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

to stop.

On the second evening in Padstow they paid their tribute to the god of
seafood. Amanda seemed happy, perky in a new Karen Millen and smelling faintly of
expensively complimentary sham-poos and unguents. David knew that it was
remarkable that a woman of thirty-seven should look so good in fashion tailored for
the young and slim, and was glad. Not delighted - because, to be honest, he had
grown accustomed to Amanda looking good - but glad. The food was predictably
excellent. David ate it. Amanda ate it. They talked of things in the news and in the
papers. They were benignly tolerant of the next table, which featured two
well-behaved but voluble children. Neither had anything against children. They didnтАЩt
have any because it had been discussed, seven or eight years before, when David
was launching the business and Amanda had just switched companies and
em-barked on the route to her current exalted position in publishing. At the time it
would have been a mistake to complicate their lives, or might have been a mistake. It
was then still more or less appropriate, too, for Amanda to make that amusing joke
about not needing children just yet, because she was married to one. David did little
to sustain this idea now bar an occasional hangover and a once-in-a-while
good-humoured boisterousness, but having children wasnтАЩt something they
discussed at the moment. Maybe later.

They went back to their room after dinner and made love. This was nice, if a
little self-conscious and laden with implicit self-congratulation. TheyтАЩd still got it, still
knew how to have a good time. That much was clear.

In the middle of the night David awoke. Amanda was sound asleep beside
him, and remained so for the two hours he spent lying on his back, staring up at the
ceiling. This time heтАЩd brought something more back with him than an atmosphere.
An image of long grasses near somewhere watery. Of somewhere not close, but not
far away.

A sense that this was not the beginning of something after all.

****

By the second week of April David was waking almost once a night to find
himself lying in a strange bed. Familiarity closed in rapidly, but for a moment there
was a sense of inexplicability, like moving on from the missing (4) to the comfort of
the present (5). He could remember things about the dreams now. Very small things.
The long grasses, often, though sometimes they seemed more like reeds. The sense
of water: not moving fast, not a river or stream, but present nonetheless.

Finally, a building, or the remains of one.

He knew it was a building, and that it was ruined, though in the dream his
point of view was too close up to make out anything more than lichened stone and
clouded blue sky above. As if he was crouched down low, and glancing up.

That morning Amanda look at him over her cup of mint tea. тАЬWhere did all
those olives go?тАЭ