"Alameda, Patricia - Velkommen Til Solvang" - читать интересную книгу автора (Alameda Patricia)

= Velkommen Til Solvang
by Patricia Alameda


The first gunshot sent two Steller's Jays arcing over the top of the building, flapping their wings into the pink air. There was a second shot, and a third. A man stumbled out from behind the building. He made his wobbly way to a black sedan a few yards away. Fumbling in his pocket, he finally brought out a set of keys. After a moment of leaning heavily against the car, panting, he managed to get the car door open and get inside.

The engine started with a roar. The car moved forward jerkily, stopped, reversed, went forward again. It slid behind the building and out of sight.

An exhaust plume billowed out from around the corner, steaming in the cold evening air. The engine idled quietly. A door opened and shut. There was another gunshot, and the cadence of the dogs' barking increased. After a half-minute the car door opened and shut again. The engine roared, and the car came out from behind the building, slid to a halt in the gravel and dirt, then started forward, the back tires spitting out a small cloud of shrapnel as it turned onto the frontage road and accelerated away.

The two Steller's Jays came back and circled overhead, passing over the building's roof, its crumbling sign that read "CAFE ... DINING CARS." They flew in a wide arc over the boarded up cafe 's parking lot, and the single car at its far end, fluttering their wings as they passed around the back of the place and over the body that lay behind it, slumped against the wall and staring, its gray pin-striped suit growing a dark burgundy bloom below the lapels. The birds decided that all was safe and landed skillfully atop the old sign.

HE drove blurry-eyed, with one hand stuck inside his coat and the other on the wheel. Shot. He'd been shot. He was bleeding. It wouldn't register-it seemed like someone else had been shot. Whoever the other guy was, he wasn't doing so great. He needed to get some help. No, no. He needed money. Getaway money. That was first. Cash, because he wouldn't be able to fence the stuff. Not quickly, anyway, and he had to be going now.

The car swerved dangerously close to the raised median strip, and he jerked the wheel, sending a bolt of pain through his chest. It wasn't so bad. Not like he had imagined. Where was he? He was on an overpass, crossing the freeway, heading up into some hills. He passed some fast food joints, right off to the side of the road. No good-too many lights, too close to the freeway, too easy for a highway patrolman to stop for a cup of coffee at just the wrong moment. He had to go further. See, he thought, I'm thinking straight. I'm closing the deal. We're practically safe already. He pushed on the gas pedal, and the car sped up into the hills.

SHE should have closed the shop hours ago. But then what? Get in her car and go home and listen to her father complain about his day. Why not just wait for the one or two customers that would come straggling in after dark, searching for just the right knick-knack to put on their shelf-a porcelain windmill with SOLVANG, CALIFORNIA written on it, a plate with a pastoral Danish scene hand-painted in blue. Some cheap thing to remember this quaint little tourist trap of a town.

She looked around the lonely shop. Everything was in order, everything bright and cheery. The cuckoo clocks ticked on the wall, their clicks and whirrs washing over each other in weird rhythms that would for a moment seem almost musical, then would dissolve into chaos.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirrored back of a shelf-a neatly-made up blonde dressed to look like a milkmaid, a scarlet curve of mouth, overlarge blue eyes.

"I look like some pedophile's dipshit fantasy," she said aloud.

There was a certain joy to saying nasty things in the clean, bright little gift shop.

"I hate stupid fucking lame-assed windmills."

The door chimes tinkled. She jumped, snapping her head around toward the door, the color rising in her cheeks.

The man came through the door unsteadily. He was pale, with blond hair that fell in a curl across one side of his forehead. His eyes had a funny gleam in them, and his cheeks were flushed. Like the red circles painted on a nutcracker's cheeks, she thought, and the association made her think for a moment that the gun in his hand was a toy. Then he raised it with a stiff, wooden arm, pointing it at her face. His mouth opened wide, as if he were going to scream at her, but the word that came out was small, and his voice had an almost childlike break in it.

"Money."

She backed around the glass counter, as if it could protect her. She felt strange-giddy, almost-the way you might feel if on a hot day you were suddenly struck by a water balloon. She was not afraid-they didn't usually shoot you, did they? And anyhow, she intended to give him the money. It wasn't hers, after all. But surely you were supposed to be afraid when someone stuck a gun in your face, weren't you?

He had stepped forward, and he bent toward her at the waist oddly for a moment, then straightened again, quickly, his eyes widening, the gun again coming level with her face. The arm that was not holding the gun was stuck inside his jacket, Napoleon-like. He was right across the counter from her now, and the gun wasn't more than a foot away from her nose. It swayed slightly in the air.

"Of course. Money. Here." She punched the "NO SALE" button on the register, and the drawer crashed open. At the same time, one of the cuckoo clocks started a blast of chirping, and she saw the man's arm swing toward it, puppet-like. There was a pop, and when she looked up, wood splinters were tumbling through the air. The shingled roof of the clock bounced off the counter and hit the floor. Her head jerked back to the man. He was blinking, not seeming to comprehend-and then a small smile crept into his eyes and crept its way down his face to the corners of his mouth. They were frozen-her mouth a softly compressed 'o', he with an odd, self-amused look on his face. Then, from the ruins of the clock a spring let go with a cartoonish "boiiing!" and bounced off a display of teacups. She started laughing, leaning against the wall and holding her stomach. He laughed too-his a small, whispered huffing sound, barely more than a whisper. Something between them had been shattered by the spring. She felt almost close to him.

She stopped laughing when his hand slid out from his jacket and came to rest on the counter, smearing the glass with blood.

Impulsively, she reached out and touched his hand. He pulled back from her, swaying unsteadily, swinging the pistol around toward her face again. Her fingers were stained with his blood.

HAD someone heard the shot? Would someone be coming? He hadn't been thinking when he'd done it. His thinking kept getting hazy. He bit the inside of his lip until it bled, and that helped-it brought the girl behind the counter into focus. Veronica. She looked like Veronica. Veronica standing in the doorway. Veronica laying on the couch, asleep from waiting, a glass ready to fall from her hand and shatter, Veronica. Why had she touched him? Why wasn't she scared? She stood there, looking at his blood on her fingers. And then-no, she couldn't have done that.

"Give me the money," he growled. Talking made little stabbing pains in his side.

She took her fingers out of her mouth and swallowed luxuriously. "You won't hurt me, will you?"