"Charles de Lint - Spirits in the Wires" - читать интересную книгу автора (De Lint Charles)

money had come from, my own work history popped up in my head. Dates, places of
employment, job descriptions, salary and benefits. But I had no personal, hands-on
memories of even one of these places where I was supposed to have worked.
I closed all the files and turned off the computer.


file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/de%20Lint,%20Charles%20-%20Spirits%20in%20the%20Wires%20(v1.0).html (12 of 346)8-12-2006 23:50:50
SPIRITS IN THE WIRES by Charles de Lint




After a supper of asparagus, tomato, feta cheese and shredded basil on a small bed of pasta,
I was finally able to go outside and sit on the wicker chair I found out on the balcony. The
flavour of my meal still lay on my palate, the food itself a comforting pressure in my
stomach. It was dark now, the city lit up with lights, but I was safe and unseen in a pool of
shadow since IтАЩd turned out the lights in the room behind me.
I watched the people passing below, each of them a story, each story part of somebody
elseтАЩs, all of it connected to the big story of the world. People werenтАЩt islands, so far as I was
concerned. How could they be, when their stories kept getting tangled up in everybody
elseтАЩs?
But all the same, I understood loneliness right then. Not the idea of it, but the empty ache of
it inside me. How one could live in a city of millions and realize that there was not one
person who knew or cared if I lived or died. I searched my mind, but nowhere in amongst
the neat and orderly lines of facts and work histories was there the memory of someone I
could call a lover, a friend, or even an acquaintance.
That will change, the calm voice in the back of my head assured me.
But I didnтАЩt knowтАФnot how my life could have come to this, or if it even should change.
Either I was so unlikable that IтАЩd been unable to make a single friend in theтАФI counted out
the years from the facts in my headтАФfour years since I had apparently moved here from
New MexicoтАФor I was some kind of freak. Neither, it seemed to me, deserved friends.


I dreamed that night that I was flying, soaring, not over city streets, but over circuit boards,
and rivers of electricityтАж


The next morningтАФmy second that I could truly recallтАФI felt a little better. I still had a lack
of hands-on memories and a calm, quiet voice in the back of my head that was happy to play
encyclopedia for me, but the weight of a full dayтАЩs experience seemed to have steadied me.
Even if all IтАЩd done for the whole day was wander around in my apartment and then get
terribly depressed as I sat out on the balcony in the evening, that one day still felt as though
it had anchored me to the real world.
In the morning light, things didnтАЩt seem quite so bleak, so desperately black and white, it had
to be this way or that. I was able to consider that I might be different and it didnтАЩt cripple
me. Last nightтАЩs loneliness and despair had no real hold on me this morning. I didnтАЩt know
quite how or where, but I was sure I had to fit in someplace.
Today I meant to go outside.
I finished my coffee and washed my breakfast dishes, then put on a pair of running shoes. I
found my purse. After checking it for apartment keys, I stepped out into the hall.