"Dead To Me" - читать интересную книгу автора (Strout Anton)

SCRYER

We’re looking for unique individuals for unique growth opportunities!!!

Wanted for detail-oriented, interpersonal casework in a busy office environment. Some travel.

Knowledge of Excel, Front Page, Clairaudience, Clairvoyance, PowerPoint, and Word a must.

Special in-house training program for motivated self-starters. Familiarity with basic armaments a plus.

About our company-Misunderstood but special. About you-Special but misunderstood.

NO Scientologists or actors!Respond Box D3P7-07H3R

I was intrigued. What type of organization would post such a bizarre message-part business, part Amazing Kreskin-that wholly peaked the interest of someone like myself? Clairaudience and Clairvoyance might have turned out to be computer programs, but my gut told me they weren’t. My gut told me reply to the ad.

I left a message the next day, and within a week, I found myself pulled into a world beyond my own personal pains, a world that promised control of what I was and what I could do.

A world, I noted through the crusting liquid film solidifying on my watch, that with only two hours ’til sunrise, was rapidly approaching. I would gladly have traded my powers of psychometry for the ability to turn back time-maybe fly around the world like Superman-all for an extra five hours of blissful sleep.

I mournfully threw my ruined jacket into a basket in the bathroom markedTO BURN. The coat was beyond hope, but maybe I could salvage my dear Ramones tee. I threw it into the bathroom sink to let it soak overnight. Maybe I’d become a trendsetter and soon bootlegGABBA GABBA HE T-shirts would be all the rage.

A shower never felt so good, but it was slow going as my body popped and cracked like that of a ninety-year-old. It took forever to free myself from the street ick I had rolled around in, but eventually time and several shampoos won out. I got out of the shower and toweled off as I ignored a volley of fresh new aches and pains. I gimped myself across the room and collapsed on the lonely expanse of my bed. The Bed That Sex Forgot.

As I drifted off to sleep, I tried with little success to hold back a montage of psychometric flashes of all my old girlfriends having much better and sweatier times in bed with men other than me. Tamara was now part of that list. Some people counted sheep. I counted orgiastic, writhing bodies. I was up to forty-six when calm, dreamless sleep finally engulfed me, and the discomforting sound of Mardi Gras beads rhythmically goingshink shink shink faded from my brain.