"John Kessel - The Pure Product" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kessel John)

She looked right through me.

“I take whatever I can get from strangers,” I said. “Because I’m a
stranger, too.”

I guess she liked that. She was different. She sat down and we
chatted for a while. There was something wrong about her imitation of a
seventeen-year-old; I began to wonder whether hookers worked the park.
She crossed her legs and her shorts got tighter. “Where are you from?”
she asked.

“San Francisco. But I’ve just moved here to stay. I have a part interest
in the sporting goods store at the Eastridge Plaza.”

“You live near here?”

“On West 89th.” I had driven down 89th on my way to the bank.

“I live on 89th! We’re neighbors.”

An edge of fear sliced through me. A slip? It was exactly what one of
my own might have said to test me. I took a drink of wine and changed the
subject. “Would you like to visit San Francisco some day?”

She brushed her hair back behind one ear. She pursed her lips,
showing off her fine cheekbones. “Have you got something going?” she
asked, in queerly accented English.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, have you got something going,” she repeated, still with the
accent—the accent of my own time.

I took another sip. “A bottle of wine,” I replied in good Midwestern
1980s.

She wasn’t having any of it. “No artwork, please. I don’t like artwork.”

I had to laugh: my life was devoted to artwork. I had not met anyone
real in a long time. At the beginning I hadn’t wanted to and in the ensuing
years I had given up expecting it. If there’s anything more boring than you
people it’s us people. But that was an old attitude. When she came to me in
KC I was lonely and she was something new.

“Okay,” I said. “It’s not much, but you can come for the ride. Do you
want to?”

She smiled and said yes.

As we walked to my car, she brushed her hip against my leg. I