"Edward Bryant - The Transfer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bryant Edward)

and certainly I'd never met one, much less talked to any. If my mother had
been along, I'm sure she would have turned and walked twice as fast the
other way, maybe shrieking for police at the same time. I was braver. When
the freakish-looking man said, "Hi," I just kept on walking in the same
measured pace.
He followed in step beside me. "You look awful nice," he said. "Will you
just stop a minute and talk?"
My step faltered and I really looked at him. He was young, perhaps even
younger than I. Blue eyesI remember those well. They were the same deep
blue I sometimes saw in the winter sky above the lake. He wore a
broad-brimmed leather hat and a fringed leather jacket that looked like it
had been sewn at home. His goatee and long hair were blond. The hair made
me feel uneasy, but the clean shine of it somehow triggered me to speak.
"You look like Buffalo Bob"
"Bill," he said, correcting me, apparently unamused.
I laughed. After a moment, so did he.
He told me his name and then spelled "Anderssen." "It's not so remarkable
where I come fromnorthern Minnesotabut at least down here the s's and the
e make me something different. It's groovy."
I blinked. I wanted to ask if Cody really was his first name, but felt too
shy.
At first Cody made all the conversation. He told me about leaving
Minnesota and coming here, of living on the streets for months before
finding a job in a pet store and an apartment he could afford. He talked
about drugs, a topic that scared me. It was the question of control. "And
you?" he finally said.
I talked about growing up in Macomb and hardly ever going to the city, and
how, when I graduated from high school, I went against my parents and
didn't enroll at Western Illinois. The first brave thing I ever did in my
life was to take the bus to Peoria, then on toward Chicago.
My parents had talked so often of my striking out on my own, I thought
that was what they really and truly wanted of me. The conflict made me
sick for days. As ever, I stored up the tension like a battery.
But I ended up in Aurora as a weathergirl at a tiny TV station, and then
immersed myself in the city.
"That's great," Cody said, and then laughed. "You oughta be a hippy too.
You've got the spirit of freedom in you."
No, I didn't, but I didn't say my doubts aloud.
"It's late," I said, looking at my watch. "My lunch hour's gone. I've got
to go back to the office."
"Meet me after work," said Cody. "Please?"
I stared at him. I'd never met anyone at all like this.
After work, in the mob of rush hour, I found him. The next morning, which
was Saturday, I met him again and we went out to the Museum of Science and
Industry and toured the coal mine. That night I accompanied him back to
his apartment and lost my virginity.
And two decades later, I wish I were back in Chicago. In a different bed
than where I lie now.
Two weeks later I moved into Cody's apartment. My original apartment had
been larger, but I was too shy to let him move there. I kept going back to