"Lisa Goldstein - The Narcissus Plague" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goldstein Lisa)

Gary was in his cubicle. So were a number of other people, all of them
sitting around his desk and watching him. "I like to be noticed," Gary was
saying. "I love it when people pay attention to me. That's what I live
for. I have to have someone listening to me and watching me at every
minute ..."
Almost everyone was trying not to laugh. "One day, I remember, we were
sitting around and talking about the president," Gary was saying. "So I
started talking about the president too, and then the president's brother,
and then my own brother, and finally I got to my favorite topic, myself.
Another time I thought that Thomas was getting too much attention, so I
went down two floors and had him paged from a pay phone. Then I went back
to work -- it was much easier to talk about myself after he'd gone."
One of the more enterprising reporters on the paper had turned on his tape
recorder. If Dr. Clark had indeed found a cure for the virus Gary was
going to have a very hard time living this one down.
"How long are you going to let him go on like that?" I whispered to
Thomas.
"Oh, I don't know," he said. He felt to make sure his mask and gloves were
in place. "It's almost lunchtime -- probably we'll send him home then."
I left Gary's cubicle and went back to my desk. Before I could start on
the story about Dr. Clark my friend Barbara knocked on my partition and
sat in the room's other chair. "Hi, how are you?" she said.
"Fine. How was Washington?"
"You won't believe it," she said. "The pilot on the flight back got the
plague. There we all were, looking out the window or reading our in-flight
magazines, and the next minute this guy comes over the intercom to tell us
that his fingers are nearly all the same length. On and on -- you wouldn't
believe how much mileage this guy could get from his hands. Every so often
you'd hear a scuffle in the cockpit, where the co-pilot was trying to gain
control of the intercom, but the pilot held on grimly all the way home."
She sighed. "For three and a half hours. Talk about a captive audience."
"What happened when you landed?"
"Oh, he landed fine. He wasn't that far gone. There was a stretcher
waiting for him at the landing gate -- I guess he'd bored the traffic
controllers too."
"Listen," I said. "I just interviewed a doctor who says she found a cure
for the plague."
"Really? Do you think she's on the level?"
"God, I hope so," I said.

I visited Mark after work. I'm not sure why I still see him -- I guess I
do it out of respect for the person he once was, for the memories I have
of our times together.
Mark's mother let me in. Her eyes looked tired over her oxygen mask. "He's
in his room," she said, pointing with a gloved hand.
I thanked her and went down the hallway to Mark's old room. He was staring
out the window with his back to me, and I stood there a while and watched
him. He was tall and thin, with straight brown hair that shone a deep red
in the light. For a moment I desired him as much as I ever had before he
became ill. Maybe this time, I thought, he would turn and smile at me,