"The Cloud Atlas" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mitchell David)CHAPTER 8I HAD NO IDEA WHERE GURLEY AND I WERE FLYING, SO I packed everything I could think of into a large duffel and hauled it down to the airfield the next morning. I got there an hour early, just to be safe. After a flight left for Juneau and points south at 0630, I had the terminal to myself, with the exception of a surly master sergeant who appeared to be in charge of everyone’s comings and goings. I went outside to wait. At 7:10, the sergeant poked his head outside the door and asked if I’d seen a Captain Gurley I said no, and he ducked back inside before I could say anything more. At 7:30, the sergeant poked his head outside again, saw me, frowned, and then disappeared once more. At 7:55, Gurley bounced up in the back of a jeep driven by two sailors. None of the three looked like they had bathed, changed, or slept since the day before. Gurley climbed out of the back carefully, but quickly, exchanged a laugh with the driver, and then turned to face me. The jeep lurched away. “Who’s late, Belk? You or me?” He looked at his watch, and then caught sight of my bag. “What’s this?” he asked, kicking it. “You packed me a lunch?” “No, sir,” I said. “I-well, I wasn’t sure where we were going, so I packed everything I—” Gurley looked completely confused, so I tried something shorter: “That’s my gear, sir.” “Lovely, Belk, but why-oh dear,” he said. “You assumed-but of course you did, what with your feeble brain and eager youth. You thought you were going Gurley walked us away from the building-he was concerned about eavesdropping; I was concerned about a fight-and then turned me around, put his hands on my shoulders, and said, “Before we begin, Sergeant, let us be absolutely clear on one point. What you learned yesterday is extremely secret. You are to tell no one. If you do—” Now, it would have been clear enough for Gurley to draw a finger across his own throat. But, as always, he’d devised better. Whether it was improvised or practiced, I can’t say, but this is what he did: he put a thumb to my neck, just to the left of my carotid artery. And then he slowly drew his thumbnail across-carotid, esophagus, jugular- before lifting it, before I quite knew how to react, before I’d started breathing once more. He smiled. “There, now,” he said. “It might just be better to pretend-and this may not be too difficult to do-that you learned nothing, not a single thing.” He was right. That would not be difficult at all, because this was Alaska. During the war, the entirety of Alaska was declared of strategic importance. Press censorship was so tight, soldiers returning Outside sometimes weakly joked that their whole horrific Alaskan experience may have taken place in their imaginations. They’d been to this strange and wild place, after all; many of them never saw the enemy (nor the sun). Once they were home, they discovered that no one had heard or read a single word about what they’d done. Daily dispatches from the South Pacific appeared in the press, but the Alaska news blackout was almost total. Maybe nothing had happened there at all. And if Americans thought that, if the enemy thought that, it was fine with Gurley. He fought his war on two fronts, as he now explained. On one side were the Japanese, their balloons, and the prevailing winds. On the other side, the American press and public, whom he feared and loathed even more. The greatest danger these balloons posed, Gurley insisted repeatedly, was not that they would kill a few civilians or set ablaze a few acres, but rather that they would be discovered by the wrong sort of people-in particular, members of the press, who would inevitably sensationalize the issue. And why not? Japanese bombs were raining down on North America almost daily now, and not many Americans-though surely more than Gurley’s supposed fifty-knew what was happening. Although there had been a few brief mentions of the balloons in the As it happens, just such a blanket agreement was later struck. But when I told Gurley that this sounded like a sensible plan, his reply was quick. “The best way to keep a secret is to tell as many people as possible?” Gurley said. I tensed for a fist or foot to come flying. “Tell as many If the witnesses were civilian, the job became a little more involved. Depending on what they had seen-or But now, Gurley’s plan-indeed, his whole mission-was in jeopardy. He had been summoned to San Francisco by his superiors to discuss the progress of balloon interdiction efforts. Or rather, the decline of such efforts. Early on, the numbers of balloons spotted had climbed steadily, week after week. Then they had stabilized, and recently, had begun to decline. The question now was whether to scale back American efforts to track and recover balloons. After all, resources were needed elsewhere, especially as U.S. forces drew ever closer to Japan. Instead of soldiers, the