"Michael Marshall Smith - Maybe Next Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Michael Marshall)

fashion. The companyтАЩs job was to take other companiesтАЩ corporate identities and
make them better. Spruce up or rethink the logo, make typeface decisions, provide a
range of stationery to cater for all contingencies: business cards, letter-heads,
following-page sheets (just the logo, no address), docu-ment folders, fax sheets,
envelope labels, cassette boxes for the video companies. They had the latest Macs
and some decent young designers. Their accounts department was neither
menda-cious nor incompetent. Everyone did their job, well enough to weather the
periodicity of corporate confidence and wavering discretionary spend. His company
was a success, but sometimes David thought the only interesting thing about it was
the name. HeтАЩd chosen it personally, on start-up, seven years before. Every-one else
- including Amanda - had thought it a bad idea. All too easy to take the second word
and run with it. Who wants to hire bodgers, even if you know itтАЩs a little joke? David
fought, arguing that it showed a confident expectation that clients would never feel
the need to make the association. He won, and it worked, and there were other times
when David thought that the name was probably the most boring thing about the
company, too.

One evening in February he found himself in Blockbuster, looking for a film
he couldnтАЩt name. He was twice becalmed at pub bars, both times with clients,
having remembered what he wanted to drink, but then forgotten it again. On both
occasions he bought a glass of Chardonnay, which was what he always drank.

Once again, too, David found himself hesitating in the midst of jotting a note
at work: apparently unsure not so much of what he was going to write as of the
precise physical nature of the act. He hadnтАЩt forgotten how to use a pen, of course.
It was more a question of choice, like recalling whether one played a tennis
backhand with one or two hands on the racket. When he eventually started writing,
his handwriting looked odd for a while.
 But it was not until the next month that he could honestly say that he started to
think about any of these things.

****

On 4 March David dreamed. This was not in itself unusual. He dreamed as
much as the next man, the usual intermittent cocktail of machine-like anxiety or
amusing but forgettable trivia. On the fourth of March he dreamed of something
different. He didnтАЩt know what it was; could not, when he awoke, remember. But he
was distracted as he sat with his first cup of the day, feeling as if some recollection
was hidden just behind a fold in his brain. He stood, stared out of the window, and
did not move even after Amanda had come down after her shower.

She rummaged in the cupboard, looking for a new box of her current brand
of herbal tea. тАЬWhat are you thinking about?тАЭ

тАЬI donтАЩt know,тАЭ he said.

тАЬWhy have we got so many olives?тАЭ

тАЬHmm?тАЭ He turned to look at her. The memory felt neither closer nor further
away. She held up a jar of green olives.