"Baroque Cycle 1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stephenson Neal)

“I like it too. It’ll be interesting to see what Phil says about it. I wonder if we’re hanging him too far out there.”

“I think he’ll be okay, but I wonder what Winston’s staff will say.”

“They’ll have a cow.”

“It’s true. They’re worse than Winston himself. A bunch of Sir Humphreys if I ever saw one.”

“I don’t know, I think they’re just fundamentalist know-nothings.”

“True, but we’ll show them.”

“I hope.”

“Charles my man, you’re sounding tired. I suppose the Joe is about to wake up.”

“Yeah.”

“Unrelenting eh?”

“Yeah.”

“But you are the man, you are the greatest Mr. Mom inside the Beltway!”

Charlie laughed. “And all that competition.”

Roy laughed too, pleased to be able to cheer Charlie up. “Well it’s an accomplishment anyway.”

“That’s nice of you to say. Most people don’t notice. It’s just something weird that I do.”

“Well that’s true too. But people don’t know what it entails.”

“No they don’t. The only ones who know are real moms, but they don’t think I count.”

“You’d think they’d be the ones who would.”

“Well, in a way they’re right. There’s no reason me doing it should be anything special. It may just be me wanting some strokes. It’s turned out to be harder than I thought it would be. A real psychic shock.”

“Because…”

“Well, I was thirty-eight when Nick arrived, and I had been doing exactly what I wanted ever since I was eighteen. Twenty years of white male American freedom, just like what you have, young man, and then Nick arrived and suddenly I was at the command of a speechless mad tyrant. I mean, think about it. Tonight you can go wherever you want to, go out and have some fun, right?”

“That’s right, I’m going to go to a party for some new folks at Brookings, supposed to be wild.”

“All right, don’t rub it in. Because I’m going to be in the same room I’ve been in every night for the past seven years, more or less.”

“So by now you’re used to it, right?”

“Well, yes. That’s true. It was harder with Nick, when I could remember what freedom was.”

“You have morphed into momhood.”

“Yeah. But morphing hurts, baby, just like in X-Men. I remember the first Mother’s Day after Nick was born, I was most deep into the shock of it, and Anna had to be away that day, maybe to visit her mom, I can’t remember, and I was trying to get Nick to take a bottle and he was refusing it as usual. And I suddenly realized I would never be free again for the whole rest of my life, but that as a non-mom I was never going to get a day to honor my efforts, because Father’s Day is not what this stuff is about, and Nick was whipping his head around even though he was in desperate need of a bottle, and I freaked out, Roy. I freaked out and threw that bottle down.”

“You threw it?”

“Yeah I slung it down and it hit at the wrong angle or something and just exploded. The baggie broke and the milk shot up and sprayed all over the room. I couldn’t believe one bottle could hold that much. Even now when I’m cleaning the living room I come across little white dots of dried milk here and there, like on the mantelpiece or the windowsill. Another little reminder of my Mother’s Day freak-out.”

“Ha. The morph moment. Well Charlie you are indeed a pathetic specimen of American manhood, yearning for your own Mother’s Day card, but just hang in there—only seventeen more years and you’ll be free again!”

“Oh fuckyouverymuch! By then I won’t want to be.”

“Even now you don’t wanna be. You love it, you know you do. But listen I gotta go Phil’s here bye.”

“Bye.”