U.S. would now rely on local authorities and private citizens to find and report balloons. The press ban would be lifted; a general alert would be issued. Gurley, of course, disagreed. “It’s not just about me, Sergeant,” he said. “It’s not just that I sense dark forces are, yet again, trying to sweep me into some forgotten corner of the war. I have America ’s interests at heart.” He looked at me. “This campaign has only begun. These first balloons, what have they carried? Piddly little incendiary or antipersonnel bombs? You don’t develop an entire program like this to start a few brush fires. Think, Sergeant.” I did, but all I could think of was how Gurley really was taking this personally. “There’s worse coming, Belk. That must be evident, even to you.” He looked at me and waited. “A “Where?” I asked, or stammered, honestly frightened-though more of Gurley than of what his imagination had produced. “Well, I doubt they’re in goddamn San Francisco with my so-called superiors.” He turned around, waved broadly at the mountains that formed a backdrop to the base. “Here, Belk. Alaska. In the vast, concealing wilderness. Our backyard, Belk. We have to find them. And damn soon, before we get shut down. So you shall be busy while I’m gone.” “Yes, sir,” I said, looking up to the mountains, their crowns still scabbed with snow. Gurley followed my gaze. “Not up there, you ninny. Or who knows, maybe. But we’re not going to go hiking around aimlessly- I’m certainly not going to go hiking around anywhere-no, start your search here. Back at 520. Start with the book. I trust you came up with nothing?” “No sir,” I said. “Nothing yet.” I’d stayed in the office until midnight, staring at the book until the watercolor maps seemed to animate, its rivers flow and grasses glisten after a rain. Which seemed like more than a book could or should do, so I had closed it and crept back to the barracks for sleep. Gurley shook his head. “Well, of course I didn’t expect a child prodigy. Just someone to put in the tedious work of comparing the book’s maps to ours, quadrant by quadrant, feature by feature. Tedious work-you can see why I thought of you.” I opened my mouth to protest, but didn’t utter a sound when I saw Gurley’s face harden into the one he assumed before delivering a blow. “Sergeant Belk,” he said, low and even. “One balloon, one explosion, one leg. I almost had my war taken from me.” He straightened up. “I barely held on to my commission. I had to fight to even get posted to this godforsaken place. They’d rather have me in a bathrobe and wheelchair in Princeton. If we fail to find more balloons, or worse still, find one and handle it injudiciously-if I lose the second leg-or a hand, or an arm, or an eye, or the skin off my fucking face-it won’t matter how much I yell. I’ll be shipped home before the blood’s even soaked through the bandages.” He took a deep breath. “Do you understand?” “Yes, sir,” I said. “I shall close by letting you in on a final secret,” Gurley said. “A trifle compared to all that I have told you so far, but still, a secret, and an important one nonetheless.” “Sir?” “Right, then: I know almost nothing about defusing bombs.” He paused. “And thus, I shall leave those details… to you.” I could only stare at him. He wore the same bomb disposal insignia I did. I’d assumed that when he’d gotten himself assigned to this mission he had picked up the bomb disposal training that went with it. Of course he would have. He’d learned, hadn’t he, the price explosives exacted from the ignorant? “Sir,” I began, searching for the best way to phrase this. He was an officer, I was the sergeant. The way things worked— “You’re incapable of this?” Gurley asked. “I was told you were the best in your class. Now that I have had some time to observe you, I can see that it was not much of a class, but still, I had certain expectations.” “Sir,” I began, thinking back to Manzanar, the pit, Sergeant Redes, and the “rare” fuze pocket that had simply fallen out of the bomb. “So I understand,” said Gurley. “And so it was here, until recently. But, as I believe I’ve said, they’ve been trying to shut me down. Starve me. I used to have a full detail, including a young lieutenant, planning to read history at Oxford when this was all done.” Gurley’s actor’s mask fell for a moment, and then he resumed. “I must admit, I took a certain shine to him, although he was given to a younger man’s ways. And, of course, he was no good at his job, or I assume as much, because he blew himself right up on the team’s second mission.” “I’m sorry to hear that, sir,” I said, though I was barely listening. All I could think of was: “Well, I was pretty damn sorry as well. Not just because he was a good sort, but-an officer. That’s when it struck me, this little swipe of genius: “Sir, I’m not sure that, well, in training, they—” “Yes, of course, they’re always behind in training. No, no, Sergeant, I’m quite pleased with my proposal, and