"Adam Roberts - Balancing" - читать интересную книгу автора (Adams Robert)

Natalie came through. 'Sorry to bother, Allen,' she said. 'But this came
through from Harvard Registry.' She put the leathery fax paper on the
desk. Lou's business number. Allen stared at it for a moment before
realising what it was.
'Thank you, Natalie.'
And she went out.

The Friday crush on the tube was worse than usual. So many people. Hemming
him in. How could you avoid hurting some of them? Just one or two? From
time to time? Surely the important thing was intention.
Emma was waiting for him when he came in, hurrying along the hall to greet
him, calling out daddy daddy. As he picked her up he thought to himself:
I've been a good man, haven't I? A good father? Would Emma, put in the
celestial dock, accuse him of causing more pain in the world than
pleasure?
'Is your elephant finished now, sweet pea?' he asked her.
'Daddy!' she rebuked him. 'I told you, next week.'
'Oh yes,' he said. 'Next week.' He put her down and her tiny feet pattered
like drizzle as she ran over the floorboards.
Moira was sitting in the front room reading a wedge-sized novel, folding
the covers back over and cracking the spine. 'Late,' she said, without
looking up. There was a glass of wine on the low table in front of her. In
the corner the TV was on, and Emma was settling herself down in front of
it again. Some minimal white environment, animated penguins sliding back
and forth.
'Don't sit so close, Em, love,' he said. 'You'll hurt your eyes.' Were his
daughter's eyes part of the equation too? 'Sorry I'm late, love,' he said,
leaning over Moira. Her lips had the tang of red wine.
'The bottle's open,' she said, going back to her book. 'Kitchen table.'
'Thanks,' he said. 'Oh God, that Mexican account will kill me. You can
tell them I said so, when you deliver the eulogy at my funeral.'
'Mmm,' said Moira.
He went through to the kitchen and filled a wine glass.

: 4 :
It was Saturday morning. He was lying with his eyes wide open, watching
the patterns made by the backlit curtains against the ceiling. The bedside
clock said ten past eight. This was the day; the Devil himself had said
so. He thought to himself: I'll know today whether this has any basis in
reality. But as he sat up he found himself scoffing. Reality?
He wondered whether the Devil would appear in the morning or the
afternoon. Afternoon seemed more the proper time for the languid, slightly
fey gentleman in brown that Allen had imagined meeting. Or not imagined. A
lazy afternoon, in the heat and the dust. But the Devil had first appeared
to him in the morning. Some Mick Jagger figure of elegance, dressed in
sixties' crushed velvet, the Devil Comes in the Morning. Suddenly, with a
cold-splash sense of being suddenly fully awake, Allen remembered that
Satan had appeared to him before in the early morning, before his day of
work, just before eight thirty am. If his three days meant precisely three
days, then he would appear at eight thirty this morning. It was already