Читать книгу Sombrero Fallout - Richard Brautigan - Страница 24

BREATHING

The other two women stopped talking and looked up at him.

The Asian woman was very carefully looking at him.

He’d never had an Asian woman look that carefully at him before. Her eyes were dark and narrow. For a second because her eyes were so narrow he wondered if she could see as much as a Caucasian could. The thought vanished upon the thinking of it but it was to return many times during the two years that he knew her. It was just that he wondered sometimes if she could see everything that was in a room or wherever they were. Maybe she was only seeing 75 percent of what was going on.

It was the kind of thought that a child would have.

He’d never had any experience with an Asian woman other than just seeing them around San Francisco: Chinatown, Japantown, etc. He’d never had one of them look very carefully at him. There was also something else in her eyes that he had seen before in the eyes of other women when they looked at him.

He knew what it was.

He relaxed slightly.

‘Please do,’ she said.

Then he sat down.

He knew by the expression in her eyes that everything was going to work out. Her breathing had changed slightly. She was breathing a little faster. The increase in her breathing pleased him.

The cocktail waitress came over and he ordered a round of drinks. Then they exchanged names at the table.

She was Japanese.