"Richard Paul Russo - Just Drive, She Said" - читать интересную книгу автора (Russo Richard Paul)

On the freeway there were differences I could identify. The overhead signs
were blue rather than green, lit from below by rose-tinted lights. And the
street and city names were completely unfamiliar--definitely not English.
I didn't think I could pronounce half of them.
"You going to tell me what the hell is happening here?"
"Just look for a motel," she said.
"And how am I supposed to recognize one?"
She smiled. "Spelled just the same here as where you're from. It's
practically a trans-universal word."
We drove on, and I wanted something to break the silence, to ground me.
"Will that thing play music?"
The woman just laughed and shook her head, and I wondered what was so
funny.
She was right, though, about a motel. From a mile away I saw a bright
glowing sign:
MOTEL
As we got closer, I could make out other words, but none of them made
sense. There were numbers as well, but there were too many digits, and a
strange hooked symbol instead of a dollar sign.
"Hope you can pay for this," I said. "My money's not going to be much good
here."
She smiled. "You'd be surprised."
I pulled off the freeway, drove into the motel parking lot, and the woman
pointed out the office at the end of the building. She made me go in with
her. At the desk, she talked to a crusty old man who wore a black helmet,
face covered by a smoky visor. What they spoke sounded like a mix of
foreign languages--a few words close to English, others like German, a few
like French.
The woman paid with large, brightly colored bills, and the man gave her a
narrow cylinder that hung by a chain from a plastic ball. We walked back
to the car in silence, then she directed me to drive around the back of
the building, where we parked in front of a tan door. The woman handed the
wine bottles to me, took two duffel bags out from behind the seats, then
made sure I locked the car. She inserted the cylinder into a narrow
opening where it hummed, then clicked; the door swung open, and we stepped
inside.
There was a table with two padded chairs, a television set, a radio, and a
double bed. The woman set the duffel bags on the floor, and I put the wine
bottles on the table; the labels had changed, and were now unreadable. I
looked at her.
"There's only one bed."
"We'll manage," she said. "Let's go get something to eat, I'm hungry."
We went to a coffee shop next to the motel, where the woman ordered for
both of us. I ended up with something that looked and tasted a lot like a
Denny's chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes.


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