"Perry, Steve - JustAsk" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Steven)

"It's yellow again."

"Ah."

"'Ah?' All you can say is 'Ah?'"

She looked back at her book. "Well. What are you going to do now?"

"Do? Do? Nothing right this minute. In the morning, however, I am going to
Sears, that's what I'm going to do. We'll just see about this."

The salesman at Sears, a barely post-pimple boy of maybe twenty, had never heard
of anything like it before. Nor had he heard much of anything about anything
before, Sam reasoned.

"Uh, maybe I should, like, you know, let you, like, uh, talk to my manager?"

Never had a shotgun when you needed one. "Uh, yeah, why, like, don't you, uh, do
that?"

America was doomed. When this kid's generation took over, they'd probably feed
all the old folks to the lions. If Generation-Z lived that long, Sam would
probably be glad to hurl himself into the cage with the big cats. Not, "You want
fries with that?" but, "Fries? What are fries?" Even pictures on the buttons
wouldn't be enough. Doomed.

The manager, a woman of sixty with hair dyed the color of a palomino horse's
mane and thirty pounds too much weight, all of it below her waist, shook her
head. She'd never heard anything like it, either. "What exactly is it you want
us to do, Mr. -- ah -- ?"

"Sewall. Sam Sewall. The paint is guaranteed for fifteen years, isn't it?"

"Well, yes . . ."

"Then if it evaporates off in five minutes, something is wrong with it. I want
it replaced."

"Replaced."

"Right. I'll swap you my twelve gallons of unopened paint for twelve new
gallons."

She shrugged. "All right. I guess we can do that."

"Some freak chemical thing?" Hathorne said.

"Yep," Sam said.

"Must be pretty rare."