"Nayler, Ray - The Honor System" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nayler Ray)

Sickened, Ellie went back to the tent. Sam was reading by pen-light. She took it away and pulled him on top of her.

Afterwards, she lay beside him, naked and damp, her leg between his, her arms around him, listening to his breathing in her ear. He would die someday. She would be without him.

"What are you thinking?"

"Hmmm?"

He repeated himself.

"I was thinking of that girl. I didn't tell you -- I saw her in the bathroom." She told him the story of what had happened. "If we don't do anything . . ."

"About what?"

"About what's going on over . . ."

"Just what is going on over there?" He tensed against her. She could feel his anger in the dark, coiling in his arms. "What do you know? Kids say lots of things. They say terrible things. They lie to people. They say awful, hurtful things."

Ellie had never heard him talk this way before. He'd never been angry with her.

"Sam, I just meant . . ."

"What? That you want to meddle in someone else's business, because of what you think is going on. Because you don't like what you see?"

He was talking about them -- about her and Sam, and the way that people stared at them, wherever they went. She thought of the women at the pool. About a hundred other times. Sam never talked about it. Now, she realized, he was talking about it, without saying it right out.

"I'm sorry, Sam. You're right."

She felt him relax. His fingertips brushed her back.

"Ellie, I shouldn't have snapped at you. I should never . . ."

She silenced him, the best way she knew how.
* * *
Ellie woke up sweating. The sun was on the tent, superheating the inside. She gasped, fighting for breath.

Sam was gone.

Ellie fumbled her clothes on and wrenched the tent's zipper open. Outside, the air was early-morning cool. Where was Sam?

She walked out onto the gravel path, toward the office.

Jenny's tent was closed. The man was nowhere to be seen. At the other campsites people were morning zombies, shuffling around. Fires had been lit, Coleman stoves set up on the picnic tables. In the bright sun, it seemed to her that Sam was right. What was she doing, assuming such awful things? Couldn't a father or an uncle camp with his little girl?

It was hysteria, that was all. A bad feeling, taken too seriously, blown up into something it was not. Was she unconsciously trying to ruin her vacation with Sam? Her own thoughts were a dark mass to her, water beneath brittle surface. What am I afraid of? Afraid I'm not good enough for him? Afraid I'm using him, somehow -- without knowing it?

She had felt guilty, being so attracted to him at first. Seeing him at the caf, his profile over a book, his hands around a cup of coffee; long dark hands that she had imagined on her face, fingertips on her skin. She had gone over and talked to him, about work, about nothing, about art. He began coming into the caf, sitting at the same table while she worked. She would watch him from behind the counter.

He always wanted to be alone with her. He hated people. He never talked about people, except to say that this or that artist was a genius. But his artists were all dead. He belonged only to her.