"Lisa Tuttle & Steven Utley - In the Hole" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tuttle Lisa)

he had ever seen on a human face.

тАЬI do love you, Heath. I always have.тАЭ

тАЬI know. IтАЩve always loved you, too. I always will. Forever.тАЭ

They said no more. The better part of a minute passed. Then, still
without speaking, without even touching, they both rose from the table and
went to her bedroom.

The room was as he remembered it, only not so bright. The filmy
curtains were closed, and the late sunlight filtered through them, thin and
strange. The same prints of paintings by Monet and Cezanne hung on the
yellow walls, however, and the same china figurines shared space with what
seemed to be the same books and recordings on the shelves. He
recognized the flowered bedspread and fluffy white rug. He saw nothing
indicative of new interests acquired during the years of their separation, and
he wondered if she had really been here all that time, like the sleeping
princess in the fairytale, awaiting the reviving kiss of her prince. Or had she
returned only recently to look after her father? Had she left her real life
somewhere else, merely fitted herself back into the bedroom of her
childhood, too busy, or too depressed, to bother to redecorate, putting off
the major step of moving in all her stuff because to do so would be to admit
that this was her real life now?

He did not ask; he dared not risk this moment of intimacy.

Cara pulled back the bedspread, and they undressed clumsily,
scarcely looking at each other. Horribly aware of his wasted, scarred flesh,
pallid, shrivelled, and aged from years of semi-starvation spent crouching in
the dark, he was grateful for the maidenly reserve that kept her eyes
downcast as she fumbled with her clothes. When she turned away to pile
them neatly onto a chair, he crawled beneath the sheet. Moments later, she
slipped in beside him, and as they moved closer together he smelled the
clean fresh citrus tang of her shampoo, a powdery, perfumed waft of
deodorant, and the more subtle, personal scent of herself beneath. He put
his arms around her. She shivered at his touch and then lay still, waiting.

He waited, too.
 He thought of how she had come to him countless times in the hole,
of how he would squat and stare and see nothing in that utter blackness
until, after a time, he caught glimmers of light, and a faint hint of motion.
Then he would hear her voice humming a sad, wordless tune, and the
sadness of it would bring hot tears to his eyes. She would murmur his
name, tell him that she loved him, tell him what she had done that day, all
the simple, ordinary things: how she had gone on her bicycle to the store
and then worked in the garden with her father, the music she heard on the
radio while preparing supper, what book she read at bedtime.

Gradually, as he listened to her familiar phrases, the darkness would