Robotgnomics

Начало книги

Miagic is not to be found in the desperate suburbs. The split-level home, once so eagerly desired, has become oppressive to Edmond Ives's spirit. Here he is.

propped up in the superfirm king-size bed. watching a rubberfaced comedian on the bedroom TV.

His wife, Marissa, lies beside him. satin sleep mask in place,"

mouth tense, awaiting her nightly journey to oblivion on the good ship Valium. Is this what life is all about?

Marissa isn't fun anymore. She isn't even cute anymore. She's no longer right for Ives, a man hungering for a new spirit and a new life.

For these and other vague but compelling reasons, Edmond Ives left his wife and moved back to New York City.

Ives was an account executive at Smith, Levy, Durstin & Tamerlane, an advertising agency looking forward to better times. Ives was thirty-four, of medium height, with hazel eyes, iight-brown hair, and smalt, even features. He just missed being handsome without the compensation of looking interesting. In a TV drama, Ives might have played the star'sold college friend who killed the blond hitchhiker in the first act for reasons that never become entirely clear, In New York, Ives looked at a few apartments, all unsatisfactory for one reason or another. Then he was shown a multilevel place in the East Sixties. The broker who accompanied him had the air of a man explaining divine mysteries. "It's unusual to find a place like this on today's market, "he pointed out. "Dustin Hoffman once sublet here, you know."

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