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

He wanted to cry. Why was she taking so long? Where was he? Coming in, he had glimpsed a shadowy windmill on the side of the road. There were Christmas lights in the trees along the streets. The buildings were strange and foreign. For a moment, getting out of the car, he had felt weightless, and had thought, illogically, that he was already dead. And now this-this milkmaid wouldn't just give him the fucking money. Yes, he wanted to say, yes I am going to hurt you. I am going to-but what was he going to do? He had a sudden vision of himself biting into the soft, white flesh of her neck, just below the jawline, but he didn't have the strength. Even the thought of it exhausted him.

He decided to shoot her, but the moment had passed. She was taking the money out, and putting it on the counter. What was she doing now? She was counting it.

"Put it in a bag."

She reached down and got a bag and started stuffing the money into it. He liked the way that her blonde hair fell across her eye and she brushed it away with her hand, automatically. Wasn't that a good sign? That he liked that? It seemed to mean that he wasn't dying. He wanted to push her down on the floor and prove to her that he wasn't dying.

The thought slid over him, black and ugly, that he didn't have the strength to drive the car out of here. He was feeling lightheaded-tired, terribly tired-it took everything out of him just to keep the gun leveled at the milkmaid's face. And he wasn't even sure how to get out of the place. And if someone had heard the shot-if someone had heard, then there would be police already on their way here. Some nosy county sheriff would poke his head in the door, maybe right now, or five minutes from now. Soon. Nervously, he glanced out the window. The street was empty. It was a weekday. It was very late. Perhaps nobody was close enough to have heard. But even the quaint, thatch-roofed building across the street seemed menacing. There could be someone within its walls on the phone with the cops even now, or maybe they had already called. Maybe they were watching him from the black behind the glass, waiting for the show of the sheriff shooting him dead and rescuing the girl. The cuckoo clocks on the walls were loud. He wanted silence, so that he could hear the sound of a car approaching.

SHE finished stuffing the money in the bag-a little more than four hundred dollars. The money seemed different now that it was out of the register. Inside the register, it hadn't seemed like real money at all-not like money that could be stolen, could be pushed into a pocket and walked out with. It had seemed like just paper in the register. Now it seemed like money again-anyone's money. Her heart had sped up, a little, looking at it. She wanted it for herself. But she picked up the bag and held it out to him.

He gestured with his gun. "You're coming with me."

She stared at him, still holding the bag out dumbly.

He gestured with the gun again. "You're going to drive my car."

She shook her head. "No."

His eyes rolled up into his head for a moment, and when they came back down, he screamed at her. "I will shoot you! Do you understand? I will shoot you in the face! I'll blow your goddamned brains out! Do you hear me? You are coming with me, and you will drive my car!" His entire body shook. She could see a small bead of sweat rolling down his cheek. A dark blue, angry vein showed itself at the side of his neck, like a worm under the skin. His eyes were wide and terrifying. She felt fear, then, for the first time. But it passed. And something else took its place.

"Okay," she said. "All right. Just don't hurt me."

He jerked his head toward the door and she started walking, slowly, holding the bag in her hands. She could see herself bolting with the money-see him shooting her dead, her falling forward onto the cobblestones, trying to breathe with a bullet in her lung. She pushed the glass doors open. The outside air was cool. She felt the barrel of the gun at the small of her back. His voice came from over her shoulder. "The black car-over there."

She nodded. She heard the sound of a passing car, blocks away, on the main street. She felt him tense up, pushing the gun harder into her back. They stopped. She could feel his breath on the back of her neck. The sound of the car died away. Of course. It wouldn't be coming this way-and she realized that she didn't want it to. She wanted to see what would happen. The street was empty and silent, the little shops with their simulated thatch roofs, their bindingsvaerk walls, were all closed. There was no one around to stop it from happening.

HE waited for the sound of the car to die away and then shoved her forward. She did not protest. If she screams, he thought, I will shoot her. And then what? He looked down at his hand. It shook visibly. He was terrified. It's this place, he thought. He looked at the cobblestone sidewalk. There was no trash anywhere. Everything was perfectly clean, as if nobody lived here, as if nobody ever walked the streets. It wasn't right. He didn't want to die in this place. If I die here, he thought, I will never leave. He imagined himself as a phantom, trapped among the strange buildings, and shuddered.

They were at the car now. He jabbed at the milkmaid with the barrel of his pistol, and she opened the door and got in. She didn't seem to care what was happening to her. She didn't look at him. She slid behind the wheel and waited there, almost politely, until he had struggled into the passenger seat. The keys were in the ignition. He had learned to leave them there-you leave the keys in the ignition, the doors unlocked. He had known a man-it seemed like a thousand years ago-who had been shot to death during a robbery, because he had fumbled with his keys, trying to get his car unlocked.

Nervously, he glanced into the back seat. The bag was still there, of course.

When he turned back, he found her looking at him patiently.

"Where should I drive you?"

Was there even the tiniest quiver of fear in her voice? He could not be sure. He leaned back heavily in his seat. The pain was not bad, but he felt weak. So weak. He rested the gun in his lap, its little black hole of a barrel pointing at her. He wanted very much to go to sleep, but he knew that he should not.

"The freeway," he said, trying to put some strength into it.

She nodded, very businesslike, and started the engine.

SHE turned onto the main street and went west, toward the freeway. The town, for some reason, seemed unreal to her now. It looked so small and fragile from the car. It was like a scene inside a snow-globe, that could be destroyed simply by throwing it down on the ground. She wondered if she would ever see the town again. They shot past the Kronborg Inn. Someone had forgotten to take the Dannebrog down from its pole, and it fluttered limply in the night breeze. She found herself really seeing its red-and white cross for the first time in she didn't know how long. She had stopped really seeing the flag, because it had become so familiar. Now it practically burnt itself onto her eyes.

They were almost at the town's edge.

"Don't speed."