"Dick, Philip K - The Zap Gun (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dick Phillip K)

"Okay," he said, and he and Pete shuffled and squeezed in on both sides of her.

Surveying Miss Bedouin, Pete interlaced his fingers and rested his hairy arms on the table of the booth. He said to her, "Hey, how come you can't beat out that girl he keeps to run his Paris office, that Maren something?"

"Mr. Freid," Miss Bedouin said, "I'm not sexually interested in anyone."

Grinning, Pete glanced at Lars. "She's candid."

Candor, Lars thought, at Mr. Lars, Incorporated. Ironic! A waste. But then Miss Bedouin didn't know what went on. She was sublimely pursap. As if the era before the Fall had been re-established for roughly four billion citizens of Wes-bloc and Peep-East. The burden, which had once been everyone's rested now on the cogs alone. The cognoscenti had relieved their race of a curse... if "cog" really derived from that and not, as he suspected, from an English rather than Italian word.

The English archaic definition had always seemed almost supernaturally apt to him. Cog. Using one's finger as a sort of cog to guide or hold the dice; i.e. to cozen, wheedle; to cheat.

But I could be candid, too, he thought, if I didn't know anything: I see no particular merit in that. Since Medieval times a foolЧno offense to you, Miss BedouinЧhas been permitted the liberty of wagging his tongue. But suppose, just for this one moment, as we sit pressed together in this booth, the three of us, two cog males and one dainty silver-tipped pursap girl whose cardinal preoccupation resides in a perpetual concern that her admittedly lovely little pointed breasts be as conspicuous as possible... suppose I could cheerfully pass back and forth as you do, without the need to sharply split what I know from what I say.

The wound would be healed, he decided. No more pills. No more nights of being unableЧor unwillingЧto sleep.

"Miss Bedouin," he said. "I actually am in love with you. But don't misunderstand. I'm talking about a spiritual love. Not carnal."

"Okay," Miss Bedouin said.

"Because," Lars said, "I admire you."

"You admire her so much," Pete said grumblingly, "that you can't go to bed with her? Kid stuff! How old are you, Lars? Real love means going to bed, like in marriage. Aren't I right, Miss whatever-your-name-is? If Lars really loved youЧ"

"Let me explain," Lars said.

"Nobody wants to hear your explanation," Pete said.

"Give me a chance," Lars said. "I admire her position."

" 'Not so perpendicular,' " Pete said, quoting the great old-time composer and poet of the last century, Marc Blitzstein.

Flaring up, Miss Bedouin said, "I am too perpendicular. That's what I just now told you. And not only thatЧ"

She ceased, because a small, elderly man with the final glimmerings of white hair coating irregularly a pinkish, almost glowing scalp, had abruptly appeared by their booth. He wore ancient lens-glasses, carried a briefcase, and his manner was a mixture of timidity and determination, as if he could not turn back now, but would have liked to.

Pete said, "A salesman."

"No," Miss Bedouin said. "Not well dressed enough."

"Process-server," Lars said; the elderly, short gentleman had an official look to him. "Am I right?" he asked.

The elderly gentleman said haltingly, "Mr. Lars?"

"That's me," Lars said; evidently his guess had been correct.

"Autograph collector," Miss Bedouin said, in triumph. "He wants your autograph, Mr. Lars; he recognizes you."

"He's not a bum," Pete added reflectively. "Look at that stickpin in his tie. That's a real cut stone. But who today wearsЧ"