"Edward Bryant - The Transfer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bryant Edward)

explode. Energy flows, deepens, prepares to flood. I have so little
control anymore.
Storm warning.
It was wet, raining heavily, when I met Jim. He never realized the
melodramatic circumstances of how it happened. All he knew was that he
happened upon a bedraggled woman trudging toward the midway point of a
highway bridge over the Chicago River in the middle of a driving
rainstorm. He thought I must have had automobile trouble, so he stopped to
see if he could help. What he did was save my life, since I'd been
planning to jump from the center of the span into the muddy current. I
never let him know that. I would have turned down his offer of a ride
except for his eyes. They were kind eyes, a deep liquid brown, and
intelligent.
I got in his car. That was the beginning. I forgot about the attraction of
the abyss, of the fatal temptation that had continued to haunt me after
Cody's death.
It was love, or something similar. At least it was the need, the necessity
that always tugged me toward others.
It's not that I'm a chameleon. I'm not. Transference and
transformationthose are the key words. What they mean is less important
than what I feel. In truth, I adapt to my environment. It's the way I
survive.
Jim and I lived in Chicago for another two years, then went to Cleveland
when he was offered a good clinic position. It didn't work out as well as
he'd have liked, so then it was back to Chicago. Finally we came to Kansas
City, where some of Jim's medical school friends had set up a partnership
and invited him in.
It was peaceful. For years, the only real conflict was my having to
convince Jim that I really couldn't have children. I didn't want to tell
him the truththat I didn't want to. That was our only difference, and I
think I only had the will to carry it out because he secretly, in his
heart of hearts, didn't want to share his life with anyone else. At any
rate, my forty-fourth birthday would be in just one more week, on the
seventh; procreation was getting to be ever less of a real possibility.
For all those years, Jim urged me to be myself. It was only partially
successful. I've stored up so much.
The forecast . . . Storms? Earthquake? Tidal wave? Apocalypse? I don't
really know. All I do know is that my head hurts, as though the skull
wants to come apart at the cranial fissures.
Jim? Touch me, stroke me, tell me things are all right. If I could just
see you again.
But I would have to open my eyes.
Something I learned to notice with both Cody and Jim: it wasn't just that
I came to resemble them in so many important aspects; to whatever degree,
to be them as I was defined by each. There was always something a little
extra, a lagniappe.
As they perceived me, they had what they wanted, and a little bit more.
Simple physical proximity was enough to trigger the process, closeness of
bodies and souls carried it through. I discovered that sex speeded it.
Sharing served as an accelerator. And trauma