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

"I don't see my truck," Mr. Sunquist said. "Are you sure this is the night?"
"You called me from your office and said to meet you here," Mrs. Sunquist said. "I do
not make a habit of bicycling to bars. This is the night you proposed."



"Maybe we pulled off the highway a few minutes early." Mr. Sunquist offered. He
suggested they wait for him inside the bar, just to be sure.



The interior was designed in one of those inverted situations from the turn of some
century. The patrons clambered together on a large round cushion the color and texture
of boxing gloves. Three bartenders hovered over a counter that encircled them.



TV monitors were placed to catch the eye at every angle. In this age, Sonny's fancied
itself a sports bar. But Sonny himself? He liked novellas, Mexican soap operas. Two
different ones were playing simultaneously as the Sunquists walked in. A regular was
complaining that the World Cup was on, Brazil versus Russia. Sonny was laughing and
nodding, paying the man no particular mind. His eyes were neither on the man nor on
the screens.



Like everyone else in the room, Sonny watched the girl in the sundress and sandals. She
sat on the quiet side of a circular cushion, away from most of the television screens. She
read Justine (the one by Lawrence Durrell, not Marquis de Sade), and nudged a glass of
chardonnay around by the stem. Maybe it was something about seeing across
twenty-five years in the space of a single room, but Mr. Sunquist imagined the girl in a
singular light. Maybe it was simply that everyone else seemed to dim by comparison.



The Sunquists found chairs in an alcove beneath one of the television screens. They had
a view of the bar from here, and the television to distract anyone who looked their way.



A waiter asked what they were having. Mrs. Sunquist asked for iced tea. ("Ice tea," she
snickered. "This kills me.")



Mr. Sunquist liked a scotch-and-soda, but not here. As he looked across the bar, he
recognized iterations of himself and his wife from other summers, all drinking
scotch-and-sodas. He did not wish to be known by the sort of drink he ordered. He
ordered a glass of merlot.