"Michael Scott Rohan - Chase the Morning" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rohan Michael Scott)

up contracts - then today I hit one lucky streak a^d suddenly you're flagging
me down! They're all right, B*rry- Don't worry about it.'
\\e plucked a few more petals and ran a hand over his greying yellow
curls. 'If you're really happy about
them -'
'I'rn happy. Dave's done his usual great job, and Clare too. And you've been
through them yourself, or you wouldn't be sitting here asking! Go on, Mr
Managing Director, sir, get your pinstriped arse off my desk! I'm happy!'
But I wasn't. Not about the contracts I'd processed; about those I was
confident. I might be twenty years younger than Barry, but I knew my job. I
just wasn't enjoying it as much as usual. I hadn't wanted to go into every
twist and turn of the business behind each bit of shipping, the way I normally
did; I'd missed the old urge to linger and learn about every commodity we
shipped, from foodstuffs to fine arts, an urge that had picked me up a lot of
very useful background knowledge. I was suddenly more impatient of the whole
sticky web of formalities, anxious to be rid of it. And Barry, being the canny
businessman he was, had scented something of that. But as well as being a boss
you could joke with, he was also sensible enough not to harass his staff. 'All
right, my precocious infant! I'll go polish Bill Rouse's desk instead, see if
Accounts can catch the speed bug too and push these through in record time.
Probably kill all our regular clients - the shock, you know. Er - I'd suggest
you push off home straightaway and rest that arm, but if you can hang on
another half-hour or so - just in case anything crops up - you know how it is
...'
'Sure. No problem, Barry.' I wouldn't have gone home, anyway; something
told me I wouldn't be any happier there than here. I was getting fed up with
this haunting half-memory that trailed dissatisfaction shadow-fashion at my
heels. I'd had a hellish, frightening time last night; serve me right for
meddling with low-life. But the more I tried to think about it, the less I
could remember - hardly anything now, anything clear. Faces and places were
nameless blurs. As if that haze was like a conjuror's veil, lifting to reveal
emptiness; as if I really had dreamed the whole thing up, from scratch. So
then why was it turning my own ordinary life upside down, my own carefully
tailored slimfit Armani existence - the life I knew I could handle?
I badly wanted time to settle down and think - to remember, so I could
comfortably forget. But here was Clare, bringing me one more cup of sugary
coffee and hovering distractingly again. As a distraction she had natural
advantages. Normally I never let them bother me; I made a point of treating
her as the competent secretary she was and not as some brainless dolly. Not
that she looked like one, exactly;- if she fitted any stereotype, it might
have been a milkmaid in a butter commercial. Her hair and eyes set you
thinking of cornfields and summer skies, and the rest went with them, her
slightly blunt, sensual features, all cream and freckles, her slender but
heavy-breasted shape, her unselfconscious charm, bubbly but sincere. Most of
the time I enjoyed it without letting it get to me, though when you are trying
to think hard about something - or even harder not to - that hair on the back
of your neck, that breast negligently brushing your shoulder could be damnably
irritating. Now and again, naturally, it kindled fantasies, but I wasn't
stupid enough to muddy office waters, chasing a casual affair. And what other
kind made sense?