expect you to be as well. Or… I can… reassign you, if you like.” He looked back toward the terminal. “I’m frequently told that young and able men are needed to clear out caves and bunkers on treeless islands throughout the Pacific. North or south, your choice.” He waited. “No, sir,” I said quietly. “No to the north, or south? Aleutians or Philippines?” “I’m your man, Captain,” I said. “For this mission.” Gurley said nothing for a full minute, and I could feel him staring at me the whole time. “Sergeant,” he finally said, “I believe that you shall never again find a mission as intriguing-or easy. You are used to digging out half-ton bombs that have plummeted from great heights deep into the earth; these bombs flitter and float to earth via We began walking back to the terminal. I wondered what Sergeant Redes would have had to say about Gurley’s dangerous-as-groceries bombs. “And if it weren’t all obvious enough,” Gurley said, “there is even a We’d reached the door of the terminal, and he paused. “One more thing, Sergeant. Examine your heart while I’m gone. Examine your hands, for that matter. If you feel you’re not up to this task-if you’re not up to tackling alone what bombs we do find, tell me when I get back. Because I don’t want to face another scene like I did with that Harvard man. He didn’t die immediately, you know. Lasted long enough to ask me to put a bullet in him. Put him out of his misery.” Gurley grimaced. “Can you imagine such a thing? Good Lord, there was hardly enough left of him to shoot.” With that, he opened the door and stepped inside. THERE IS PLENTY of Ronnie left to shoot. But they don’t allow guns in the hospice. It doesn’t matter; I have an equally efficient weapon in my hand. Ronnie’s Comfort One bracelet. It is pretty, in its way. A heavy gold chain with a green and gold charm featuring the program’s curious logo: the two words, plus two restroom-sign-style humanoids, a gold person standing behind a white one. Is the white one the patient, and the gold the comforter? Or is the white the soul, the gold the body? Unfortunately, what it resembles most to me is a mugging, the gold man about to pounce his hapless white counterpart. It cost twenty dollars, as predicted, but I know it’s worth much more than that. They are precious things to those who have them, and I find that more of the elderly and dying I visit in the hospital or hospice these days do. They’re meant to spare patients pain and everyone else second-guessing. Ailing parishioners usually try to hide the existence of Do Not Resuscitate orders from me; they know the Church stands against euthanasia and worry that their DNRs might run afoul of such beliefs. As it happens, they need not be concerned, but that doesn’t keep the patients who have DNRs from prizing them. I marvel at some of those I visit here, so desperate to die. I think of those Japanese soldiers on Kiska, surrounded by the enemy, with no hope of survival. I think of their wounded, the Japanese soldiers in their field hospital, committing suicide. The doctor doled out grenades, gently laying one on each man’s chest. Those who could, pulled their own pins. He pulled the pin for those who could not. Three hundred died this way; the doctor wrote as much in his diary. Then he put down the pen, closed the book, and picked up the grenade he’d reserved for himself. I’m surprised Ronnie ordered the bracelet. It means he had to get the paperwork, have a doctor sign it, and send it off. It suggests planning and foresight that he never seemed capable of nor interested in. More to the point, it suggests he’s going to die, and that he knows this. It makes me realize that I may be the only person who doesn’t think he’s going to die. Or, for that matter, the only one who doesn’t want him to die. Not now. Not yet. Which is why I’m keeping the bracelet, for the time being, in my pocket. I’m keeping it safe-I’ve tucked it inside a pyx. I’m sure the bishop would be horrified; the pyx is for carrying communion to the sick and homebound. But I shudder to think what Ronnie would do if I presented him with the Host. Better to let the bracelet rest in the pyx for now, where God can keep an eye on it. Bad idea? We’ll see. It’s not like I had the best of models for hospital ministry. “KILL ANYONE YET, Sergeant?” Father Pabich surprised me with a clap on my back. I jumped; his hand had hit a bruise I hadn’t known was there. He’d found me walking back from the airfield terminal. I wanted to tell him about the morning’s conversation with Gurley but didn’t dare. After that first encounter with Gurley in the bar, I’d done a bit of whimpering to Father Pabich. It didn’t go over well. This was an army for fighters, not whiners, Father Pabich had told me, and urged me to shoot someone as soon as I could, preferably Japanese. Thus his question: Had I killed anyone? But before I could answer, Father Pabich wheeled me around so I was walking in his direction. “I’ve