"Kate Wilhelm - The Girl Who Fell into the Sky" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

the piano. For a moment he was tempted to finish his drink and
leave, let them fight it out. A surge of envy came and went; he
envied them their passion, their uncompromising fights, their
uncompromising love. They played hard, fought hard, loved hard,
and they had kept all their passion when characteristics were being
handed out at his conception. He had her hair and eyes, his fatherтАЩs
long thin nose and robust build. They had kept all the passion for
themselves.
When he left his parentsтАЩ house an hour later, the temperature
had climbed to one hundred ten, and he was committed to driving
three hundred plus miles to load an old piano into his fatherтАЩs truck
and bring it home.
He and his father were partners in the law firm his father had
started decades ago. He had called his secretary to warn her that
he would be gone a few days possibly, that MacLaren Senior would
handle anything that came up. There was no point now in going
back to the office since it was four, a blistering afternoon, and he
was driving his fatherтАЩs ten-year-old truck without air conditioning.
He turned toward his house instead of downtown Wichita.
His house overlooked Three Oaks Golf Club; no one was on the
greens that hot afternoon. The sprinklers worked day and night, it
seemed, and still the grass had brown patches here and there. The
groundskeepers kept moving the sprinklers in a futile attempt to
cope with the heat wave and drought. John entered the house
through the garage door and turned up the air conditioning on his
way to the front door mail drop. No letter from Gina. He dumped
the mail on the hall table and went to the kitchen to make himself
a drink, and again a surge of envy swept him. His parents fought
like alley brats and would kill anyone who tried to come between
them. He and Gina never fought, never quarreled, never spoke
sharply to each other, and she was spending the hot summer with
her family in St. Louis. She did not write, did not call, and when he
called, she was out somewhere. He spoke on those occasions with
his son Tommy, or his daughter Amanda, but not with his wife who
was always very, very busy.


Lorna Shields stood behind the heavy glass door of the Howard
Johnson restaurant where she had just finished a strawberry soda
and a glass of iced tea and two glasses of water. Beyond the door
the heat rose crookedly from the pavement; the glare of light was
painful. Ever rising heat; cruel light; and no sweat. ItтАЩs not Ohio,
kid, she told herself with some satisfaction. Not at all like Ohio. Oh,
it got hot back there, too, but a thick, sticky, sweat-making heat,
not like this inferno that sucked her dry as soon as she walked out
into it. Her lips felt parched; her skin prickled; her hair had so
much static electricity that when she had tried to comb it on
entering the rest room earlier, it had sprung out like the hair of the
bride of Frankenstein. She had laughed and another woman in the
small space had eyed her warily.