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

sound up? Probably not. It increasingly seemed to him that television was being
created for someone else. He was welcome to watch it, of course, but it was not he
whom the creators had in mind.

As David left the room he passed one of the bookcases, and paused a
moment when a book caught his eye. He took it down, opened it. It was a first
edition of Conjuring and Magic by Robert Houdin, published in 1878, bought
some months before at a stall in Covent Garden. HeтАЩd told himself it was merely an
investment - at fifty pounds for a vg+ copy, it was certainly a bargain - but actually
heтАЩd bought it in the hope that going back to the classics might help. In fact, it had
yielded no better results than the small handful of cheap paperbacks heтАЩd desultorily
acquired over the last few years, since heтАЩd realized that a little magic was
some-thing heтАЩd very much like to be able to do. The problem with magic, heтАЩd
discovered, was that there was no trick to it. There was practice, and hard work -
and the will to put these things into practice. Even buying the little gewgaws of the
trade didnтАЩt help. All but the most banal still required sleight of hand, which had to
be acquired the old-fashioned way. If you learned how a trick worked, all you
actually gained was confirmation that it required a skill you didnтАЩt have and lacked
the time and energy to acquire. Learning how a trick worked was the same as being
told you couldnтАЩt do it. You gained nothing, and lost everything.
 He flicked through the book for a few moments, admiring the old illustrations
of palming techniques, and then put the volume back on the shelf. It wasnтАЩt worth
even trying tonight. Maybe tomorrow.

Instead he went into the kitchen and ate half a jar of olives while he waited for
the kettle to boil.
****
David dreamed a few more times in March, but remained unable to take
anything from them. All he was left with the next morning was absence and the
unnameable smell of open water. An absence, too, was what he felt during most of
the last weekend of the month, which they spent down in Cornwall. It was the third
time theyтАЩd taken a romantic mini-break in Padstow. Both pre-vious occasions had
been great successes. TheyтАЩd walked along the craggy coast, bought a couple of
little paintings which now graced the bathroom, enjoyed a superlative dinner in Rick
SteinтАЩs restaurant (having taken efficient care to book ahead). Good, clean, adult
fun. This time David couldnтАЩt seem to get into it. They did the same things, but it
wasnтАЩt the same, and it wasnтАЩt merely the repetition which made the difference.
Amanda was in good form, braced by the wind and the sky. To him they seemed
merely there. In some way it all reminded him of an experience heтАЩd had a couple of
weeks previously, during a meeting at work. A creative powwow, with, as it
happened, the clients with the potato-headed boss. There had come a point when
David had found himself talking. He had been talking for a little while, he realized,
and knew that he could keep going for as long as he wanted. The other people
around the table were either his employees or clients gathered to take advantage of
his keen design brain, his proven insights into the deep mysteries of corporate
identity. Their gazes were all on him. This didnтАЩt frighten him, merely made him
wonder if they were in fact listening, or rather staring at him and wondering who he
was, and what he was talking about. They were all nodding in the right places, so this
seemed unlikely. Presumably it was only David, therefore, who was wondering these
things. And wondering too whether it was ever worth speaking, if no one wanted you