"Smeds-MarathonRunner" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smeds Dave)

She leaned into him, robbing her slick form against his. The spray couldn't wash
away, her fresh, feminine aroma. His penis stirred against the curve of her
buttocks.

He shifted his hips away abruptly, as he would have done had a child, wriggling
in his lap, prompted an inadvertent sexual response.

He needed time. An evening of candlelight and good food would reshape his mood,
make him forget the ninety year difference in their ages. Even a few minutes
might be enough, but not now, with the water rinsing away the delicacy of his
fantasies.

He didn't have time. The stiffening of her shoulders told him she'd taken
offense.

Ah, thought Neil, he'd buried himself now. She'd made an offer, and he had
slapped it down. She wouldn't leave herself open for rejection a second time. If
he wanted anything to happen later, he'd have to pursue her with diligence.
She'd make him ask, in words, and would give him no encouragement until her ego
had recovered.

But he didn't want to pursue her with that kind of fervor until he was more sure
of his feelings for her. Yet to delay would surely cause yet another insult. He
didn't have to be a genius to know that all too soon, Felice would be looking
for a new tennis partner.

Slowly, like a senior citizen, Neil rinsed the soap from his hands.

Daffodils bloomed along the walkways of the cemetery. The heat of late spring
had already shriveled natural daffs, but here the yellow King Alfreds and
orange-and-tan Saharan Lords stood tall and proud, maintained by their own
versions of nanodocs, programmed by the groundskeeper.

Neil followed a route his feet had traveled many times before, until the
headstones took on dates-of-birth that sent a burble of acid up his esophagus.
1950. 1955. 1960. 1965. The last generation to die of old age. He could find the
names of kindergarten classmates on those marble and granite markers. By the law
of averages, his mortal remains should be here, too. But that burst appendix
hadn't claimed him, the lymphoma had been treatable, that drunk driver had
swerved at the last moment. Here he was.

An ancient oak tree shaded the particular resting site that he had come to see.
Weather had muted the sharpness of the carved letters. He scanned across the
name to the impossible date-of-death. How had thirty-two years passed with so
little in them?

Kneeling he placed a lavender rose upon the grass, over the spot he imagined his
good wife's heart to be.

"You spoiled me, Stacey," he said to the earth. "You set my damn standards too