"c322" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burt Andrew - Noontide Night)
NOONTIDE NIGHT - Chapter 32.2
Chapter 32.2
3:20 P.M., Tuesday, March 7, 2000
Agate, Colorado
Nate shoveled the debris from his family room into a
wheelbarrow. He figured the shovel would scratch the hardwood
floor, but no worse than it was already. He'd have to refinish it
before he sold the place. What the hell. That seemed so far off;
"once things are normal again" had the same spiderwebbed feel as
"when I'm old." He didn't know exactly why he was cleaning up.
He supposed he'd tacitly decided he wasn't returning to Halifax.
The CyberCorps would have to catch up with him in a few years,
if they cared. He gashed the floor again with the shovel. What the
hell.
He shoveled his life with Amber out as well. The globe
paperweight she'd given him—scoop—the skinny book of zen
koans—lift—the CD of Celtic music—dump. When this load was
full he pushed the wheelbarrow out back to the trash heap, near
the frozen body. As he tipped it forward, two years of his life slid
with it. The paisley tie Amber had given him just this past
Christmas slithered out last onto the pile.
Mamie Smith's silky voice consoled him with her "If You Don't
Want Me Blues." He'd turned up the volume so anyone within a
half mile could probably hear the '20s jazz.
In fact, when he saw the steel blue minivan cruising down his
private road, he thought it must be one of the neighbors come to
complain. Although most of them drove beefy trucks. He watched
from inside while it pulled up. He scowled when its lone occupant
got out.
Oh great, Nate thought. Soccer Mom.
Or worse. As he spied on his visitor, he saw her lift a .38 from
her purse and check it, before sliding it back in. Psycho Soccer
Mom.
He met her at the door. From here he could see the license
plates were from California. Puzzled, he opened the door before
she knocked.
"Oh. Hi," she said, startled, with a hint of Australian accent.
"I'm Desiree Hyland, and I got your address from—"
"Did you say Hyland?"
"Yes, I got your address from—"
"You know a Morgan Hyland?"
"He's my husband."
"Holy matrimony, Batman!" Nate stepped out of the way.
"Come in, come in! I'm sorry the place is a mess, but— Oh, I'm
Nate Zamora, by the way, I worked with your husband." He
uprighted the kitchen table and a couple chairs. "Here, have a
seat. I'm not sure what I can offer you. I hadn't expected visitors,
and I've, ah, been pretty busy cleaning up. Inventorying the pop
wasn't first on my... What's wrong?"
She was staring at him oddly.
"I really didn't expect to find you here. Have they released the
drafted programmers?"
"Oh, I, uh..." How could he admit to having gone Mitnick?
He had no idea what kind of person she was. What if she pulled
out that gun and marched him to the nearest CC office? "Are you
sure you don't want something, I—"
She began digging in her purse. Oh, this is it, Nate thought.
She's going to pull the g—
Water bottle. "I've got my own, thanks," she said. She twisted
off the cap and held the bottle out. "If you've got a glass I'll split
it with you."
Nate sat down, relieved. "No, no thanks. Why I'm here.
Yeah. Umm..." And he spilled his whole story. Going AWOL,
stealing the Land Rover, the drive in. Right down to the moment
before she drove up, sweeping Amber from his life.
She sat silently, looking perturbed. Maybe full disclosure
hadn't been such a good idea.
"What you're saying is, you ran away from the CyberCorps to
look for your girlfriend?"
She sounded disapproving. Nate didn't have to defend his
actions. He'd carefully considered them at each moment. How
dare she question him. He felt himself getting defensive. "Look,
I did what I had to do. You have to decide what's best for yourself.
I had to leave, and if that meant bypassing a little CyberCorps rule
or two, that's too bad." She wasn't looking like she bought this.
Well, okay, miss high horse; try this on for size. "It's no different
in concept than your husband going AWOL to tell you about the
leap year bug, now is it? Or didn't he tell you he was AWOL?" At
least at the time he'd believed it was no different. Amber's words
about his selfishness were working their way under his skin.
She blinked uncomprehendingly. "Leap year bug?"
Nate was on a roll. He'd reached the moral high ground, he
could hear it in her voice. Victory! "The leap year bug that was
going to kill some hospital generator. That I told him to go AWOL
to... uh... tell you... uh..."
Desiree looked glassy eyed. Shattered.
Nat realized she wasn't exactly toting a baby carrier. Oh my
God.
"You got his letters, didn't you? I saw him mail them. How
uh..." He couldn't bring himself to ask how her son was. "Why,
ah... What, exactly, brings you to Colorado?"
She stumbled out her story about the terrorists, Jeremy, trying
to find Morgan, renting a car in LA, waving her CyberCorps
orders to get past roadblocks and into Denver. He questioned her
about how she got through the closed cities. I-40 and I-25 were
fairly rural, she said. Albuquerque was the only one, and she'd
bluffed her way through with her CyberCorps orders. The
California plates probably helped, Nate offered. As she talked,
Nate watched her shrink back into the chair, her strength seeming
to deflate like a balloon.
Nate could understand; he felt drained himself. The poor
woman. She'd instantly gone from thinking she'd killed her baby
to thinking her husband had. A real kick in the gut.
When she was done, she rose. "Let me help you clean this up,"
she said. She grabbed a nearby broom off the floor.
"No, hey, hey, no way." Nate took the broom from her. She'd
held on, as if she needed it for mental support. This wasn't right.
Nate was the one who'd gone flittering off on selfish adventures.
She shouldn't be offering to help him. Amber had, he realized with
a tightness in his chest, been entirely right. He felt the huge debt
he'd built up with the world. "It is a ponderous chain," Marley's
ghost had told Scrooge.
For that matter, the world itself seemed to have taken a season-long "closed for snow" day. Someone had to step up to the plate
and get things rolling again. Nate swallowed. Might as well be
him. There was probably a prison sentence in his future if he
returned to Halifax. That would be hard to take. He looked
around. Worse than this, though?
"Listen,—" Nate noticed Desiree had turned away from him
and held her face in her hands, crying quietly.
"Listen, Desiree." He cleared his throat. "There's nothing fry
me here. I'm, uh, heading back to Halifax in a couple days, after
I get the supplies together. If you want to go, I'd really like to take
you there."
Nate hoped he might have heard the clink of one link of his
ponderous chain fall away.
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