"Casil,_Amy_Sterling_-_To_Kiss_the_Star" - читать интересную книгу автора (Casil Amy Sterling)

Mel heard herself mumbling. She wasn't quite sure of what she wanted to say. No matter what, he wouldn't understand. God, let him not see her face.
"Mel, please sit up. I've got something to tell you." The bed sank down. He was sitting beside her.
She ground her face into the pillow. "Nuh-no," she said. She tried to call for Hana, then realized that she hadn't heard her soft movements, or her humming, for some time. The traitor had let John in, then left them alone.
John was pulling on the covers. Mel struggled, using her hands as weights, but it was hopeless. The sheets slipped away. She flailed toward her head, trying to cover what she could of her face. Her rebellious hand struck the left side of her head. She could see once more.
"Look, if it's this thing they've put on for your eyes, I don't care. It looks like sunglasses, is all. Big sunglasses."
"No!" Mel said. Desperation made her voice strong.
John grasped her shoulders. He turned her around as if she was a doll.
"Mel, I don't care. I've been visiting you for a year."
Her face. He was seeing her horrid face, and she couldn't cover it. She caught a glimpse of him through her clenched fists. She tried to strike her left temple, turn off the visor, but her arm was completely rebellious. He had her hands, both of them. He drew them away from her face.
A groan escaped her lips as she struggled. John, so fab. His features were fine, almost feminine. His hair was as soft and shiny as the hair of a dark, lovely woman. He had a small beard and moustache, neatly trimmed around his chin and lips. She held herself as still as she could, though every muscle in her body was going wild. Her feet twitched beneath the covers, out of control.
John took her wrist, turning the bracelet. "That visor is nothing," he said, smiling. "I'm glad you're wearing the bracelet." Something shone on John's left hand. A ring -- he'd never said he was married. Of course he was married. His wife was probably as stunning as he was.
"Muh-muh-muh," Mel said. She jerked her body toward the table and the voiceboard. John looked uncertain. She moved her shoulders toward the table, and his eyes followed.
"Your voiceboard. Right," he said. He retrieved it. While he walked across the room, Mel thought of covering herself again, but it was too late. He'd already seen her. And he'd been seeing her, for the past year. She had been a fool -- a complete fool. She didn't know why he had come to visit her, but it certainly couldn't have been for any of the reasons she'd imagined for so long, in her self-deluded blindness.
When he put the voiceboard in her lap, she said, "it's so kind of you to visit the ugly cripple."
John looked puzzled, as he sat by her once more, then sympathy came over his face. No, Mel thought. Pity. She thought of hitting the visor again, going blind, but he was fab, as Hana said. The most gorgeous man she'd ever seen, she thought -- and she had loved to collect pictures of the teen idols, before her eyes had gone. That had been stupid then, just the way this was stupid now. But she loved to look at his face, even as he looked on her with pity, as if she was some trapped laboratory monkey, or a freak from the vids.
"Come on," he said, forcing a cheery tone in his voice, Mel thought, "let's take a spin on the patio. I'll get you into your seat." Then, he retrieved her wheelchair from the corner (it was very worn and cracked on the seat, Mel noticed, shabby-looking), and brought it to the side of the bed. Mel allowed him to lift her into it. Shamed that she enjoyed his touch, Mel looked away from him, toward the window, and the vase with the daisy. The daisy drooped -- that was the end for it. Mel wondered how long it had been there, and who had put it there. Probably Hana.
John guided her down the hall, though she no longer needed his help. Mel saw some of the other inmates of the Center peeking out of their doors. They looked jealously at them. Quite a few were elderly. More than Mel had thought. She hadn't known how many there were during her blindness. She hadn't realized, although she could smell them, of course, always smell their terrible smell -- death and decay and disinfectant.
When they reached the patio, John parked her in a sunny spot. A small bird, a linnet, Mel thought, flew past them, wings whirring. He pulled a packet of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, and a lighter.
"Come on," he said, shaking two cigarettes out. "Hana told me that you wanted to do this." He lit the cigarettes. Their red tips glowed -- her visor showed a round ball of whitish heat around the tips. John put the filter of one cigarette to her lips.
The filter was hot. The smoke burned her nostrils. She put her lips around the filter and drew in a breath. Choking, horrible. Her arms flailed. Couldn't use the voiceboard ... couldn't speak ... coughing, spitting.
John threw both cigarettes down, crushing them beneath his foot, then whacked Mel's back. "Oh, no," he said in an agonized voice. "I should have known!"
