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

her.
But why did this happen?
Another damn mishap?
He had a searing insight for an instant. Yes, of course ...
Then he lost it.
He looked down at Laura's lips, and trembled.
***
Jeff had always found strength in the rivers of New York.
He had spent hours as a child wandering along the banks of the
Bronx River -- more a stream, really, than a river -- admiring
its waterfalls, sticking his toes in its pools, following its
path through the Botanic and Zoological Gardens. Years later,
he would sit on the terrace of Rena's high-rise on 125th Street,
watching the powerful Hudson roll through the ninth decade of
the stagnant 21st century. Good in medicine, agriculture, the
intra-physics that the Thorne embodied, but not much else. Good
in looking inward, backward, not outward. He walked now around
Carl Schurz Park, looking down on the East River and its
reflection of this 1960s city, hoping to find something he could
use to recover his balance.
Laura was ok, resting in his apartment, well out of danger.
That wasn't the problem.
"Close," the doctor had said. "Good thing you rushed her
over here. Combo of booze and that kind of drug is dangerous.
Good thing it responded to--"
Better get used to it doc -- you'll see a lot more of it
before this decade is over.
Thank God Laura was ok.
But Jeff wasn't.
He had slept maybe an hour after bringing her home from the
hospital, undressing her, tucking her safely in their bed. He'd
had nightmares -- older and younger versions of his
great-great-grandmother coming in and out of his life, changing
it with each appearance, editing the narrative that was him so
many times that he had no bearings. Only alterations, of
alterations.
Jeff had always valued the sanctity and clarity of his
mind. That's why he'd steered clear of the psychedelic drugs of
_his_ century -- better to improve external reality than just
your perception of it. But he figured the contamination now of
his past and future was far more toxic to the psyche than the
worst drugs. Coleridge, de Quincey, Huxley, Leary, Goonatilake
-- you're all pikers compared to me.
But why was he feeling the brunt of this now?
Something Laura had said or done -- not her almost ODing,
but something that had happened then, though he didn't know what
-- had unhinged him--
"Hi honey." A soft, cool hand touched his as he leaned
against the stone embankment. He turned to Laura. She still
looked pale.