"Kelley Eskridge - Alien Jane" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eskridge Kelly)

"I still don't thinkтАФ"

"Thank you, Doctor," and that didn't sound like any voice I'd ever heard come out of Rousseau. Whot's
wrong? I wanted to say but I couldn't open my eyes. I heard Tommy Gee thump out of the room.

I heard Rousseau take in a deep breath and walk past me to jane's bed.

"Well, I just need you to sign this release."

I lcnew I should open my eyes but I couldn't stop climbing stairs inside my head. No, I tried to say, no no
but I could only make a little noise. "Go to sleep, Rita," Rousseau said, and pulled the curtain across
between me and Jane.

She became silent fane again, and I saw less and less of her because she had started the testing, and once
the lab rats got hold of her they didn't want to give her up. The nurses talked about it up and down the
halls, even Madge who was such a porcupine for rules, so we all heard about Jane in the lab beirg
electroshocked and pinpricked and nerue pressed and never feeling a thing, and how it was something
you were born with and that nothing that happened to you ever hurt, no matter how bad it was. Terry
Louise said it was hnd of neat and jane was like the star of one of those old fltrrg saucer movies where
the alien takes over your body, so you look like a hrr*an but you're not.

One d*y in the room, I wanted to say I was sorry.

"Forget it."
"I didn't mean to hurt you."

"Stupid. Stupid, stupid. No one can hurt me. They've been trying for a week now. Go ahead, do your
best."

That wasn't what I meant, I thought, and I couldn't think of anything to say, so I just went on sittirg on the
edge of my bed rubbing my fingers down the little nubby rows of the bedspread. Jane lay on her back,
arms straight by her sides, toes pointed at the ceiling. Her pajamas were dirty around the seams. She
looked very thin, greasy
Alien Jane тАв 83

with fatigue. She kept absolutely still. She moved only to breathe, and she rvouldn't look at me.

I thought I would lie down like that too and look at the ceiling, and be very, very still. The ceiling was
gray and restful. I wondered, if ]ane and I lay in the same room long enough, would we start breathing
together? When I closed my eyes I could hear everything. I heard orderlies wheeling medicine carts past
our open door, the pills hissing in the tiny paper cups, little insects full of honey and poison; IlursтВмs in
rubber soles; Terry Louise in paper slippers; Tommy Gee in his pointy leather shoes; Dr. Rousseau in
heels: all stopping at our door, heads bent around the jamb loohng in at Jane and me laid out like bodies
on the back tables of funeral parlors, waitittg to be made pretty enough to be seen by the living. Go
away, I thought, go away and they all did, while Jane and I breathed together and the morning light
turned gray under the weight of wet clouds and the light in the room dimmed into something soft and
private.

After a long time the old pictures came back into my head and this time it was okay, okay to let the