"Joe Haldeman - 1968" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

done with her dates. Beverly was still a virgin, though she'd never said so. She and Spider had
progressed as far as "heavy petting," fast and furtive mutual masturbation. That was about as much fun as
she wanted to contend with for the time being.

She looked at Spider's dust-stained letter on her desk. "I never said I didn't love him."

"Yes, you di-i-id. Night before last."

"What I meant was like he's so far away, and I haven't seen him since before Thanksgiving, and before
that he was away at Basic for four months and I just, I just don't knowhow to feel. He's not even the
sameguy anymore. God, they fired him from his clerk job and they've got him out in the jungle, in a firing
base, whatever that is."

"You just don't want to send him a Dear John letter."

"I don't know. That would be pretty shitty, wouldn't it?"

Sherry pulled down the blind and started undressing. "Well. maybe it might be the best thing. What if you
keep leading him on, and when he comes back, you're doing it every night with the San Francisco Kid?"

"Sure, fat chance." She went over to look at Spider's letter. Sherry's casual attitude toward nakedness
made Beverly uncomfortable. Bad enough that you had to do it in gym. Beverly took her shower at night
and changed into pajamas in the relative privacy there.

"I saw you give him like your phone number, didn't you?"

"You aren't nosy or anything."

"So you're gonna see him again."

"Sure, maybe." In another week, Lee was going to see more of her than Spider ever had.

First contact

After he finished his letter to Beverly, he wrote a short, neutral one to his mother. Her letter had been a
long and scrawled ramble. One or two highballs too many. Dear old Dad had done three hundred
dollars' worth of damage to the car in a "parking accident"; sure. One of those high-speed parking
accidents you're always hearing about.

He'd been stopped for drunk driving two times that Spider knew of. How could he make a living if they
took his license away?

Spider sealed both letters into dusty envelopes and franked them, writing "free" where the stamp would
normally go. Other than lots of fresh air and exercise, that was the only advantage Spider had found to
living in Vietnam.

He heard a helicopter coming in and he and Killer went around the(hill to meet it. There was a "natural
LZ" there, a clearing large enough for the chopper.

All the helicopter brought were two old guys, a major and a bird colonel. It waited on the LZ, blades