"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Courting Rites" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

I didn’t quite hear the music, although I felt it, rollicking through me. For a
moment, the old man’s face lit up, and I saw him, strong and young, a baby girl on
his shoulder, a beautiful woman beside him. Then the image faded, and with it, the
sparkle in his eye. Silas finished playing, swung the banjo back into position, and
reached for the old man’s face.
Mariah pushed him aside, knelt beside her father. Silas stumbled backward,
then stared at her for a moment, and I saw longing so intense that it burned me.
What was it like to be outside time, human but not human, loving, but unlovable? I
hoped I would never know.
He saw me watching him. Color touched his cheeks. “Come on,” he said.
We walked into the corridor. People flowed around us like water around a
rock.
“You lied to me, you know,” I said. “You were there when my father died.”
He stopped near the elevator. “The first time you summoned me was in that
convenience store.”
“I was courting you.”
He smiled a little, but the smile was sad. I liked his beauty. I liked his
compassion. I liked him. “I’m not the kind of lover you want,” he said. “I’ll never
leave you, but I’ll never make you happy.”
He reached into his pocket, pulled out an envelope and handed it to me. Then
he leaned forward and kissed my forehead. “Silas,” I said—but he disappeared. One
moment there, one moment gone. A man who was lonelier than I could ever be.
I stood there for a while, then I remembered to pocket the envelope. When I
got downstairs, I would donate the money to the hospice center. They had to have
one, every hospital did, for cancer care for families and patients. Then I would go to
the desert and stare at the greenery.
The dream would never come again. Nor would he ever have to admonish me
anymore.
The courtship had ended. We were, and we would remain, just good friends.