"Folsom, Allan - The Day After Tomorrow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Folsom Allan)

"boyfriend?" Paul teased-and then be invited to dinner or tea or
whatever and have to make excuses. Osborn checked them into the
Connaught, one of the grandest, smallest, most guarded, and "English" of
all the London hostelries.

they needn't have bothered. Saturday evening was Ambassadors Theatre
and a revival of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, followed by dinner at The Ivy
across the street, a hand-in-hand stroll through the theater district,
broken by several giggly champagne breaks at pubs along the way, and
finally a long, circuitous taxi ride back to the hotel during which they
challenged each other, in sensuous and conspiratorial whispers, to make
love without the driver's knowledge. And did. Or thought they did. The
rest of their thirty-six-hour stay in London was spent in bed. And it
was neither because of sex or by choice. First Paul, and very shortly
afterward, Vera, came down with either food poisoning or a violent
attack of the flu. All they could hope for was that it was the
twenty-four-hour kind. Which it turned out to be. And by the time
Monday morning came and they took a cab to Victoria Station, both,
though a little weak and shaky, were nearly one himdreci )ercent
recovered.

"Hell of a way to spend a weekend in London," he said as he held her arm
and they walked toward her train.

Looking at him, she smiled. "In sickness and in health."

Later, she wondered why she'd said it, because she knew she'd put
meaning into the words. It was an inflection in her voice that just
came out. She had been trying to make it light and funny but she knew
it hadn't sounded like that. Whether she meant it or not she didn't
know, and she didn't want to think about it. All she remembered
afterward was Paul taking her into his arms and kissing her. It was a
kiss she would remember all her life, rich and exciting, yet at the same
time filled with a strength and self-confidence she'd never before
experienced with any man.

She remembered watching him from her compartment window as her train
pulled out. Standing there in the massive station, surrounded by trains
and tracks and people. Arms folded over his chest, staring after her
with a sad, bewildered smile, and with every click of the wheels,
growing smaller and smaller, until, at last, she was olit ,f the station
and could see him no more.

Paul Osborn had left her at 7:30 Monday morning, ",Ctober 3. Two and a
half hours later he was in the duty free shop at Heathrow Airport,
killing time before boarding his twelve-hour flight back to lose
Angeles.

He was looking at T-shirts and coffee mugs and frilly towels with the
London subway system printed on them when he realized he was thinking of