"Dennis Danvers - Circuit of Heaven" - читать интересную книгу автора (Danvers Dennis)

bathing cap. He pinned her arms and pushed himself into her, hammering away at her. He came in a
matter of minutes and rolled off of her. She opened her hand and there was his address, wadded to a
pulp in her hand. He yanked the cap off her head, and she woke up.

Her heart was racing. Her stomach was in a knot. Her fist was clenched around the sheet. Slowly, she
opened it. There was no slip of paper there. It was just a dream. I’m still me, she thought, still Justine,
twenty years old, in the Bin six weeks—and I’ve never seen a car in the real world except rusted out
junkers, never walked down a city street without feeling the grit of glass under my shoes.

The girl in her dream was named Angelina, and it’d been 2002. She had no idea how she knew that, but
there it was, like a memory. Justine was born in 2061.

In the present, she was in her hotel room with a man’s naked arm across her chest. He wore a fat gold
ring with an onyx pentagon on his middle finger, a heavy gold chain around his wrist. His fingers were fat
and stubby, his nails buffed and polished to a shine. Downy white hair covered his arm, the back of his
hand, like moss. He was sound asleep, his face half-buried in the pillow. He’d said he was a senator, she
remembered. He looked the part—silver hair, strong jaw, square shoulders, just enough crow’s feet to
make him seem wise and fatherly. Old enough to be her father. She couldn’t remember how she’d ended
up in bed with him. I must’ve been tying one on, she thought. Watching him sleep, there was something
she didn’t like about him, though apparently there’d been something she’d liked well enough the night
before.

She looked around the room, moving her head carefully to make sure she didn’t wake him. A narrow
shaft of light, where the curtains weren’t quite drawn, cut across the room. It was a nice room, a tasteful
room, with delicate furniture and a vaseful of jonquils on the dresser. Not the sort of room to wake up in
with a stranger. His clothes and hers, tangled and inside out, were scattered around the rose-colored
carpet. She didn’t remember that either.

She remembered fucking him. She remembered that too clearly, tortured herself with the memory for a
while, thinking, Justine, you’re too damn lonely.

She carefully lifted his arm off her and slid out of bed, placing his arm on her pillow as if it were a sleeping
kitten. She gathered up her clothes and went into the bathroom, locking the door behind her. As she took
a shower she tried to remember the man in her bed. His name was W something—William or Waylon
or—Winston, that was it. She was almost sure. Winston.

But when it came to what kind of person this Winston was, all she could remember was lewd, cartoonish
sex like something out of a porno. God, she thought, that wasn’t me. I must’ve been worse than drunk.

She took a long shower, fiddling with the massage, lathering herself up till she looked like a marshmallow.
She wanted to put off for as long as possible talking to the stranger in her bed. But then, she asked
herself, who else are you going to talk to? She didn’t know anyone in D.C., not a fucking soul. She
rinsed herself off, watching the huge gobs of suds pile up around the drain. She stepped out of the
shower, wiped the steamed-up mirror with the side of her arm, and grimaced at herself, thinking, I don’t
even know the guy I just fucked.

But then, she thought as she dried off, if I wasn’t myself, maybe he wasn’t himself either. By the time
she’d finished blow-drying her hair, she’d decided to at least give the guy a chance. Maybe have
breakfast with someone for a change. She shut off the dryer and stuck it into its little cubby hole. The
whine of the thing echoing off the tiles still rang in her ears. She picked up the wad of clothes and