"Steven Gould - Jumper" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gould Stephen Jay)

jumped to the Stanville Library.



There was a couch with a coffee table in Periodicals that was away from the windows and had
one of the lights they left on above it. That's where I ate my sandwiches, feet propped up, chewing
and staring off into the dark corners. When I was done eating I washed three ibuprofen down at the
water fountain, then used the bathroom.

It was a relief not having to worry about someone crashing through the door. I soaked a few
gauze pads with hydrogen peroxide and dabbed at the cut on the back of my head. It stung more than
the time before and the pad came away with fresh blood. I winced, but cleaned it as best I could. I
didn't want to end up in a hospital with an infection.

I bagged the ibuprofen, gauze, and peroxide, then flushed the used gauze down the toilet. I
jumped, then, back to my hotel room in Brooklyn.

My head hurt and I was tired, but sleep was the last thing in the world on my mind.

It was time to see what I could do.
 THREE
In Washington Square Park I appeared before a bench that I'd sat upon two days previously.
There was a man lying on it, shaking from the cold. He had newspapers tucked around his legs and
his fists knotted in the collar of a dirty suit jacket, pulling it close around his neck. He opened his eyes,
saw me, and screamed.

I blinked and took a step away from the bench. He sat up, grabbing for his newspapers before
they blew away in the light breeze. He stared at me, wild-eyed, still shivering.

I jumped back to the hotel room in Brooklyn and took the blanket from the bed, then jumped
back to the park.

He screamed again when I appeared, shrinking back onto the bench. "Leave me alone. Leave
me alone. Leave me alone." He repeated it over and over again.

Moving slowly, I put the blanket on the other end of his bench, then walked away down the
walk to MacDougal Street. When I'd walked fifty feet or so, I looked back at the bench. He'd picked
up the blanket and wrapped it around himself, but he wasn't lying down yet. I wondered if someone
was going to steal it from him before morning.

As I neared the street, two men, dark figures silhouetted by the streetlights, blocked my path.

I looked over my shoulder so I wouldn't be taken by surprise again.

"Give us your wallet and your watch." There was the gleam of a knife in the streetlight; the other
man hefted a length of something heavy and hard.

"Too late," I said. And jumped.