"Big U, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stephenson Neal)

single, and resolved never to share her private space again; this
double made her very angry. In the end, though, she lucked out. Her
would-be roommate had only taken the space as a front, to fake out
her pay-rents, and was actually living in A Tower with her
boyfriend. Thus Sarah did not have to live four feet away from some
bopper who would suffer an emotional crisis every week and explore
the standard uses of sex and drugs and rock-and-roll in noisy exper-
imental binges on the other side of the room.
Sarah's problem now was to redecorate what looked like the
inside of a water closet. The cinderblock walls were painted
chocolate brown and absorbed most light, shedding only the garish
parts of the spectrum. The shattered tile floor was gray and felt
sticky no matter how hard she scrubbed. On each side of the
perfectly symmetrical room, long fluorescent light fixtures were
bolted to the walls over the beds, making a harsh light nearby but
elsewhere only a dull greenish glow. After some hasty and low-
budget efforts at making it decent, Sarah threw herself into other
activities and resigned herself to another year of ugliness.
On Wednesday of the term's second week there was a wing
meeting. American Megaversity's recruitment propaganda tried to
make it look as though the wings did everything as a jolly group, but
this had not been true on any of Sarah's previous wings. This place
was different
When she had dragged her duffel bags through the stairwell
door on that first afternoon, a trio of well-groomed junior matrons
had risen from a lace-covered card table in the lobby, helped her
with the luggage, pinned a pink carnation on her sweaty T-shirt and
welcomed her to "our wing." Under her pillow she had found a
"starter kit" comprising a small teddy bear named Bobo, a white
candle, a GOLLYWHATAFACE-brand PERSONAL COLOUR
SAMPLER PACQUET, a sack of lemon drops, a red garter, six
stick-on nametags with SARA written on them, a questionnaire and
a small calligraphied Xeroxed note inviting her to the wing meeting.
All had been wrapped in flowery pastel wrapping paper and cutely
beribboned.
Most of it she had snarlingly punted into the nether parts of her
closet. The wing meeting, however, was quasi-political, and hence
she ought to show up. A quarter of an hour early, she pulled on a
peasant blouse over presentable jeans and walked barefoot down the
hall to the study lounge by the elevator lobby.
She was almost the last to arrive. She was also the only one not
in a bathrobe, which was so queer that she almost feared she was
having one of those LSD flashbacks people always warn you about.
Her donut tasted like a donut, though, and all seemed normal
otherwise, so it was reality— albeit a strange and distant branch
thereof.
Obviously they had not all been bathing, because their hair was
dry and their makeup fresh. There were terry robes, silk robes,
Winnie-the-Pooh robes, long plush robes, plain velvety robes,
designer robes, kimonos and even a few night-shirts on the cute and