The visor blurred. Mel's eyes were watering, and she was gasping for breath between coughs. What a horrible, vile taste, like swallowing burning coals! Her throat began to swell.
At last, she began to breathe more easily, and the coughing slowed to little hacks wracking her chest every few seconds.
"That's the worst thing I've ever tasted," she told him.
John knelt beside her, patting her knee. He nodded, his eyes full of regret. "Oh, God, I was so stupid," he said.
"No," Mel said. "I asked for it. But I like lobster better."
"Hana told me what else you asked for," he said. Before Mel could react, he'd leaned forward and had his arms around her. His lips brushed her neck. His voice, so warm and soft, whispering, right next to her ear. Mel felt her body trembling, legs jerking around. Stop it, she told herself, but it was hopeless. Her chest grew hot; she felt the flush all the way up her neck, working its way over her cheeks. "Sweet Mel," he said.
She managed to get her hands on the voiceboard, even as John's body pressed against her lap.
"No," she said. "Please, John." How warm he was, how hard the muscles felt in his arms and shoulders. He smelled of John Player Specials and of some spicy cologne, and of his own clean, soft flesh.
He kissed her neck, gently. She glimpsed his face, eyes closed, moving in front of her, and though she closed her eyes beneath the visor, she still saw the patio, the canvas awning, the little bird flying over the cheap plastic furniture, as his firm, sweet lips touched hers. Not her mouth! She had seen the terrible teeth in the mirror; the misshapen lips, cracked and rough. What could she expect when she couldn't even stop herself from drooling, had to depend on others even to clean her teeth? It must be horrible for him to come so near. How could he?
"Why?" she asked.
His lips pressed tighter against hers, and his arms drew her close to his body, almost all the way out of the chair. Mel was afraid that she would explode with everything that was rushing through her; things she didn't even have words for. The patio wavered, her sight flickered, and she heard her heels rattling in the chair.
At last, he drew gently away, putting her back in the seat, and sat back on his heels. He was smiling, almost shyly.
"Hana said you wanted a kiss," he said. His voice was throaty and rough -- a street-tough tone she'd never heard from him before.
Her hands fluttered over the voiceboard. At last, she made it say, "I was just saying that. I didn't really -- "
"Yes you did," he said, putting his hand on her knee and looking into the visor, where her eyes should have been. As if he knew what she was thinking, he said, "the bloody thing covers your eyes. You have beautiful eyes, Mel."
She felt like he had stabbed her through her heart.
"Don't lie to me," she said.
His gaze was steady. "I've never lied to you," he replied.
She looked at his hand on her knee, where the ring glinted. "Yes, you have," she said, even though this wasn't exactly true, as she'd never asked him if he was married. She had always assumed that he wasn't.
He seemed confused at first, then he realized that she was looking at his ring. "Oh," he said. "That's what I had to tell you. Why I wasn't here last week. I got married."
"Last week?"
He laughed. "Yes. I should have told you. But it was really a last-minute thing."
Mel backed the chair across the patio. "Good luck to both of you," she said. "I'm sure she's very beautiful." She was thankful this time that the voiceboard droned mechanically. It could almost sound sincere. She didn't want John to know that she was foolish enough to care.
He stopped the chair with one hand, just as she was about to go through the open glass door into the Center. "She is beautiful," John said. "She's going to have my baby."
A cry came from somewhere deep inside of Mel. She masked it with a cough. Let him think she was still choked up from the cigarette. She would endure whatever she had to endure before he left, and then she would go back into her room. She would take away the voiceboard, and turn off the visor. When the cowboy counselor came and tapped her hand, she would not move. She would not jerk, so that he couldn't possibly imagine that she wanted to go on with it. She would wait until he tapped twice, then clench her hand tightly, with all her strength. She would let them think that the visual implants had damaged her. Somehow, she would get them to take the damn thing off. Tear it off herself, if she had to. She could make her hands obey, if she tried hard enough. Then, she would be blind again. She wouldn't eat. Eventually, they would hook her up to machines, which would feed her. What was left of her body would waste away; then, real darkness.
John was talking, in the hard, street-wise tone she'd heard earlier from him. Mel refused to look at him.
"Alexandra and I have been together for a while. When she told me about the baby, it seemed like the right thing to do. My Da took off when I was just a kid. I'm not like that," he said.
"Good," Mel said, when he said nothing for a while.
John took her hand. Mel stared at the blank patio wall. Ugly gray bricks. She began to count them.