Читать книгу The Snow Queen - Michael Cunningham - Страница 12

Tyler battles an urge to step up onto the bedroom windowsill. He’s not thinking of suicide. Fuck no. And, all right, if he were thinking of suicide, this is only the second floor. The best he might do is break a leg, and maybe—maybe—his skull might kiss the pavement with enough force to produce a concussion. But it would be a pathetic gesture—the loser version of that wearily defiant, ineluctably suave decision to say That’s enough, and waltz offstage. He has no desire to end up lying on the sidewalk, merely sprained and bruised, akimbo, after a leap into a void that can’t have been more than twenty feet.

He’s not thinking suicide, he’s thinking merely of going into the storm; of being more stingingly assaulted by wind and snow. The trouble (one of the troubles) with this apartment is one can only be inside it, looking out a window, or outside, on the street, looking up at the window. It would be so fine, so brilliant, to be naked in the weather; to be that available to it.

He contents himself, as he must, by leaning out as far as he can, which produces little more than a frosty wind-smack across his face, and snow pelting his hair.