"Stuart Hughes - Clock's Runnin, Mister" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hughes Stuart)

"So what do I call you, mister?" she asked once he'd pulled into the flow
of traffic.
"Just call me Jack."
"Okay Jack," she said. "Let's grab some coffee."

Jack knew how to drive; the Buick handled perfectly as he put it through
its paces. It was one of the fastest, smoothest, and safest drives through
the streets of San Francisco she'd ever experienced.
Neither of them spoke which was fine with her. What wasn't fine was the
direction her thoughts were heading. She kept trying to think about
something else, but she couldn't get away from it. She thought about home.
Not the feeble excuse for an apartment she shared with a couple of other
girls in San Francisco, but home back in Phoenix, Arizona. Even though it
was two and a half years since she'd left, she still thought of her
parents' house as home. She wondered how Mom and Dad were? What they were
doing now? What they were thinking about her? That was the one that really
hurt: What were they thinking about her? She really ought to call them,
but it was eighteen months since she'd last spoken to either of them and
the longer she left it the harder it got.
Jack took a right into the parking lot outside the IHOP diner and dropped
the transmission into park.
"Here we are," he said.

The diner was sparsely populated. It was too late for the dinner crowd
that seemed to flock to fifties style diners like this and still too early
for the late-nighters.
They sat on opposite sides of the table in a booth next to the front
windows overlooking the parking lot. An Oriental waiter came over and took
their order.
Jack smiled sheepishly at her, appeared as if he was about to say
something, then gazed out the window. Realising she was out of his
peripheral line of vision she carefully studied his profile. His hair was
dark, but in the light of the diner she noticed for the first time the
grey streaks at his temples, and the slight ripple in the bridge of his
nose that signalled its having been broken, perhaps more than once. He was
older than she'd first thought: thirty-five, maybe nearer forty.
The waiter returned and poured their coffee. Jack added cream and two
sugars, she took hers as it was.
"So ..." he said, breaking the silence, "... you seem like a nice enough
kid, so how come you wound up playing this ancient game?"
"Shit." She looked directly at him, making eye contact for the very first
time, and her face must've shown her surprise because he laughed.
She fought to maintain eye contact and realised that his eyes - an
incredibly beautiful, haunting shade of blue - were his most striking
feature. Like the ocean, she thought. They seemed to be smiling at her as
if he knew all about her parents and understood.
"Shit," she repeated. "What the hell kind of question's that?"
"I'm sorry," he said. "That was out of line. Way, way out of line. Please,
forget I asked."
"S'okay." She looked away. Outside the diner darkness had settled in. She