"Maureen McHugh - Virtual Love" - читать интересную книгу автора (McHugh Maureen F)

door.

The chair by the window is empty. He is gone.

And I notice that the light is different, not nearly so hot and white, when he is
not sitting there.

He was beautiful, too.

For days and days I am a ghost. I haunt the Salon, I sit in Cairo in white linen
under slow ceiling fans, I check all the local places where he might be. Places
appropriate to his taste. But how do I know his taste? No one would ever guess that
the same woman who is Alicia, who loves the Salon, could also be Stork, who loves
the dirty talk of the Black Hole. Or Sulia, who lives in the flash of the Metro. He
could be anywhere. Like anything. Maybe he has more than one persona.

Of course he has more than one persona.

So I start to look in all sorts of places.

I find him in the Rathskeller, talking politics. I know him the moment I see
him, even though now he is a long-haired radical student wearing a coat out of the
French revolution. He is vivid, interesting in the way that the pale copies around him
are not. His signature is instant, apparent. It is not in any one thing, this student is as
different from Ian as Kristiana is from Alicia, and yet they are both so intense, so
original; they have style. He is an artist. He is someone I can talk to, who will
understand the things I admire.

I slip back to the lobby, ghost back into the green dressing room тАФ and
pause. Who do I have for the Rathskeller? Who can sit in a brick basement and talk
politics over the sound of the band?

I pick up a manтАЩs bracelet. Marty could go there. Marty looks back at me.
Marty is small, neat, a bit natty. тАЬSystem,тАЭ I say out loud and do something I almost
never do once I have finished a persona and named it; I change Marty.

Instead of his natty suit, I give him a long sharkskin coat, just a bit roughed
up. And I give him glasses, the kind you can look over. I raise his temples, take a
little of his hair, working fast and knowing if I make a mistake it will take too long to
fix, that I might miss him. I give Marty a narrow braid tail of hair, a pair of knee
boots. HeтАЩs a mix of eras and styles, scruffy and just right for the Rathskeller. I save
him as Mick, and his icon becomes the glasses.

I cross the lobby and the elevator takes forever. He will be gone, I know it. I
clump down a Berlin street, seeing myself reflected in the windows, moving wrong,
moving in MartyтАЩs dapper way despite MickтАЩs heavy boots, but itтАЩs too late to fix it.
Past the green-haired whores shivering in the cold, calling тАЬHey Brit,тАЭ because they
think Mick looks British. So I decide maybe IтАЩm a bit Irish, as IтАЩm walking, flying
high on adrenaline, improvising like mad, scared and excited.