not seen you at Mass for a few mornings running, and I was putting two and two together. You’ve been out, on a mission? What’s the good word?” “No, Father.” “Sergeant Belk,” Father Pabich said. “This won’t do. The meek are gonna inherit the earth, God willing, but not until men like you and me take care of a little business.” I nodded. “Kill some Japs,” Father Pabich said. I nodded again. Father Pabich coughed and looked at me. “What’s the matter, son? Shouldn’t you be at work, defusing some bomb, blowing something up?” “Got dismissed early, sir,” I said. “I almost killed someone,” I said quietly, thinking of the glass I’d shot out of Gurley’s hand-and the belt I’d tightened around the neck of that sailor at Lily’s. “Well, Once there, he told me to wait outside while he made his rounds, but then changed his mind and ushered me in by the elbow. The hospital was fairly new, but it was already showing signs of overuse. One or two soldiers were lying in cots in the hallway. One ward had spaces for twenty beds, but two were missing, their places taken by a tarp and buckets that were trying to do the job of the roof that had failed above. Father Pabich visited with each man. He shared a joke with ones who could talk, and mumbled prayers over the ones who were sleeping, including one man whose chart indicated that he was Jewish. When Father Pabich finished making the sign of the cross over him, a man in a neighboring bed said, “He’s, uh, not that way, Father,” and Father Pabich blessed him, too. I thought we’d seen the whole of the hospital, but then he eased open a door that led into a small vestibule and paused. “You still feeling okay, Sergeant?” he asked. I nodded. “Say yes, son, so I know you’re not just pressing your lips together to keep from puking.” I said yes. “Right. Now, be a good man in this next room. No staring, but no looking away, and no being sick. These are good men.” And then we went in. In this room, there were only eyes. Five of the six beds were occupied; the nurses were changing the sheets on the sixth. And from each of those five beds, two eyes watched Father Pabich and me enter. The rest of their bodies were swathed almost entirely in bandages or covered with sheets. I’d been told not to stare, so I couldn’t confirm what my mind kept insisting- things were missing. Arms, legs, hands. Sheets lay flat in impossible places. Some of the eyes peered out of unbandaged faces that were a dirty pink, skin rubbed raw but somehow still flecked with black. I couldn’t breathe. Father Pabich told me they were burn patients, but I knew that. And I knew who they were. I knew they’d been on that hillside above Fort Cronkhite. I knew that flames had leapt up around them because I hadn’t called to them, run to them in time. And I further knew that this was impossible, that those men had died, there, on that hill, and that even if they had lived, they would never have been transported to Alaska. Sure, I knew that. It didn’t matter who they were, really, because Gurley had made all such men mine: Father Pabich went to the nurses who were changing the bed and seemed to ask them something. When they shook their heads, he straightened up and then began working his way around the room. He spoke quietly to each man; none spoke in return. Before moving on to the next man, he would murmur a short prayer and close with a slight, but slow and solemn, bow. He didn’t rush. The eyes had all been open when we entered the room, and had followed our every move. But now I saw the man in the last bed close his eyes before we reached him. Father Pabich didn’t notice until he was at the foot of the man’s bed, and then breathed a deep sigh. We spent a longer time at that bed than anyone else’s. Father Pabich slowly lowered himself to kneeling, and then pulled me down as well. I listened to the man breathe. I watched and waited for him to open his eyes. AS SOON AS WE got outside, Father Pabich dug around for a cigarette. A breeze had picked up, and he had some trouble with his match. When he finally got the cigarette lit, he started walking away without a word. I caught up, but he wouldn’t look at me. “The man in the sixth bed, the empty one-gone this morning,” he said. “I should have been there. They couldn’t find me.” He looked at his watch, then at me. “Scared?” I thought about telling him about Fort Cronkhite, about the explosion there, the men, how I wasn’t able to or didn’t help. “You can admit to being a little scared,” he said. “That’s no sin. A little fear can help a man.” He took a long drag on the cigarette, then another, and then, even though it wasn’t nearly done, dropped it on the ground and toed it out. “I don’t know what happened. They were part of a special team, gone more often than they were here. Then one night, they were all brought in from who knows where. Badly burned. Limbs missing. Some kind of accident, I would have guessed, but- God doesn’t permit accidents like