"Leslie What - Love Me" - читать интересную книгу автора (What Leslie)

communicate with the blink of an eye. If there's a disclaimer, I can't read it; the Russian manual is Greek
to me.

Yelena points to the FAQ list. She blinks, three times hard and fast, and I stare into her eyes and try to
interpret her thoughts. "A union waits, frozen in hellish Siberia."

I suspect there's something missing.

I blink three times, just like she did, ask, "What's for dinner?" Her answer is to roll the FAQ into a tube
and swat me on the side of the head.

I try again, "Honey," I say. "Let's go home. I'm hungry." Then I get wise to what she's saying. "If you'd
rather not cook, we can grab a bowl of borscht downstairs."

Her words come so fast and furious that no machine can decipher them. I've said something wrong. Or
maybe the device has made a mess of the translation. I'll never know for sure. Yelena heads for
Nystroya's front door. I follow her out. In the morning, I wake up, knock on her bedroom door. "Did
you make breakfast?" I ask, not because I want her to, but just so's I won't duplicate her efforts.

"You bacon!" she says.

"We have bacon?" I ask. She doesn't do the shopping anymore, she doesn't do anything. She's turned
out really different from the woman I fell in love with from the mail-order brides in the brochure.

"Stuff the turkey," she says.

I figure she's confused, because Thanksgiving isn't for another few weeks. We keep trying, at least I do,
another few months. Things get worse. I can't tell if Yelena understands me, but I sure as heck don't
understand her. The translator doesn't help. For the first time I start to doubt she loves me. Maybe she's
a lesbian. That would explain things. Finally, she packs her bags, leaves. She won't return my calls. The
bank repossess my car. I have to let go of cable. And now the letter from her lawyer. I'm sick over the
whole thing. I can't eat. I can't sleep. My hair falls out in patches. My boss fires me. It's this device: it
doesn't work. I have to explain to her, tell her I still love her, that we should start all over.

So I wait. And wait. Until I can't wait anymore. I polish off the champagne and fall asleep. Boy, do I ever
conk out. I must not hear Yelena come in, must not hear her gasp to see me sitting on her couch. Maybe
she doesn't recognize me. I've lost twenty pounds and haven't shaved in a week. "You've come home," I
say, lifting the bottle while I try to think up a toast.

Something's wrong. She's screaming. All this trouble I've gone through on her account and she still
doesn't understand me. I wave the bottle around, trying to get her to calm down and find myself staring
down the nostrils of a pearl-handled pistol. It looks like a toy. I start to laugh because I bought her that
gun. "You wanna play?" I ask, thinking this is another game, like Charades, only with bullets instead of
words.

She's so serious, aiming right at my head. I sober up quick. I blink, five times, hard. "Don't shoot," I say.
I can't tell if my message gets through, or if she understands me loud and clear and plans to pull the
trigger anyway.