"Steven Gould - Peaches for Mad Molly" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gould Stephen Jay)

PEACHES FOR MAD MOLLY

by

Steven Could

Sometime during the night the wind pulled a one-pointer off the west face of
the building up around the 630th floor. I heard him screaming as he went by,
very loud, like this was his last chance to voice an opinion, but it was all
so sudden that he didn't know what it was. Then he hit a microwave relay off
542 ... hard, and the chance was gone. Chunks of him landed in Buffalo Bayou
forty-five seconds later.

The alligators probably liked that.

I don't know if his purchase failed or his rope broke or if the sucker just
couldn't tie a decent knot. He pissed me off though, because I couldn't get
back to sleep until I'd checked all four of my belay points, the ropes, and
the knots. Now if he'd fallen without expressing himself, maybe?

No, I would have heard the noise as he splattered through the rods of the
antennae.

Stupid one-pointer.

The next morning I woke up a lot earlier than usual because someone was
plucking one of my ropes,
adagio, thrum, thrum, like the second movement of Ludwig's seventh. It was Mad
Molly.

"You awake, Bruce?" she asked.

I groaned. "I am now. " My name is not Bruce. Molly, for some reason, calls
everyone Bruce. "Shto etta, Molly?"

She was crouched on a roughing point, one of the meter cubes sticking out of
the tower face to induce the micro-turbulence boundary layer. She was dressed
in a brightly flowered scarlet kimono, livid green bermuda shorts, a
sweatshirt, and tabi socks. Her belay line, bright orange against the gray
building, stretched from around the corner to Molly's person where it vanished
beneath her kimono, like a snake hiding its head.

"I got a batch to go to the Bruce, Bruce."

I turned and looked down. There was a damp wind in my face. Some low clouds
had come in overnight, hiding the ground, but the tower's shadow stretched a
long ways across the fluffy stuff below. "Jeeze, Molly. You know the Bruce
won't be on shift for another hour." Damn, she had me doing it! "Oh, hell.
I'll be over after I get dressed."