"Neal Stephenson & J. Frederick George - The Cobweb" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

he was even taller, and he was a boy, and he was with his friends, tough Nishnabotna boys who worked
throwing hay bales and pig corpses. He was safe. He reached out and grabbed her ass.

He blinked as Desiree's long black braid snapped across his face, whipped around by tremendous
centrifugal force.

She was in violent motion; his hand was empty before the pleasing sensation had even traveled up his arm
to his brain.

A moment later she was behind him and his arm had been wrenched up behind his back, bent like a
hairpin. Desiree shoved him face first across the breezeway and gave his arm a final twist. He opened his
mouth to holler.

The sound was muffled by a chunk of steel window frame that went directly against his tongue. The frame
was not insulated. It was January. Desiree let him go but the window frame didn't. His tongue, and about
fifty percent of his lips' surface area, remained flash-frozen in place, as if the window frame had been
coated with Krazy Glue.

Her girlfriend held her place in line. Desiree returned, hitching her jeans back around.

“My name's Desiree," she said. Desiree had been in this country since the age of five weeks, but Clyde
still imagined she spoke with a haughty crisp accent like the models in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit
video.

“Aaah," the boy from Nishnabotna said, swiveling his eyes way around in their sockets.

“Desiree Dhont," she said.

“Aaaaaaaaghhh!" the boy said, and began to struggle.

“Darius ain't here--yet. He's parking the truck."

Clyde decided not to stick around and watch the kid rip his own tongue off the window frame. He had a
lot to think about now, and the Injuns–Little Twisters game was not the place to do it. Better, and much
more his style, to walk around aimlessly in the blinding cold. What he had just witnessed was very
important. He was going to have to do a lot of thinking about it.

He knew from that moment on that Desiree was the woman for him and that he was the man for Desiree
and that one day they would get married and have a family. Actually getting introduced to her, getting her
to fall in love with him, and all of that stuff were just details.

The details ended up taking about fourteen years to sort themselves out. Things got off to a false start the
next year when Clyde seemed to spend about half his life wrestling Dick Dhont, younger brother of
Darius. In any other municipality in the world Clyde would have been the champion of his weight class. In
any other state he would have been state champion, and in any other country he would have had a fair
shot at the Olympic team. At Wapsipinicon High he was a perpetual loser and object of merciless
derision. The only way for him to move upward in life was to defeat Dick on the mat, which he tried to
do once a week. On two occasions he actually won, only to be beaten by Dick the following week.
Clyde and Dick got to know each other a lot more intimately than many married couples. Naturally he
hoped that this would lead to a relationship with Desiree. It did; but the relationship was distant and