"Carol Emshwiller - Day at the Beach" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emshwiller Carol)

beach. I forget a lot of things, but I remem-ber that."

"If I were you, I just wouldn't think about it." Ben's empty eyes finally
focused on the youth chair and he turned then to the open window behind
him and yelled, "Littleboy, Littleboy," making the sound run together all
L's and Y. "Hey, it's breakfast, Boy," and under his breath he said, "He
won't come."

"But I do think about it. I remember hot dogs and clam chowder and
how cool it was days like this. I don't sup-pose I even have a bathing suit
around any more."

"It wouldn't be like it used to be."

"Oh, the sea's the same. That's one thing sure. I won-der if the
boardwalk's still there."

"Hah," he said. "I don't have to see it to know it's all gone for firewood.
It's been four winters now."

She sat down, put her elbows on the table and stared at her bowl.
"Oatmeal," she said, putting in that one word everything she felt about the
beach and wanting to go there.

"It's not that I don't want to do better for you," Ben said. He touched
her arm with the tips of his fingers for just a moment. "I wish I could. And
I wish I could have hung on to that corned beef hash last time, but it was
heavy and I had to run and there was a fight on the train and I lost the
sugar too. I wonder which bastard has it now."

"I know how hard you try, Ben. I do. It's just sometimes everything
comes on you at once, especially when it's a Saturday like this. Having to
get water way down the block and that only when there's electricity to run
the pump, and this oatmeal; sometimes it's just once too often, and then,
most of all, you commuting in all that danger to get food."

"I make out. I'm not the smallest one on that train."

"God, I think that everyday. Thank God, I say to myself, or where would
we be now. Dead of starvation that's where."

She watched him leaning low over his bowl, pushing his lips out and
making a sucking sound. Even now she was still surprised to see how long
and naked his skull arched, and she had an impulse, seeing it there so bare
and ugly and thinking of the commuting, to cover it gently with her two
hands, to cup it and make her hands do for his hair; but she only
smoothed at her kerchief again to make sure it covered her own baldness.

"Is it living, though? Is it living, staying home all the time, hiding like,
in this house? Maybe it's the rest of them, the dead ones, that are lucky.