, right? «

    » Well, her oldest son is sixty-seven. She’d be younger than him. That would be awkward. Her grandkids would freak out because their grandma didn’t look like a sweet old lady anymore. So what does she tell them? This nice Druid I know did me a solid? «

    » It’s not about hurting me. They’re going to want to stay young too. And then their friends and relatives will, and before you know it the tabloids will get hold of the story and latch on like seven puppies after six tits. «

    » And then the government will get involved, because having someone live that long is eventually going to raise flags at the IRS and the Social Security Administration. Her driver’s license picture won’t match her face. All sorts of questions are going to be asked. «

    » The widow by herself would be worth the trouble. But I can’t confine it to her. Still, let’s say I did. She gets to start life over at forty while her kids all continue to age and die. Would she thank me for her youth when she’s standing over the grave of her son? Or the graves of her grandchildren? «

    » Good. I’ve been in that position, Oberon, far too many times. I’ve buried my children and their children and so on. It carves away a piece of you. «

    » Sure I have. It’s how I learned all the stuff I just told you—the painful way. And I learned that some people become distanced from humanity, severely troubled, and reclusive when they live too long. Sort of like vampires tend to do, only without the bloodsucking. If their minds aren’t trained like a Druid’s, they gradually collect neuroses over time, like sunbathers collect wrinkles. Immortali-Tea can’t fix batshit insanity. «

    » Yep. That’s why eventually I stopped offering. «

    » Not soon. Need to be in a place where I can settle down. And this isn’t that place. I need to talk to you about that, actually. «

    I explained to him that we needed to move out of Tempe. » I’ll have to go back to Asgard soon, and it’ll be a longer trip than the first one. It might be forever, because I might not come back, and if that’s what happens, then you need to be good to Mrs. MacDonagh. But if I do return, we’ll be leaving right away. «

    » I don’t know yet. «

    » Heh! I never thought of it that way. « I smiled. » But now that you’ve clarified my thinking, I wonder why they don’t list those amenities in real estate ads. It seems criminally negligent. «

    » I care, buddy. I believe you to be remarkably wise. «

    I laughed. » Perhaps when we are safely settled elsewhere. «

    » I cannot promise you, Oberon, « I said, regret tingeing my voice, and I could tell he was disappointed. » But, look, it is good to have a dream so long as you do not let it gnaw at the substance of your present. I have seen men consumed by their dreams, and it is a sour business. If you cling too tightly to a dream—a poodle bitch or a personal sausage chef or whatever—then you miss the felicity of your heart beating and the smell of the grass growing and the sounds lizards make when you run through the neighborhood with your friend. Your dream should be like a favorite old bone that you savor and cherish and chew upon gently. Then, rather than stealing from you a wasted sigh or the life of an idle hour, it nourishes you, and you become strangely contented by nostalgia for a possible future, so juicy with possibility and redolent of sautéed garlic and decadent slabs of bacon that you feel full when you’ve eaten nothing. And then, one fine day when the sun smiles upon your snout, when the time