that.” He zipped up his coat. “No one will tell me what happened exactly, and I suppose I don’t want to know now. Some things you don’t want to know are possible. Coming out here, I knew I’d see men who were hurt, men who’d died, but I didn’t think I’d see that-men who’d died, but are still alive, somehow, with eyes like that, like ghosts.” Father Pabich looked at me. “I don’t want to know how it happened. And I don’t want you to tell me.” “I won’t,” I said. “I mean, how could I? How would I know?” But what I really wanted to say was, how could he know? Father Pabich took a moment considering his next words. “I guess there’re things you and your captain haven’t talked about yet.” “Like what?” “Like those men, Sergeant,” Father Pabich said. “They’re your- they’re your detail. Or they worked with your captain there, once. Nobody ever knew quite what they did, what he does. What you do.” He stared at me until I met his gaze. “I just hope you do it well. Or better.” “Father, I—” “Whatever he’s asking you to do, do it,” Father Pabich said. “If it’s going to keep those beds empty, do it.” I nodded. He picked up my hands. “No more bar brawls. Next time you put your hand on the door of a bar, you think of these men. You think about where you’re needed.” He dropped my hands, and thumped my chest with two fingers: “You think about who needs you.” BUT TRY AS I MIGHT, it wasn’t those men, but Lily, who came to mind at those words and who stayed there the entire day. I went back to the Quonset hut, I watched the training film, I stared at the little book until, once again, the artwork seemed to shift and flow and change before my eyes. What’s more, I kept seeing, imagining, Lily’s face, in a cloud, in waves, connecting the points of a map. I finally gave in and started for downtown. I told myself I was going because Lily was going to help me find some of these mysterious floating bombs, help me save lives. She’d said she wasn’t as good at the future as she was at the past, but she could tell me something. THE FIRST THING she wanted to tell me was goodbye. “Hey, friend,” Lily said. She’d emerged from the entrance of the Starhope as I approached. “You came back to see me off.” I looked at her, and then looked around, in search of something to say. “I’m going home,” she said, checking to make sure I understood. I didn’t, but told her I’d be happy to walk her home. I thought I was being quite gallant; a lot of guys back then wouldn’t have wanted to walk anywhere near a woman who looked like Lily. Well-maybe they’d She looked down at my feet. “You don’t have the right shoes,” she said. “And it’s a long, wet walk.” “How long?” I asked. “I don’t have to be back in my barracks till midnight.” “About four hundred miles,” Lily said. I stared at her. “You’re leaving,” I said. “Really leaving.” “Yeah,” she said. “That’s the idea. I’m still working on how- travel’s not as easy with this war you all got cooked up. But I’ve got something to do anyway, before I go.” “What’s that?” “Have dinner with a friend.” She smiled and put out an arm. LILY WALKED ME THROUGH the darkening streets to a part of town I hadn’t discovered yet. There were fewer soldiers and sailors here, and more-people. White faces, Asian faces, women, men, children, and very few uniforms. I drew more stares than Lily as she threaded our way through narrower, older streets to a diner. There were no menus; Lily said they just brought you whatever was on the stove. That night, it was a stew of Thanksgiving leftovers. We didn’t say anything while we waited for the food. I was tongue-tied-she was I wouldn’t have had words then to describe what I saw; I’m not sure I do now. Why did her hair make black seem the brightest color? Why did her breathing through slightly parted lips, her tongue flitting once to moisten them, seem risqué? How could her bare neck, all smooth curves and shadows, suggest that the loose clothes she wore weren’t there at all? I suppose the chemicals that flood a boy at that time in his life are partly to blame, but give Lily and the God who made her some credit. “Don’t stare,” she said, not opening her eyes. I mumbled something about how I wasn’t, and she opened her eyes in time to see that I was. The food arrived and she immediately started in. “You were, just a moment ago, when I had my eyes closed,” she said. “I wasn’t staring,” I said. “I was trying to figure out what I was going to do without you.” She stopped eating, and laughed. “That’s silly.” She took another bite, and before she swallowed, added, “And very sweet.” “No, I had-I had a question for you.” And I did, a hundred, mostly about her. But I had another question, the one I’d spend the war asking. “I don’t think those two thugs are coming back, if that’s your question,” Lily said. “That’s what I like about sailors. Or liked. They sail away on their little ships. They don’t come back.” “It’s about something else.” I looked at my hand, then held it up and showed her