"Ron Goulart - Nemo" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goulart Ron)

me to drop by now and then when I'm in America."
"That's okay. But listen, Mr. Swedenberg. Haley and I bought this house
from you three years ago, right after I started working for the Repo
Bureau. I've been thinking maybe you're too sentimental about this place,
too attached to it still."
 Swedenberg dismissed the idea with a slow shake of his head. "By the
way, I hope I didn't scare your friend away. My arrival sent him flying, I'm
afraid."
"What friend?"
Buzz! Buzz!
"And I hope his pictures won't be spoiled."
Buzz! Buzz!
"That's the telephone," reminded the house.
Ted scowled up at the speaker grid. "Stay right there, take more movies,
Mr. Swedenberg. I have a phone call." He ran, skirting the sleep pits, to
the bedroom phone alcove. Sobbing was coming out of there. "Shit,"
muttered Ted, slowing.
The pink-faced old man who showed on the oval pixphone wallscreen
was dressed up as Uncle Sam, except that his shaggy gray beard was stuck
under his nose and not on his chin. He was wiping his eyes on a
star-spangled sleeve.
"Good morning, Mr. Woodruff."
"Would it make you retch to call me Father or Dad or even Pop?"
"Probably, yes. You're not my father, Mr. Woodruff, you're Haley's
father. And your beard's fastened on the wrong place."
"A lot you know about American history and the question of where
Uncle Sam's beard goes." Haley's father was calling from a street-corner
booth. Outside on the early morning Florida street was parked a landtruck
with a huge lollipop of plastic mounted on top. "Where's my little girl?"
"Not here."
"Drove her from the house again with your foul behavior?" Woodruff
removed his stars-and-stripes hat. A plastic bubble of bourbon was
concealed within the hat. He took a long swig.
"Cheers," said Ted.
"Who wouldn't take to drink with his only girl married to a raving
maniac and suffering all the remorse a blighted career can bring?"
"I didn't blight Haley's career. If anybody did it was you."
The bubble didn't get sealed quite tight enough, and when Haley's
father slammed his topper back on, bourbon squirted onto his scalp. "She
had such great potential. Do you know what her 26Q rating was?"
 "Two hundred and forty, you've told me before." By twisting and
hunching slightly he got a glimpse of the lawn. Swedenberg was still out
there. It looked like he was crying, too.
"Where's my little girl?"
"Not home yet, this is one of the nights she works up at the kids'
hospital."
"If Haley was happy with you, she'd stay home nights."
"Perhaps, Pop. Why did you say you had your beard pasted on your
nose?"
"I'm taking out one of the trucks today, helps me keep in touch." The