Hard Rain Falling (New York Review Books Classics)

by Don Carpenter

Everybody knew what was what, but nobody wanted to be straight about it. They would go on like this—bored, indifferent, edgy, too hip to live—until they got drunk, and then somebody would turn on the radio and they would dance in the tiny space between the beds, and somebody would push somebody down onto the bed, and in the darkness the four of them would be sorted out into fornicating couples almost at random, with the light coming in through the window shade, and later somebody would throw up, and some time after that somebody would suggest that they switch partners, and after an hour of dull bitching they might or might not, and everybody would fall asleep from alcohol and boredom, and the radio would keep playing through their fuzzy dreams, and eventually they would all have to wake up. So much waste, he thought. He shook his head, trying to rid himself of this overwhelming sense of waste. He had come to San Francisco to think, and he was not going to do it. He was always doing the easy thing, the thing that first came to hand.