"Reed-TheSingingMarine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reed Kit)

"So if you don't mind . . ."

"You haven't ordered."

There is nothing on the menu that he wants. This isn't a bar, where you can
order something deep enough to disappear into; it's an old-fashioned pharmacy
with a soda fountain and this is high noon, not the dead of night that lets you
go home with the lovely woman who found you. When he goes outside, it will still
be hot and bright. "It's not my kind of place."

As he stands she rises with him; they could be executing the first movement in
an elegant pas de deux. "It's not mine either," she says, drawing her long hands
down his arms. "Let me take you someplace where it's cool."

Emerging from the air-conditioned drugstore, he is staggered by the heat. When
he looks for the woman, she is several paces ahead. "Where are we going?"

Her tone is suggestive; she does not look back, but the words reach him.
"Someplace you already know."

The Marine will remember the aftenoon as a bizarre, agonizing progress on foot,
her striding ahead with those black gauze skirts flying and him struggling along
behind, heading for the next town. No cars pass them but he understands that she
would not accept a ride. In the outskirts of the big town or small city, she
stops at a marked bench just as the bus comes along. DEEP CAVERNS, the marker
says. He is about to tell her he's never heard of the place when she turns on
the step and pulls him on board.

So they ride out to the caverns side by side on the cracked leatherette back
seat with engine fumes boiling up between their knees while the woman thinks
whatever she is thinking and the singing Marine finds that even the relentless
monotony of the song cannot crowd out the mishap that separated him from his
platoon last night and put him on this road. He is grieving for them. "What?"

"I said, when you get there, I want you to go inside for me."

The thick fumes make his eyes water. "Ma'am?"

"I can't," she says. "You have to. Understand, you won't be sorry. In the end,
I'll make you very happy."

"You . . . want me to go into the caverns?"

"It's cool," she says. "Believe me, you won't be sorry."

"You want me to go in and get . . ."

"The tinderbox. It's an old-fashioned fire-starter."

"What would you want a thing like that for?"