my palm. Lily shook her head. “You know-the palm reading-I don’t really read palms.” “But you know things. You knew things about me.” Lily put down her spoon; she spent a moment carefully aligning it with the plate. “What do you need to know?” I offered her my hand, but she kept her hands at her sides and shook her head. “Not here.” She looked around. “I’m not going to do that here.” “Then how can you tell me-?” “Just talk,” she said, and as she did, I could feel her feet entangle mine. “Just talk,” she repeated, more softly. By now, of course, I could hardly breathe. It took me a moment to remember what I wanted to ask. “I need to know where this-thing- will—” I stopped. “I need to know where something’s going to be.” But that wasn’t good enough for her. She shook her head, again and again, no matter how I phrased the question, until she finally said, “I need a place to start. A detail. Without that, it’s just dreaming.” I thought of all the things I could tell her: places where we knew balloons had landed and exploded; the map in Gurley’s office; the eyes of those men in that private ward. Or I could just tell her my secret- Gurley’s secret, our country’s secret, or Japan’s-I could tell her that high above the Pacific, even now, clearly visible if you only knew where to look, floated balloons laced with powdered fire. All you had to do to catch them was give up a hand, an arm, a face, a leg-or find out first where they were landing and when. “I’m trying to think where to start,” I said. “Here’s an easy detail,” she said. “What’s your name, Sergeant Belk?” I blinked. “Your first name, brother of Bing.” “Louis,” I said, relieved I could give up such an easy secret. “Louis,” she said. “See, I’m not good at this at all. ‘Louis’ I never would have guessed. Okay, what do you want to know, Louis?” I looked around the room. No one was looking at us, but it seemed as though everyone was listening to us. Intently. I said nothing. Her feet left mine. “Next time, then,” she said. “Your wallet have anything in it tonight?” “Please don’t leave,” I said. “Louis, I told you my secret,” she said. “I’m not a palm reader.” “But you didn’t tell me how you-why you-know things.” “What “I don’t read palms, either,” I said. She looked at me, waited. “And I don’t read feet,” I added. She smiled and clamped her feet back around mine. “And I don’t…” I went through a whole litany of jobs, both military and civilian, that I didn’t do. This was much easier than lying, this circling, joking. She seemed to enjoy it, too, protesting every now and then that some task I said I didn’t do-blow reveille on a bugle each morning-I actually did do. Slowly, invisible to everyone but me, her hands crept closer to mine, until they were almost touching, then they were touching, and then resting on top of mine, contented and relieved. By then, the whole of me was humming. Maybe she wasn’t a palm reader, maybe she had no special powers at all, but she could do this: tap something inside of me-more than hormones, perhaps blood- and seize it, take charge of it. Change the direction of its flow, or arrest the circulation altogether. Part of me believed I was allowing this to happen, part of me thought I was powerless, but most of me didn’t care. I wanted to sit there, be held, touched, like that, and never move. I would have done anything to stay. “What do you do, Louis?” she said quietly. “Bombs,” I said, the word out before I even realized it. “Yes,” she said. “But what kind?” she asked, leaning closer, the shade of a new look in her eyes, but not enough of a new look to spook me, not yet. “Bal-loons,” I said, my mind rising in alarm with the second syllable, but by then it was too late. Gurley’s thumbnail slid down, and across, and up my neck. Lily closed her eyes, slowly. And then her shoulders sank, her head sank, my blood began its nervous flow again, and my heart pounded at the secret it had just disclosed. “I didn’t say anything,” I said, looking down to find my hands uncovered. “Not a thing,” Lily said, expectant. “I have to go,” I said. “So soon?” she said. She waited a moment, and then appeared to make up her mind. “Lily, you can’t tell She waited a moment, then smiled. “You came in with a question,” she said. “Now, I have an answer.” She leaned over, put her lips to my ear. I swear she kissed me. I felt the brush of a touch, a breath, and when I looked up, she was standing by me, smiling, and then leaving. It was a fine way to deliver a secret, because I heard nothing, not then. Oh, she’d whispered the name of the place-Shuyak-but I didn’t realize that, not until later. At that moment, I was consumed with the way her breath found my ear, the way her face grazed my hair, the way her lips were moving- When I came to, she was gone, the counterman was gone. Al that remained was the bill, which I paid, and the whispered word, which started echoing in my head, louder and louder, as I made my way back to base. |
||
|