"Jim Munroe - Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gas Mask" - читать интересную книгу автора (Munroe Jim)

It was funny he'd do that, because I often thought of my ability as a
kind of extreme
version of bending my thumb back -- ugly, unnatural and ultimately useless.
"Oh bra*vo* ," I muttered, but not quietly enough.
Black-haired girl looked at me. "Well," she said, "what can *you* do?"
I hauled myself to a standing position. "Me?" I asked her, watching the
candlelight on
her face. I noticed her mascara was fucked up, and liked her more for it.
Everyone else was
shadows, silent watchers.
And I was really going to do it. I really was. I took a breath and
prepared to step out of
myself.
Instead, I turned my head away and puked explosively onto the formica
table I had
been sitting at. The candle fell over and went out.
Dazed, I leaned over the table, looking at the mess I'd made. I
dry-heaved, went to sit
on the chair again and missed. Busted my lip wide open on the metal table leg
on my way down.
"Projectile vomiting. That's really . . ."
"That's really *something* ."
"Yeah."
"Do you think he was aiming for the candle?"
There was a wave of laughter and my consciousness seemed to be borne out
on it. I
was grateful.

I had a crush on this waitress at the diner near my house. She was
splashy generous
with the coffee, so I found myself at Sok quite a bit during the winter.
"Haven't seen you in a while," Cass said, passing by with a breakfast
plate.
At first I didn't think she was talking to me. Coffee and convenient
location aside, Cass
was the biggest attraction at Sok, and now she wasn't an exhibit any longer.
Now I had to talk
to her, an exciting and nerve-racking thing. Witty repartee only comes easily
to me when I'm
with friends. It wasn't coming now, naturally, because I was thinking of it as
flirting.
"I like the patios in the summer," I said lamely as she passed. My
coffee, the fourth, was
mostly finished, and she filled it without asking.
"What was stopping you from taking a chair and sitting out front, like
Frank?" she said,
her eyebrows arching as she nodded towards an old Italian guy. Despite the
unpleasant
weather, he sat outside, a winter-steam tendril growing out of his head.
"Nuh-uh," I said. "You're a gawker if you do that. Too blatant."