"John D. MacDonald - Flaw" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacDonald John D)

mistake. At least we called it a mistake. Now I know that it wasnтАЩt, because
Johnny didnтАЩt come back.

With the usual sense of guilt we planned to be married, and then
reverted to our original plan. I would wait for him. Nothing could go wrong.

Takeoff was in the cold dawn of a February morning. I stood in the
crowd beside a girl who worked in the same office. I held her arm. She
carried the bruises for over a week.

The silver hull seemed to merge with the gray of the dawn. The crowd
was silent. At last there was the blinding, blue-white flare of the jets, the
stately lift into the air, the moment when Destiny II seemed to hang
motionless fifty feet in the air, and then the accelerating blast that arrowed it
up and up into the dark-gray sky where a few stars still shone. I walked on
leaden legs back to the administration building and sat slumped at my desk,
my mouth dry, my eyes hot and burning.

The last faint radio signal came in three hours later.

тАЬAll well. See you next year.тАЭ

From then on there would be fourteen months of silence.

I suppose that in a way I became accustomed to it.

I was numb, apathetic, stupefied. They would probably have got rid of
me had they not known how it was between Johnny and me. I wouldnтАЩt have
blamed them. Each morning I saw the silver form of Destiny III taking
shape near where Destiny II had taken off. The brash young men made the
same jokes, gave the office girls the same line of chatter.

But they didnтАЩt bother me. Word had got around.

I found a friend. The young wife of Tony Marienetta. We spent hours
telling each other in subtle ways that everything would come out all right.

I remember one night when Marge grinned and said:

тАЬWell anyway, Carol, nobody has ever had their men go quite so far
away.тАЭ

There is something helpless about thinking of the distance between
two people in the form of millions of miles.

After I listened to the sea last night, I walked slowly back up the steep
path to this beach house. When I clicked the lights on Johnny looked at me
out of the silver frame on my writing desk. His eyes are on me as I write
this. They are happy and confident eyes. I am almost glad that he didnтАЩt live
to find out.