"William Gibson - Spook Country" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gibson William)

тАЬLook. Look here.тАЭ

She turned, following his gesture, and saw a slender, dark-haired body, facedown on the sidewalk.

тАЬAlloween night, 1993,тАЭ said Odile.

Hollis approached the body. That wasnтАЩt there. But was. Alberto was following her with the laptop,
careful of the cable. She felt as if he were holding his breath. She was holding hers.

The boy seemed birdlike, in death, the arch of his cheekbone, as she bent forward, casting its own small
shadow. His hair was very dark. He wore dark, pin-striped trousers and a dark shirt. тАЬWho?тАЭ she
asked, finding her breath.

тАЬRiver Phoenix,тАЭ said Alberto, quietly.

She looked up, toward the marquee of the Whiskey, then down again, struck by the fragility of the white
neck. тАЬRiver Phoenix was blond,тАЭ she said.

тАЬHeтАЩd dyed it,тАЭ Alberto said. тАЬDyed it for a role.тАЭ

2. ANTS IN THE WATER
T he old man reminded Tito of those ghost-signs, fading high on the windowless sides of blackened
buildings, spelling out the names of products made meaningless by time.

If Tito were to see one of those announcing the very latest, the most recent and terrible news, yet could
know that it had always been there, fading, through every kind of weather, unnoticed until today, that
might feel something like meeting the old man in Washington Square, beside the concrete chess tables,
and carefully passing him an iPod, beneath a folded newspaper.

Each time the old man, expressionless and looking elsewhere, pocketed another iPod, Tito noticed the
dull gold of his wristwatch, its dial and hands almost lost behind the worn plastic crystal. A dead manтАЩs
watch, like the ones jumbled in battered cigar boxes at the flea market.
His clothes were like a dead manтАЩs as well, cut from fabrics Tito imagined exuding their own chill, a cold
distinct from the end of this uneven New York winter. The cold of unclaimed luggage, of institutional
corridors, of steel lockers scoured to bare metal.

But surely this was costume, the protocol of appearance. The old man could not be genuinely poor and
do business with TitoтАЩs uncles. Sensing an immense patience, and power, Tito imagined that this old man,
for reasons of his own, disguised himself as a revenant from lower ManhattanтАЩs past.

Each time the old man received another iPod, accepting it the way an ancient and sagacious ape might
accept a piece of some not particularly interesting fruit, Tito half-expected him to crack its virginal white
case like a nut, and then to draw forth something utterly peculiar, utterly dire, and somehow terrible in its
contemporaneity.

And now, across a steaming tureen of duck soup, in this second-floor restaurant overlooking Canal
Street, Tito found himself unable to explain this to Alejandro, his cousin. In his room, earlier, he had been
layering sounds, attempting to express in music these feelings the old man woke in him. He doubted he
would ever play that file for Alejandro.