"Walter M. Miller - The Best of Walter M. Miller" - читать интересную книгу автора (Miller Walter M)

the waist-knot, loosened it. The robe parted, and the fine spray of rain was delightfully cool on her skin.
The garden was dark, the shadows inky, the nearest neighbor a block away. The wall screened it
from prying eyes. She brushed her hands over her shoulders; the sleeves slipped down her arms. Peeled
clean, feeling like a freed animal, she pressed open the screen and stepped out under the eaves to stand
on the warm stone walk.

The rain was rattling in the hedge and roaring softly all about her, splashing coldness about her slender
calves. She hugged herself and stepped into it. The drench of icy fingers stroked her with pleasant lashes;
she laughed and ran along the walk toward the elm. The drops stung her breasts, rivered her face, and
coursed coldly down her sides and legs.
She exulted in the rain, tried to dance and laughed at herself. She ran. Then, tired, she threw herself
down on the crisp wet lawn, stretching her arms and legs and roll-ing slowly on the grass. Eyes closed,
drenched and languorous, she laughed softly and played imagining games with the rain.
The drops were steel-jacketed wasps, zipping down out of the blackness, but she melted them with
her mind, made them soft and cool and caressing. The drops took impersonal liberties with her body, and
she rolled de-murely to lie face down in the rainsoft grass.
"I am still a pale beast," she thought happily, "still kin of my grandmother the ape who danced
in the tree and chattered when it rained. How utterly barren life would be, if I were not a pale
beast!"
She dug her fingers into the sodden turf, bared her teeth, pressed her forehead against the ground, and
growled a little animal growl. It amused her, and she laughed again. Crouching, she came up on her hands
and knees, hunching low, teeth still bared. Like a cat, she hissedтАФand pounced upon a sleeping bird,
caught it and shook it to death.
Again she lay laughing in the grass.
"If Frank were to see me like this," she thought, "he would put me to bed with a couple of
sleeping pills, and call that smug Dr. Mensley to have a look at my mind. And Dr. Mensley would
check my ambivalences and my repressions and my narcissistic, voyeuristic, masochistic impulses.
He would tighten my screws and readjust me to reality, fit me into a comfortable groove, and take
the pale beast out of me to make me a talking doll."
He had done it several times before. Thinking of Dr. Mensley, Lisa searched her vocabulary for the
most savage word she could remember. She growled it aloud and felt better.
The rain was slowly subsiding. A siren was wailing in the distance. The police. She giggled and
imagined a headline in tomorrow's paper: PROMINENT SOCIALITE JAILED FOR INDECENT
EXPOSURE. And the story would go on: "Mrs. Lisa Waverly was taken into custody by the police after
neighbors reported that she was running around stark naked in her back yard. Said Mrs. Heinehoffer
who called the law: 'It was just terrible. Looked lo me like she was having fits.' Mr. Heinehoffer, when
asked for comment, simply closed his eyes and smiled ecstatically."
Lisa sighed wearily. The siren had gone away. The rain had stopped, except for drippings out of the
elm. She was tired, emotionally spent, yet strangely melan-choly. She sat up slowly in the grass and
hugged her shins.
The feeling came over her gradually.
"Someone has been watching me!"

She stiffened slowly, but remained in place, letting her eyes probe about her in the shadows. If only
the drippings would stop so she could listen! She peered along the hedge, and along the shadows by the
garden wall, toward the dark windows of the house, up toward the low-hanging mist faintly illuminated
from below by street lights. She saw nothing, heard nothing. There was no movement in the night. Yet the
feeling lingered, even though she scoffed.
тАЬIf anyone is here," she thought, "I'll call them gently, and if anyone appears, I'll scream so loud
that Mrs. Heine-hoffer will hear me."