"Michaela Roessner - It's a Wonderful Life" - читать интересную книгу автора (Roessner Michaela)

ItтАЩs a Wonderful Life
by Michaela Roessner

Michaela Roessner is the author of several novels, including Walkabout
Woman and Vanishing Point. Our readers might recall her story
тАЬHorse-Year WomenтАЭ from our Jan. 2006 issue. She says that her new
story ties together several threads: an Aikido student who is currently
enlisted in the Coast Guard partly so he can attend film school when his
tour of duty is over; her Vietnam vet husband; hearing her friend Marta
Randall mourn the loss of certain old buildings in Berkeley; and her own
interest in the conventions of wish fulfillment stories.
And then thereтАЩs the fact that тАШtis the holiday season....

****

Dodging all the folks wearing white lab coats who were rushing about, Cal
stuck close to the far side of the hallway, using his mop handle to nudge his
wheeled bucket along the corridor of the subbasement third floor. He tried
to make himself as thin as possible against the wall, tried to look like less of
a janitor/slacker by pulling the zipper of his work jumpsuit higher over the
black T-shirt underneath; the one that said тАЬCannes FanтАЭ in the faded silver
lettering of too many trips through the washing machine.

The younger technicians had been drafted into hauling down new,
revamped equipment. They were having trouble pulling it all out of the
service elevator, pushing it the length of the hall, then jostling it through the
designated roomтАЩs double-wide swinging doors.

The older ones shuffled papers on clipboards, checking off crisp little
check marks on long lists, frowning, not looking up even once or breaking
stride, not questioning for a moment that the surrounding chaos would part
before them like the Red Sea did for Charleton HestonтАФthey were that
confident of their status.

Cal glanced into the room as he passed. Busy bees. Busy bees. The
engineers, physicists, administrators, technicians, security spooks, and who
knows else swarmed over banks of machines, tiers of switches, and a
vipersтАЩ nest worth of electrical cables. The tangle of cables reminded Cal of
Indiana JonesтАЩs snake pit.

It was always like this. The secret separate parts that had been
abuilding in the different departments all coming and fitting together into a
big-ass, room-filling, three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle.
 Cal shoved his galvanized metal mop bucket forward. All it meant to
him was that in the end thereтАЩd be, yet again, one less room for him to
clean down here. He glanced over his shoulder, back the way heтАЩd come
from slopping down the Control Center at the end of the hallway by the
regular elevators and the stairway. Along the hall, between the Control
Center and where he stood, he could see the double-wide doors of four
other rooms, two on each side of the hallway, facing each other. Their glass