"Barry N. Malzberg & Kathe Koja - Orleans, Rheims, Friction Fire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Malzberg Barry N)

the water or the fire.

"-- but without her deposit they wouldn't refund it," he says, "and I, I was
going to try to make it up but I just couldn't, you know, at that time I
couldn't really afford it." Touching her arm with the green lip of the champagne
bottle, bare arm, wet glass; so cold, so bold, so old. "You want some of this?"

"No. I don't want any of it."

"But anyway," pouring for himself, elbow nudging hers, "she and I are friends
again now, at least I think we are, I think it's good to stay friends. Don't
you? To be friends, to try to --"

"Garbage," she says. "No. None of it."

"Not good to be friends?"

"No," she says, "there are no friends. Only the concrete,' and phantoms all
around it."

"Mmm," he says, "thoughtful," and lights another cigarette for her, uses the
motion to put that arm around her, lightly, oh so lightly but she feels it like
iron, iron warm from the body enslaved and she knows she should turn to him,
stare at him, tell him to get his stupid arm away ... but oh the cold, the rain
and that cold, dark passage of time so heavy all around her and he keeps
talking, warm body, flickering heat seen only through closed eyes and his moving
lips, talking and telling her all sorts of things. Ex-girlfriends, ex-wife, all
the women who are all still his friends and "Don't you think," he says, arm so
firm and steady, so soft that murmur in the brain it could be her own voice
conflated, "don't you think that making love, really making love is the best way
to know a person? I mean really know them, know them all the way down; know what
they're like, what they want, what they need? This is the way we touch, the way
we communicate and I say when --"

"No," at once and brutal, "no, I don't. I don't believe in any of that. That's
just another kind of scrap you're trying to put on my back, just another stupid
note, that's all." Oh, what they need, what they need: fire and water, water
running from the gutters, beading on the screen, is there enough fire in all the
world to quench that water now? Her voice again but more quietly, as if her
mouth has frozen, her lips so stiff and cold and "You want to know what I think?
I think your making love is just a cheap euphemism for fucking and I don't think
fucking solves anything or changes anything or makes anything happen but fucking
and I think pretending anything else is just a lie, just a soft or hard lie
depending on whether you're moving in or moving out because it's friction, it's
all just friction." Shaking now, little hurt in her chest, big hurt from
something else echoed and echoing and "It's all a lie," she says, "you're just a
voice in my head. You're a voice in your own head, and none of it means anything
at all to you, all you want is the heat, that's what I think. It's all a lie,"
she repeats pointlessly.