"Henry Kuttner - Year Day UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

2. YEAR DAY

IRENE CAME BACK on Year Day. It's a lost day for those of us who were born before 1980. The calendar day that comes between the end of the old year and the start of the new, the day when the lid's off. New York was noisy. Beamed commercials followed me right along, even when I swung over onto the fast roadway. I'd forgotten my earplugs, too.

Irene's voice spoke to me out of the little round grid above the windshield. It was funny how clearly I could hear it, even above all the noise.

'Bill,' the voice said. 'Where are you, Bill?'

It had been six years since I heard the voice. For a minute everything else blanked out and it was as if I were driving along in silence, hearing nothing but Irene. Then I all but sidesjviped a police car and the noise, the commercials, the tumult were normal again.

'Let me in, Bill,' Irene's voice said out of the little grid. For a second I almost thought I could. Her voice sounded so small and clear I thought I could reach up my hand and open the grid and take her down, tiny and perfect in my palm, standing there with her high heels denting my hand like little needles. Year Day gives me ideas like that. Anything goes.

I pulled myself together. 'Hello, Irene.' My voice was perfectly calm. 'I'm on my way home. Be there in fifteen minutes. The super will let you in.'

'I'll wait Bill,' the small voice told me.

Then I heard the faraway click of the mike on my apartment door, and I was alone in the car again, feeling strange, feeling afraid, not sure if I wanted to see her, but automatically pulling into the high-speed lane so I could get home quicker.

New York is noisy all the time. On Year Day the pace doubles. Everybody off work, out for a good time, in a spending mood if they ever are. The commercials went crazy. The air bounced and shivered with them. Once or twice the roadway passed through an area lined with special mikes and amplifiers to pick up sound and send out reactions enough out of phase to add up to silence. There were a couple of five-minute drifts like that, like driving in a dream after all the noise, but every minute on the minute a caressing voice told me, 'This silence is coming to you by courtesy of Paradise Homes. Freddi Lester speaking.'

I don't know if Freddi Lester exists. Maybe he's a filmstrip composite. Maybe he isn't. Certainly he's too perfect to be real.

A lot of men bleach their hair now and wear it in curls over the forehead, like Freddi. I've seen his face, projected ten feet high, sliding along the sides of buildings on the street in a circle of light, gliding and molding itself to every projection, and women reaching up to touch it as if it were real. 'Breakfast time with Freddi. Hypnolearn while you sleep—with Freddi's voice. Buy into Paradise Homes.' Yeah.

The roadway rushed out of a silent zone and the blare and roar of Manhattan hit me. BUY—BUY—BUY! over and over again, in a million different ways, with light and sound and rhythm.

She stood up when I came in. She didn't say anything. She was wearing her hat a new way, and her make-up was different, but I'd have known her anywhere, in a fog, in pitch dark, with my eyes shut. Then she smiled, and I saw that the six years had maybe changed her a little after all, and I hesitated for a second, feeling afraid again. I remembered how right after our divorce a TV call had come from a woman made up to look exactly like Irene. She wanted to sell me advertising insurance.

But today, on this day that doesn't really exist, it didn't matter. Only cash sales are legal on Year Day, anyhow. Of course there aren't any laws to protect a man against the thing I was afraid of, but that wouldn't mean much to Irene. It never had. I doubt if she ever quite grasped the principle that I am real. Not basically, essentially grasped it. Irene is a product of her world. And so, of course, am I.

'This is going to be a tough conversation to start,' I said.

'Does today count?' she asked.

'Maybe it does,' I said. I went over to the server. 'Drinlt?'

'Seven-Twelve-Jay,' she told me, and I dialed it. A pink drink came out. I dialed myself a Scotch and soda. • 'Where have you been?' I asked her. 'Happy?'

'I've been—somewhere. I think I've learned some things. Yes, very happy. Are you?'

I took a quick drink. 'Oh, sure. Happy as a lark. Happy as Freddi Lester.'

She smiled faintly and sipped the pink drink. 'You used to be jealous of Jerome Foret, when he had the Lester spot,' she said. 'You used to wear a Foret double part in your hair, remember?'

'I learn,' I said. 'You notice—no bleach? No curls? I'm not imitating anybody now. You used to be jealous too. I think you're wearing a Niobe Gai hair job.'

She shrugged. 'It was easier than an argument with the hairdresser. Maybe I thought you'd like it. Do you?'

'I like it on you. I try not to look at Niobe Gai. Or Freddi Lester.'