"Уильям Гибсон. Virtual light (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

a woman or a machine. He touches a key, recording the flight number, says goodnight, and
closes his eyes on the tenuous light sifting from the dark borders of the drapes.

Her white arms enfold him. Her blondness eternal.

He sleeps.

IntenSecure had their wagons detailed every three shifts. They used
this big specialty car wash off Colby; twenty coats of hand-rubbed Wet Honey Sienna and
you didn't let it get too shabby.

That one November evening the Republic of Desire put an end to his
career in armed response, Berry Rydell had arrived there a little early.

He liked the way it smelled inside. They had this pink stuff they
put through the power-washers to get the road film off, and the smell reminded him of a
summer job he'd had in Knoxville, his last year in school. They'd been putting condos into
the shell of this big old Safeway out on Jefferson Davis. The architects wanted the cinder
block walls stripped just this one certain way, mostly gray showing through but some old
pink Safeway paint left in the little dips and crannies. They were from

Memphis and they wore black suits and white cotton shirts. The
shirts had obviously cost more than the suits, or at least as much, and they never wore
ties or undid the top button. Rydell had figured that that was a way for architects to
dress; now he lived in L.A., he knew it was true. He'd overheard one of them explaining to
the foreman that what they were doing was exposing the integrity of the material's passage
through time. He thought that was probably bullshit, but he sort of liked the sound of it
anyway; like what happened to old people on television.

But what it really amounted to was getting most of this









name="2 Cruising with gunhead">2 Cruising with gunhead

shitty old paint off thousands and thousands of square feet of
equally shitty cinder block, and you did it with an oscillating spray-head on the end of a
long stainless handle. If you thought the foreman wasn't looking, you could aim it at
another kid, twist out a thirty-foot rooster tail of stinging rainbow, and wash all his
sunbiock off. Rydell and his friends all wore this Australian stuff that came in serious
colors, so you could see where you had and hadn't put it. Had to get your right distance
on it, though, 'cause up close those heads could take the chrome off a bumper. Rydell and
Buddy Crigger both got fired for doing that, finally, and then they walked across Jeff
Davis to a beer joint and Rydell wound up spending the night with this girl from Key West,