Читать книгу Beat Space - Tommaso Pincio - Страница 12

9.

Jack bought the blessed stellar atlas that he would check out in his downtime one day at the end of spring 1956. Jack and Neal had spent the night in typical 1950s fashion. At daybreak Neal still hadn’t shut up while Jack had an inexplicably sore throat. Neal had got onto this peculiar idea that every time he bought a book he had to be one of the first customers of the day, so the two had agreed to kill the early hours of the morning outside the doors of Quantum, ready to step inside the moment it opened.

Arms folded, hands tucked into their armpits, they sat outside waiting, hunched over in the cold of daybreak. The weariness of the sleepless night sent sudden shivers through them, which they staved off by stomping their feet on the pavement. A couple hours passed this way, with Neal losing himself in frenzied cursing at the cold, at the slowness of time that in the end always fools you with its speed, at the fact that he could no longer feel his feet and at how this also kept him from entertaining the possibility of going across the street to get a coffee at the cafè. Jack had the wide-eyed stare of an owl, he nodded his head so Neal would think he was listening to him, while he was actually thinking that it had now been six years since he first met Neal, and how back then he had felt weighed down by an awful feeling that everything was dead. The coming of Neal had freed him from that sad state and had opened the last few years of his life, years Jack referred to as My Spacial Years. A Coca-Cola Enterprise Inc. delivery truck pulled up in front of the bar. Jack’s mind returned to the release he signed for Arthur Miller. For a moment he was nudged by an unpleasant feeling—not unlike how he felt in the months before he met Neal—and he asked himself if it had something to do with his doubts about the release. What did it mean? Why think about all these things together, at once? The orbital controller job wasn’t dangerous and there was no reason why he should associate it with anxieties he had long since put behind him.

An Asian girl in red coveralls had emerged from the truck and was unloading a crate of bottles. Jack watched her as she centered the crate on the dolly, trying to catch her eye. He was unsuccessful, and this added a touch of sadness was added to the unrest already gnawing at him. Suddenly, he felt a desire to get into the Coca-Cola Enterprise Inc. delivery truck and go deliver bottles of Space™ with the girl. He no longer wanted to be an orbital controller; he wanted to stay on Earth, he wanted to stay, sitting in that truck, he wanted to sleep there, in that truck, with the Asian girl in the red coveralls at the wheel, driving until night fell, leaving the city behind them and moving along mysterious dirt roads left unfinished, because it had been discovered such roads would take travelers far from their point of origin without leading them anywhere. Neal was saying, “Because there’s nothing more relentless and you gotta believe me, old boy, God only knows you gotta believe me. I’m not one of those guys you can fix up real easy and you know that’s the truth, and yet that’s exactly how it went. Can you believe it, Jack? Can you believe something like that, eh Jack? You with me? Relentless like you wouldn’t believe. I for one can’t do it, I couldn’t ever do it and believe me I’ve tried. When are they going to open this place?” The Asian girl in red coveralls had come out of the bar and was getting back into the Coca-Cola Enterprise Inc. delivery truck. Jack turned and looked down to the end of the street where the girl would disappear from his life forever. The truck pulled out, turned around and headed in the opposite direction. Another strange morning sign. Jack hit his heels on the pavement. It wasn’t exhaustion or the cold. It was anxiety.