"Van Lustbader, Eric - Linnear 01 - The Ninja" - читать интересную книгу автора (Van Lustbader Eric)

The crimson motes were like points of burnished brass; the right side of her
face was entirely in shadow. 'Will you answer it?'
He smiled. 'Some that I've not cared about. Few that I have."
And all the while she watched his eyes for any hint that he might be mocking
her. She found none.
'What is it you wish to know, Justine?' he said softly. 'Are you afraid I won't
tell you?"
'No.' She shook her head. 'I'm afraid that you will.' Her nails plucked at the
nubs of cotton as a musician fingers the strings of a harp. 'I want to and I
don't want to,' she said after a while.
He was about to say, with a smile, that it wasn't so serious but he realized
that it was; he knew what she was talking about. He came around the end of the
sofa, stood by her. 'It's only me, Justine,' he said, 'who's here. There's only
the two of us.'
'I know.' But it was not enough because she had said it like a little girl who
did not quite believe what she was saying, wanting only some outside reassurance
for an important inner act.
She broke away from this tight orbit, perhaps feeling the increasing magnetism
beginning to influence the balance, and went across the room to stand in front
of the large window. The outside lights were still on, and beyond the porch and
the fluttering pitiful moths the sea broke endlessly onto the shore, the sand
now as dark as coal.
'You know, for some reason this view reminds me of San Francisco.'
'When were you there?' he asked, coming round and sitting on one arm of the
sofa.
'About two years ago, I guess. I was there for eighteen months, almost.'
'Why'd you leave?'
'I - broke up with someone. Came back here. Returned to the East, the prodigal
daughter, into the bosom of her family.' For some reason that struck her as
funny, but the laugh seemed to strangle and die in her throat.
'You loved the city.'
'Yes,' she said. 'Yes, I did that. Very much."
'Then why leave it?'
'I - had to.' She lifted her slim hand, then looked at it, surprised that it was
in that position. 'I was a different person then. Not at all secure.' She
clasped her hands in front of her, arms extended downwards. 'I was so
vulnerable. I felt - I guess I felt that I couldn't stay there by myself. There
was a kind of wind sailing through me.' As if it were an afterthought, she said,
'It was a stupid situation. / was stupid.' She shook her head as if she still
could not believe how she had acted.
'I've been there twice,' Nicholas said. 'San Francisco, I mean. I fell in love
with it. Its size; its whiteness viewed from Mill Valley.' He was watching the
thin line of phosphorescence, almost transparent, that marked the rise of the
surf and its subsequent fall to earth, coming in, coming in. 'I used to go down
to the shore just to watch the Pacific and think: Here are these waves rolling
in, rolling all the way across the world from Japan.'
'Why did you leave?' she asked. 'What made you come here?'
He took a deep breath. 'That's difficult to sum up in words. I suppose it was an
aggregate of many things, a slow accretion. My father, you know, he wanted to
come to America. He loved Japan. Fought for it, always. He might have come here