"Joe Hutsko - Nico's Dream" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hutsko Joe)

his coffee. The brew has cooled to the
point of being uninteresting, yet the
cup somehow still feels too warm in his
light, achy grasp. It's only his
imagination, he tells himself, without
realizing he is nevertheless blowing on
the already tepid coffee... maybe to
fan away the last threads of the
dream and its small and shaky hold on
his heart.

Which suddenly flutters, as if on
command. It's happened before, and
he waits. Waits to see if it will do its
strange thing. Sometimes it does.
sometimes it doesn't. All around him
his coworkers are busy with their own
forms and files, none aware of what's
going on behind Taylor's ribcage. Or
so he believes.

Whenever it happens he is
instinctively drawn to Time. His eyes
seek a watch or clock or anything with
seconds ticking off. Here in the lab it's
the enormous white-faced clock that
reminds him of grammar school
science class, the second hand
creeping along as he times the effects
of one reagent with or against
another. He follows the agonizingly
slow hand past five, ten... but not
twenty, he is relieved to discover. The
flutter abates; his heart resumes its
normal beat. Or what he figures is
normal. It's something he's been
meaning to find out with a check up.
He is in his late-twenties, lean, jogs a
few times a week, and is careful about
what he eats. He has no sex life,
which, he read somewhere, is
supposed to be good for the heart.
But he doubts that's the trouble. No,
he's pretty sure it's the caffeine in
the coffee, proving his self-diagnosis
by reading articles he's searched on
the Web by stringing together the
keywords "flutter and heart and
coffee."