"Michael Kandel - Hooking Up" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kandel Michael)

She was smiling at the camera, as if laughing, and had her arm around a
silly-looking lamb. Maybe I could curl my hair, Topaz thought, while I'm
waiting. The straight-haired, pigtailed girl in the picture, Topaz at seven,
seemed to be laughing at her.

Topaz looked in her mother's drawer and in the bathroom for curling things but
didn't find any. Then she got the idea to play disks. She didn't really care for
the games on the disks, but that would be a good way to kill time until someone
came, since she didn't know how to curl her hair by herself.

She played Life for a while, then walked around some more and looked out
different windows. She couldn't see much. From her upstairs window she could see
the most: three people lying crumpled in the street, one man and two old women.
The two old women were together. Perhaps they were friends or sisters.

Topaz stopped playing Life and played Bucket, until she began to get hungry. She
realized that it was suppertime. Her mother and father still weren't home. Maybe
the shuttle wasn't working now and they had to take the bus instead and the
driver had to keep stopping to clear the people out of the way so they wouldn't
be run over. Or maybe her mother and father were helping out in the crisis. Her
father was good at taking charge. Topaz decided to cook herself supper. They
would be pleased to see how grown-up she was, cooking for herself. She made one
of the five-minute dinners, using the microwave, and was very careful not to
leave a mess after she was finished. She even washed the dishes and then
polished the faucet in the sink, to pass the time. She went back to the
compuvision after that, but the sign on the screen was still there and nothing
had changed.

She sat by herself in the living room and waited. She was learning how to wait
better. She was able to sit still with folded hands for a whole hour: she timed
it. She played Bucket some more, though she couldn't really concentrate on it,
then waited some more, and finally she grew sleepy. She sighed, got into her
pajamas, brushed her teeth, and went to bed. She prayed, Dear Lord, please take
care of my mother and father wherever they are and bring them home soon. She
never prayed at home, because her father didn't believe in it, but sometimes at
school on Nerol, on a special occasion, there was a prayer. The Nerolians were
old-fashioned about things like prayer.

The next day, Topaz had breakfast and took a shower. She cleaned her room. Once,
at about ten o'clock, looking out her window, she saw someone walk past. The
thin man had a funny walk, as if he needed a cane but didn't want to use one,
and his clothes were dirty. Topaz knew right away that he wasn't hooked up.

On the second day, she got so good at waiting that two or three hours went by
with her doing nothing, just staring at a lamp or a shelf or a corner. She
wasn't even sure what she was staring at. She felt that she was asleep in a way,
although she had her eyes open and wasn't in bed. She might actually have fallen
asleep in the armchair that faced the door, because when the door opened, she
didn't remember having heard anyone knock or ring the bell.