"Tony Daniel - Robot's Twilight Companion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Daniel Tony)

They met at a faculty mixer in St. Louis. Henry was a visiting poet at Washington UniversityтАЩs graduate
writing program. Nell, already quite famous in her professional circles, had given a lecture that day at the
architecture schoolтАФa lecture that Henry had studiously avoided. Nell had not read any of HenryтАЩs
poetry, for that matter, but then few people had. If anything, twenty-first-century poets were more
obscure and unknown than their predecessors had been.

But both knew the other by reputation, and being the only people at the mixer who were not involved in
the intricacies of academic policy skirmishes, the two of them ended up in a corner, talking about
corners.

тАЬWhy do they have to be ninety degrees?тАЭ Henry asked. He leaned against one wall, trying to appear
nonchalant, and felt his drink slosh over his wrist. For the first time, Henry regretted that he was not a
man brought up to be comfortable on the insides of buildings.

тАЬThey donтАЩt,тАЭ Nell replied. тАЬBut there are good reasons they mostly are.тАЭ At first glance, NellтАЩs face
seemed lacking in some way, as if the muscles and tendons were strung out and defined, but werenтАЩt
really supporting anything of importance. Odd.

тАЬStructural reasons?тАЭ

тАЬWhy are there laps, when we sit down?тАЭ

Henry knew then that he was going to like her, despite her peculiar face.

тАЬSo we have something to do with our legs, I suppose,тАЭ he said.

тАЬAnd to hold cats and children on, too. Function and beauty.тАЭ Nell smiled, and suddenly Henry
understood why her face seemed curious and incomplete. It was a superstructure waiting for that smile.

They did not, of course, return to HenryтАЩs place and fuck like minks, although by the end of the mixer
that was all Henry had on his mind. Instead, Henry asked her to coffee the following afternoon. Nell
actually had a scramjet to Berlin scheduled for the early morning, Henry later discovered, but she
canceled the flight for the date. Nell understood which situations called for spontaneity, and being a
careful, thoughtful woman, she always made the right moves.

Those first moments were so abstract, urban andтАФformed, as Henry later recalled them. Like a dance,
personifying the blind calls and pediments of nature. That was what it felt like to be alive in the houses of
people you didnтАЩt really know, of living hazy days in parks and coffee shops and the chambers of the
university. Nell and he met the next day for espresso like two ballet dancers executing a maneuver.
Touch lightly, exchange, touch, pass, pass, pass.

But something sparked then and there because, of course, he had asked her to drive out to the Ozarks to
see the flaming maples, and Nell had accepted. And in the Ozarks, Henry could become himself, his best
self.

Nell had found one of his books, and when they stopped to look at a particularly fine farmhouse amid
crimson and vermilion foliage, she quoted, from memory, his poem about growing up in the country.

They kissed with a careful passion.