"Samuel R. Delany - Corona" - читать интересную книгу автора (Delaney Samuel R)

Buddy had spent a good deal of his life doing what people told him,
when he wasn't doing the opposite on purpose.

The girl sat back on her heels. "That's better."

He pushed himself up in the bed. There were no straps. Sheets hissed
over his knees. He looked at his chest. Blue pajamas: the buttons were
in the wrong holes by one. He reached down to fix them, and his
fingers closed on air.

"You've only got one eye working so there's no parallax for depth
perception."

"Huh?" He looked up again.

She wore shorts and a red and white polo shirt.

He frowned, "Who are you?"

"Dianne Lee Morris," she said. "And you're-" Then she frowned too.
She scrambled from the bed, took the mirror from over the basin and
brought it back to the bed. "Look. Now who are you?"

He reached up to touch with grease-crusted nails the bandage that
sloped over his left eye. Short, yellow hair lapped the gauze. His
forefinger went on to the familiar scar through the tow hedge of his
right eyebrow.

"Who are you?"

"Buddy Magowan."

"Where do you live?"

"St. Gab-" He stopped. "A hun' ni'tee' stree' 'tween Se'on and Thir'
A'nue."

"Say it again."

"A hundred an' nineteenth street between Second an' Third Avenue."
The consonants his night school teacher at P. S. 125 had laboriously
inserted into his speech this part year returned.

"Good. And you work?"

"Out at Kennedy. Service assistant."

"And there's nothing to be afraid of."

He shook his head, "Naw," and grinned. His broken tooth reflected in