"Paul Levinson - Loose Ends (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Levinson Paul)

years ago. But everything depends on your telling him something
-- something about me, about this -- 25 years from now."
Sarah's head shook -- not no, but from tremors. Her eyes
were a confused mixture of anger, uncertainty, love. Now she
slowly shook her head no. "I don't know you," she whispered.
"I know. But I'm part of you -- I'm your DNA, your blood."
Jeff stood up, then leaned over and kissed her. "I love you,
Sarah, I always will. Go by your instincts in this." He put a
five dollar bill on the table, and hurried out the door.
Now the April breeze caught his face, seemed to move him
along. He walked in a daze, not really knowing where he was
going, to the Pelham Parkway station. He paid his fare, walked
through the wooden turnstile -- nearly getting a splinter in his
thigh -- and sat down on the rotting green bench to wait for the
train.
And then he remembered. His grandpa swinging with him on
the hammock. Talking about a summer he'd spent years ago when
_his_ grandma was still alive, on Cape Cod. He was four, maybe
five, so it was 1990 or 1991. His parents and little sister had
gone out to Cooke's for supper. He'd had a bad cold, and had to
stay in the cottage. Grandma Sarah stayed with him. It had
started raining -- very hard -- an August Cape Cod storm that
seemed to drench the beach and every living thing. And she
told him about the strange man who had come to her long ago in
Saperman's, the bakery where she used to work...
Jeff was shaking. Thank you, Sarah -- you came through for
me. He felt like running back and hugging her, but didn't dare,
lest this somehow throw a curve into what he had just
accomplished here.
He was sure this memory of what his grandfather had told
him about what _his_ grandmother had told _him_ hadn't existed
before. It proved that he was real in this convoluted past --
that he could do things here which could indeed change the
future, even if the change were as slight as a grandmother's
words in a Cape Cod storm some 60 years before he'd been born.
But those words, his memory of his grandfather's conveyance of
them, meant everything. Sarah Harris had given him his first
real hope. If he could change the future through her, he could
figure out a way to somehow contact his team, and get back to
where he belonged.
He was crying. For he also realized that in a deep,
indescribable way he missed Sarah Harris even more than his
world of 2084, and he knew there was no way he ever could have
both.
***
"I think he's very attractive," Carla Caplan of Flushing
said. "You know, not in the Marlon Brando or Paul Newman way,
but in a cuddly way. Like a teddy bear." She stroked her left
thumbnail with an emery board.
"Oh, I don't know," Amy Jacobson replied. "His accent is a