"Richard Wadholm - From Here You Can See The Sunquists" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wadholm Richard)

houses that had been dug under in the hotel's wake. Where was that paella kitchen
where he had taught Mrs. Sunquist how to eat mangoes? Or the hotel where they had
hidden themselves away from the heat on those breathless August days when the sky
was blue-black with unspent rain? A less romantic man would have surrendered these
places to the iterations of memory. Mr. Sunquist surrendered nothing.



Twenty-five years up the highway would be the Hotel Mozambique, just as it had been at
the height of its renown. During the hot weekends of August, the Sunquists had allowed
themselves little vacations from their basement apartment on Four o'Clock Street. The
Hotel Mozambique had been their destination. Mr. Sunquist remembered the room they
had asked for. Number 219 looked out on the black-bottom pool and the ocean across
the road.



Here also would be Sonny's Bar, and the night he had proposed marriage to Melanie
Everett. This was one of Mrs. Sunquist's favorite moments.



They would get their room at the Mozambique, he decided. From there, they would find
the night of their proposal. But something about their Feynman was corrupted. Or
maybe Mrs. Sunquist wasn't reading it properly. Whatever, the Sunquists found
themselves retracing a patch of highway twenty-five years up the road. Just as their
navigating turned quarrelsome, Mrs. Sunquist sighted a blue-and-white beachcomber
bicycle racked up alongside the Ciriquito Street pier.



She pointed into the haze of decoherence that muffled the world beyond the road. In
that instant, a moment coalesced before them.



Mr. Sunquist found himself in a narrow parking strip looking down on a gentrified
waterfront. Sailboats in slips, caf├йs with sun decks. Temporal observatories offered
"Views of Parallel Worlds!" and, "The Chance to See the Life You Might Have Led!" All for
two dollars.



Sonny's Bar nestled into the crook where the Ciriquito Street Pier met the beach. Like
every other building on the beach, Sonny's Bar showed its backside to the landlubbers'
world. A sign had been painted above the dumpsters, reminding all the old
neighborhood that Sonny had been serving them in this same location "Since most of
you were underage."