"Pike, Christopher - Whisper Of Death.(1991)TXT" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pike Christopher)

That got him mad. "Do you want me to stay or
not?"

I laughed. "I don't know. Now that I know you're
not going to hit on me, probably not."

The tension was broken. He laughed, too. "What
are you doing next Tuesday?"

Like I said, I was game. "Drinking beer with you.
Maybe."

There was no maybe about it. We went out the
following Tuesday. It was the only day I didn't have to
work, besides Sunday, which was never any good
because it came before blue Monday. I was a seam-
stress in a clothes store. It was boring. I never really
got to make dresses, just sewed the seams. It paid zip,
like every other teen job in Salem. Pepper had a job,
too. I'd seen him at it before we met. He delivered
flowers. What a joke. He rode to work on a motorcycle
at eighty miles an hour in black leather, then put on a
pansy coat and climbed in a van and tooled around
Salem making young and old women alike ecstatic.
He said the tips weren't bad, and the women were
always happy to kiss him.

We went to a movie and I rode on the back of his
motorcycle. It was a horror film about the second
expedition to Mars called The Season of Passage. At
the end I wanted to cry because it was so sad, but
Pepper was still eating his popcorn. He was stuffing it
into his face, and I found it impossible to weep with
someone eating beside me.
We went for a malt and fries afterward-a typical
date in Salem. The place wasn't option city. We drank
a couple of beers on a dark bus stop bench. But then,
on the way home, still on the back of his bike, I leaned
my head back and gazed at the stars, bright in the clear
black sky. I said something to Pepper about wishing
we had a flying saucer so we could leave the planet and
he instantly made a sharp U turn.

"Where are we going?" I called into the breeze. He
drove fast but smooth, with complete control. On our
next date, though, I had already decided that we'd go
in my car. I liked my hair to look like something
naturally attached to my body when I got to where I
was going. And I knew there would be a second date. I