"Attanasio, A A - Radix 02 - In Other Worlds 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Attanasio A.A)

clever businessman like yourself? She should be thinking of the
Sham-of the Blue Apple, and the lifetime her father gave to this
place. before the Lord called him and his weak liver answered.
What's going to come of all this recent fortune and long hard work
if she goes away? I'm not going to live forever."
"Not the way you drink, Caity. Have the ketchup and mayo
we ordered gotten here yet?"
"They're in the cooler downstairs. I'm too old to stop drinking
now, Carl. I haven't long to go. I can feel it. Old folk are that way.
We know. But I'm not scared now that the Blue Apple has come
around. Forty years Edward and I put into this tavern. And only the
first ten were any good-but that was back when Chelsea was Irish. I
would have sold out when it all changed after the war, but Edward
had been brought up here, you know, and he had his dreams, like
you have yours, only he wasn't near as handy at making them real.
And then Sheelagh was born." She laughed, making a sound like
radio noise. "I was forty-five when she was born. Is she God-sent or
not, I ask you? Edward blamed the devil. No children for twenty-
five years, and then a girl. I think that's what finally killed him, not
the drink. If only he could have lived to meet you and see this: the
house jammed every night-and eating my food, no less. Take off
your glasses."
Carl peered over the rim of his wire glasses as he arranged the
dry goods on the counter for that day's dinner menu.
"Why don't you get contact lenses?" Caitlin asked him. "Those
glasses bend your face and make you look like a cartoon. And brush
back your hair. If you're going to be bald, at least keep what you've
got neat."
Carl was well acquainted with Caitlin's ramblings and
admonitions, and he grinned away her jibes and checked the potato-
and-leek soup she had prepared yesterday far this day's lunch. The
old woman was an excellent cook. During the Forties she had
worked as a sous chef in the Algonquin, and her dishes were savory
and accomplished. She made all of the restaurant's fare with the
help of _a Chinese assistant who came in the afternoon for the
dinner crowd. When Carl saw that the menu for the day was ready,
he patted Caitlin on the shoulder and went out to set up the tables
for lunch.
Caitlin Sweeney watched him go with a throb of heartbruise
that the airy, springstrong scent he trailed only sharpened. She
loved that man with a tenderness learned from a lifetime of hurting.
She recognized the beauty in his gentleness that a younger woman
like her daughter could only see as meekness. Like a lightning rod,
Carl was strong in what he could draw to himselfas he had drawn
more fortune to them in one year than her Edward for all his
brawny good looks had drawn in forty years. Carl had the prize of
luck only God could give. She saw that.- And she saw, too, that
Sheelagh, like herself in her hungry youth, yearned for the luckless
arrogance of beauty. She sighed like the warmth of a dying fire
leaking into the space-cold of night and put her attention on that