"Thomas Easton - Organic Future 02 - Greenhouse" - читать интересную книгу автора (Easton Thomas A)

discovered the honey's charms.

So he shouldn't just wait. He should do something. He looked at his watch.
Only twenty minutes had passed since he had entered the building. His stomach
rumbled. He would, he thought, wait just a little longer. While he
waited...The refrigerator was an old model, and while it kept food cold
enough, its memory was failing. Once, long before Tom and Muffy had moved into
the apartment, it had kept track of its contents and automatically printed out
shopping lists. Now, when he touched its handle, it muttered lists of foods
Tom and Muffy could not afford and of brand-names no one had seen in many
years. "Haagen-Daaz," it said. "Lobster tails. Sara Lee. Prime rib."

Modern food supposedly tasted much the same, though the sources had
changed practically beyond all recognition. He thought of pie plants and
sammitch bushes and broccoli trees and hamberries. Lobster could still be had,
for a price, but for most people...The potster salad in the leftover container
before him was made from a hybrid of potato and lobster, and if it tasted much
like the latter, it looked and grew like the former.

He forced himself to eat the salad before he reached for the phone again.
Then, while he was waiting for the police to arrive, he paced. He held Randy
in his arms, petting the bristly fur, and he remembered. He and Freddy had
been on stage for the first time in their lives, singing dirty songs to warm
Muffy's audience up for her. There had been boozy cheers and catcalls when
they had finished, and then someone had patted his shoulder and murmured,
"Good job, guys." The voice was soft, feminine, but when he turned, no one was
there.

"Watch the stage, dummy," Freddy had told him.

In the glare of the spot, he had seen: black hair, glistening in the
light, falling halfway down a bare back: a mass of black fur cradled in a bare
arm: a profile undimmed by cloth of any kind. He had gasped in unison with the
collective sigh of the nightclub's patrons.

He had met her later, and later still she had joined him for breakfast in
the nightclub's kitchen. They had become friends. She had introduced him to
the art museum where Freddy now lived. And then his bud had begun to swell and
itch. It had grown painful, and one morning he had been unable to get out of
bed.

She had come to him then. She had helped him unfurl his leaves and open
his bud.

They had been inseparable ever since. Until now.

The tears came. He let Randy climb upon his shoulder to taste them.

He wished that she had never tasted honeysuckle wine.