"New York Vignette" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sturgeon Theodore)

awning had slipped off its little hooks where I suppose the wind had bent them.
And before I knew what was happening, my man in the brown bowler had skipped up
two rungs of the ladder. He stood there balanced easily, and with one hand he
tipped his hat and with the other he took from his pocket a pair of pliers and
handed them up to the hardware fellow. Then off he went again, up the Avenue,
and when I passed the ladder I could see by the hardware fellow's face that he,
too, had gotten a special smile from the man: a piece of it was on his lips. He
took the pliers, scratched his head. I heard him laugh, and then he began to fix
his awning as if the pliers were exactly the tool he needed, which I'm sure they
were.

I hurried then, because I wanted to see the face of such a man as this, and I
hadn't, yet. I caught up with him at 50th Street. He had paused there, waiting
for something. Maybe he was waiting to decide which way to go, and maybe he was
waiting for me; I don't know. As I drew abreast he turned to face me.

Now, I don't want to disappoint you but I can't tell you what his face was like.
All I can say is that it was as neat as the rest of him, everything about it
just where it should be. He smiled.

It was like looking into a bright light, but it didn't dazzle. It was warm, like
the windows of farmhouses late at night when there's snow. It made me smile too,
the biggest, widest smile that ever happened to me, so wide that I heard a
little...(ONE CLEAR CHUCK, AS WHEN ONE CHUCKS TO A HORSE: BUT ONLY
ONE)...somewhere in my back teeth. I must have been bemused for a second or two,
because when I blinked the feeling away, the man was gone. Still smiling, I got
into a cab that pulled up for the light just then; I suddenly wanted to be home,
next to Robin and Tandy and my wife, while I felt just that way.

As the cab started to move, I turned and looked through the rear window, and I
saw the man briefly, just once more. One of those poor, cowed, unhappy men had
sidled up to him, and in every line of his shabby figure I recognized him and
all like him, and I could all but hear the cringing voice, "Dime fer a cuppa
cawfee, mister?" And the last thing I saw was the reflection of that incredible
smile on the man's dirty face, as Mr. Brown Bowler Hat reached into his
impossible pocket and handed the man a thick, steaming china mug of hot coffee
and walked on.

I leaned back on the cushions and watched New York streaming past outside, and I
thought: well, if this city has something for everyone, then I suppose it has in
it a man who can reach into his pocket and grant anyone's smaller, happy-making
wishes. And then I thought, he has tickets and tools and cups of coffee and
heaven knows what else for other people, but he apparently couldn't give me the
one thing I wanted at the time, which was a little story for Pulse. So here I am
home again, feeling sort of nice because my wife and kids appreciate the bit of
smile I brought in, but otherwise disappointed because, whatever else happened,
I don't have a story for you. I guess the man in the brown bowler hat didn't
have one in his pocket at the time.
Yours very truly,
Theodore Sturgeon