Red Rabbit - Tom Clancy [223]
"Just a cigarette," Ryan replied, without thinking. Under Cathy's iron rule, he hadn't had one since arriving in England.
"Well, here, sir." The man extended a pack with one shaken loose.
It surprised the hell out of Ryan. "Thanks, buddy." But he took it anyway, along with the light from a butane lighter. He coughed with the first drag, but got over it pretty fast. It was a remarkably friendly feeling in the still, predawn air, and the wonderful thing about bad habits was how quickly one picked them back up. It was a strong cigarette, like the Marlboros he'd smoked in his senior year of high school, part of the ascension to manhood back in the late 1960s. The milkman ought to quit, Jack thought, but he probably wasn't married to a Hopkins surgeon.
He didn't often get to talk to his customers, either. "You like living here, sir?"
"Yes, I do. The people here are very friendly."
"We try to be, sir. Have a good day, then."
"Thanks, buddy. You, too," Ryan said, as the man walked back to his truck. Milkmen had mostly gone extinct in America, victims of supermarkets and 7-Eleven stores. A pity, Jack thought. He remembered Peter Wheat bread and honey-dipped donuts when he'd been a little kid. Somehow it had all gone away without his noticing it around the seventh grade or so. But the smoke and the quiet air wasn't at all a bad way to wake up. There was no sound at all. Even the birds were still asleep. He looked up to see the lights of aircraft high in the sky. People traveling to Europe, probably Scandinavia, by the apparent courses they were flying—out of Heathrow, probably. What poor bastard has to get up this early to make a meeting? he wondered. Well… he finished the cigarette and flicked it out on the lawn, wondering if Cathy might spot it. Well, he could always blame it on somebody else. A pity the paperboy hadn't come yet. So Jack went inside and turned on the kitchen TV to get CNN. He caught the sports. The Orioles had won again and would be going to the World Series against the Phillies. That was good news, or nearly so. Had he been home, he would have gotten tickets to catch a game or two at Memorial Stadium and seen the rest on TV. Not this year. His cable system didn't have a single channel to catch baseball games, though the Brits were starting to watch
NFL football. They didn't really get it, but for some reason they enjoyed watching it. Better than their regular TV, Ryan thought with a snort. Cathy liked their comedy, but for some reason it just didn't click with him. But their news programming was pretty good. It was just taste, he assumed. Non est disputandum, as the Romans had said. Then he saw dawn coming, the first hint of light on the eastern horizon. It'd be more than an hour before morning actually began, but coming it was, and even the desire for more sleep would not hold it back.
Jack decided to get the coffee going—just a matter of flipping the switch on the drip machine he'd gotten Cathy for her birthday. Then he heard the flop of the paper on the front step, and he went to get it.
"Up early?" Cathy said, when he got back.
"Yeah. Didn't see any sense in rolling back over." Jack kissed his wife. She got a funny look on her face after the kiss but shook it off. Her tobacco-sniffing nose had delivered a faint message, but her intellect had erroneously dismissed it as too unlikely.
"Got the coffee going?"
"Flipped the button," Jack confirmed. "I'll let you do the rest."
"What do you want for breakfast?"
"I get a choice?" Ryan asked, somewhat incredulously. She was on another health kick of late. No donuts.
* * *
"GOOD MORNING,ZAICHIK!" Oleg said to his daughter.
"Papa!" She reached both her arms out with that smile kids have when they awaken. It was something they lost long before adulthood, and something universally astonishing to parents while it lasted. Oleg lifted her from the bed and gave her a hug. Her little bare feet went down on the carpeted floor, and then she took two steps to her private toilet. Irina came in to lay her clothes out, and both withdrew to the adult side of