"Judith Merril - Connection Completed" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merril Judith)

CONNECTION COMPLETED
HELLO, DARLING. I'm glad you waited.
I couldn't do anything else. She smiled wryly. I'm glad I waited, too. Hello.

He saw her through the window, sitting alone in a pool of white light, on a white chair, at a white
table, almost exactly centered in the expanse of white-tiled floor. She was wearing the green suit and the
gray-green scarf with the narrow border of pink rose on it. Her back was toward him, but he knew
beyond doubt it was she: her hair, over the scarf, was the same dark mist that floated in his mind, cool
and caressing, tickling the filaments of his imagination.
He stood out there on the sidewalk in the chill city drizzle, staring in through the plate glass window of
the cafeteria, waiting for her to make some move, any move that would confirm or deny: to turn around
and show her face, looking as he knew it must; or to vanish as suddenly and completely as the elusive
fantasy he also knew she had to be. He stood there waiting, mostly, for his own shock to give way to
decision. Go in? Go away?
"Move along, Mac!"
Todd jerked his head around, eyes wide and startled, then narrowing in anger at the dough-faced
cop.
"Is that a new law?" he sneered. "Something wrong with standing on the street?"
"Not so you just stand there," the policeman said. Then, in a different tone: "Sorry, doc. It was just
the way you was looking in the window."
"You mean hungry?" Todd didn't feel like being reasonable. The apology was to his clothes anyhow;
not to him. "Well, I am. You know any better reason to look in a restaurant?" If the cop got mad enough,
there wouldn't be any impossible decision to make; he'd be in night court, paying a fine instead.
The cop didn't get mad. He shook his head tiredly and wandered off; muttering. Todd turned back to
the window, and the girl had moved.
She was getting up. She had her check in her hand, and she was reaching for her raincoat on the next
chair. Immediately, urgently, Todd wanted her not to go.
Sit still, he begged. You waited this long, don't spoil it now. I'm coming, kid. I shouldn't have
stalled like that, but I'm coming in now. Just wait a minute.
He was walking fast up the block toward the door, watching her through the window all the time, and
he saw her change her mind and settle back in the chair again. She never turned around. He still hadn't
seen her face.
He pushed through the door into warm dry air, struggling with the corners of his mouth, keeping his
smile underneath his skin. He couldn't very well walk in on her with a triumphant smirk all over his face.
There was no reason to assume that she knew.
She didn't; he was sure of that when he saw the baffled defeat in the set of her shoulders as she
leaned back in her chair and picked up the coffee cup again. The cup was empty; he knew that. She
realized it a moment later, and set it down again, and looked up straight ahead of her at the big clock on
the wall.
What on earth am I sitting here for? She made a restless, irritable motion toward her raincoat.
Hey, wait a minute! he pleaded. Don't go now. Just give me time to think of something.
What did she expect? To have him walk over and say "Pardon me, but aren't you the girl in my
dreams?"
She didn't expect anything. She didn't even know who he was. But she turned and looked out the
window while he crossed the big room to the counter at the back. It's still raining, she satisfied herself. I
might as well sit here. She picked up a folded newspaper, and Todd stared across the perforated metal
drip-board of the counter, into a dry, yellow-wrinkled face.
"CoffeeтАФblack," he said, and waited while brown liquid flushed slowly out of the urn into a thick tan
mug. He tried to find her image in the mirror on the sidewall, but the angle was distorting; all he could tell
was that she was still there, waiting.