"S. P. Somtow - Absent Thee From Felicity Awhile.." - читать интересную книгу автора (Somtow S. P)

Hah! Fat lot you know.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
All in good time. But it’s almost 8 o’clock. Hold on, you’ll be dislocated
back to yesterday in a few seconds. You’re pretty lucky, you know; in some
parts of the world the two hours’ grace comes at some ridiculous time and
nobody ever gets up.
“Goodbye.”
Goodbye.
I woke up around 11 o’clock. Gail stirred uneasily. We made
love mechanically, like machines, with living sheets of light, only a
few microns thick, darting between us, weaving delicately transient
patterns in the air, and I felt hollow, transparent, empty.




4
 I met Amy Schechter in Grand Central Station, coming out of
the autumn night into a biting blizzard of a winter morning.
We were both standing at a doughnut stand. I looked at her,
helpless, frail, as she stared into a cup of cold coffee. I had seen her
before, but this morning there were just the two of us. She
suddenly looked up at me. Her eyes were brown and lost.
“Hi. Amy.”
“John.”
A pause, full of noisome buzzing, fell between us.
For a while, I watched the breath-haze form and dissipate
about her face, wanting to make conversation, but I couldn’t think
what to say.
“Will you talk to me? Nobody ever does, they always back off,
as if they knew.”
“Okay.”
“I’ve been standing here for five years, waiting for my train.
Sometimes I come an hour or so before 8 o’clock, you know, just
to stand around. There’s nothing for me at where I’m staying.” Her
voice was really small, hard to hear against the buzzing.
“Where are you going?”
“Oh, Havertown, Pennsylvania. You’ve never heard of it.” I
hadn’t. “It’s sort of a suburb of Philadelphia,” she added helpfully.
“My folks live there.”
“Buy you a doughnut?”
“You must be joking!” She laughed quickly and stopped
herself, then cast her eyes down as though scrutinizing a
hypothetical insect in her styrofoam cup. Then she turned her back
on me, hugging her shaggy old coat to her thin body, and crumpled
the cup firmly and threw it into the garbage.
“Wait, come back! We’ve got an hour and a half, you know,
before you have to leave—”
“Oh, so it’s score and run? Nothing doing, friend.”