"Aldridge, Ray - Filter FeedersV1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Aldridge Ray)

"Thank you. You're very kind," she said, as though Teresa were doing her a great favor.

Teresa helped the woman load her boxes into the dinghy, and her uncertain movements reinforced the impression that she was ill. She touched Teresa's bare arm lightly, thanked her again.

Teresa felt an inexplicable urge to prolong the acquaintance, such as it was. "Are you staying long? In Destin, I mean?"

The white head shook. "Just a few days. Until the boat's fixed, I guess."

"Is it just you and . . . your husband?"

"Thomas isn't my husband," the woman answered, in a voice that for the first time was almost alive. She made a strange fierce face; she looked frightened and proud at the same time.

"Oh," Teresa said uncertainly. "Well, if you decide to come ashore for dinner, I can give you some good advice."

"Thomas almost never leaves the boat."

"Is that right?" What an odd thing, Teresa thought. She wanted to ask why, but couldn't. "If you change your mind -- and if you value your stomach -- don't eat at the Bugeyed Sailor." She laughed. "That's where I work nights, so I know." She felt oddly giddy; she was never so easy with strangers. Only the most charming could get her to talk, and then she mistrusted them for their charm.

"Thank you for the advice," the woman said, and pushed the boat off the beach.

"I'm Teresa Martin," she said. She started to hold out her hand, then didn't, because the dinghy was already sliding away from the shore.

The woman's dark eyes grew darker. "Oh." Then just before she settled down and began to row, Teresa could have sworn she said, "I was Linda. . . . "

Even if Teresa had misunderstood and she wasn't actually referring to herself in the past tense, Teresa had the very strong impression that Linda couldn't remember her own last name.

That night, business was even slower than usual at the Bugeyed Sailor. The Sailorman was savagely bad-tempered; he fired Nancy, who had dropped a plate of rancid scallops en brochette. Nancy fled the premises, weeping and cursing, and Teresa envied her the vitality of her feelings.

She found herself out on the terrace at closing time. The ketch rode on a black mirror, unruffled by even a breath of wind. Light shone dim and golden from a line of portholes along the cabin and made a soft misty fan above a skylight. Teresa wondered what they were talking about, Linda and Thomas, those two intrepid voyagers.

The Sailorman came up behind her on light little fat man's feet. Before she could turn and shrink into a defensive slump, the Sailorman had pulled her against his chest and was kneading her breasts, pinching her nipples painfully: He wore his usual colognes: fish grease, old sweat, cheap rum. She twisted and railed her elbows and he let her go. "Hey," he said, with a phosphorescent grin. "Where else you gonna get some?"

"Please," she said, hating the pleading in her voice.

He shrugged and made a face, tolerant pity and infantile reproach. "Hey, just trying to help. I don't go where I'm not wanted."

Not until the next time, she thought.

As he went back inside, he said over his shoulder. "But you know, honey, if you don't get laid pretty soon, your pussy gonna scab over. That's what happens to old broads who don't keep it juicy."

In her room after a shower, lying naked in the dark, she still felt bruised and dirty where the Sailorman had touched her. The can of soda rested on her stomach, making a disk of distracting cold there.

"'Scab over,'" she said, feeling a shaky laugh trying to force itself up from her chest.

She'd had chances to avoid that fate since her arrival on the Gulf. There was the UPS driver who delivered parts to the Shipshape Chandlery, a slightly plump man in his early forties. He was very polite, he seemed reasonably worldly despite his grits-and-gravy accent. He'd asked her if she'd like to go to dinner at a nicer place than the Bugeyed Sailor. But how could she take seriously a man who wore Elvis sideburns?

Then there was the young deckhand from one of the charter boats. He'd developed an inexplicable crush on her, even going so far as to risk the food at the Bugeyed Sailor, just so he could flirt with her. He might not have been terribly bright, but he was pretty -- tall and sinewy, with clean features and china-blue eyes. But one night he'd suggested they go skinny-dipping in the harbor, and she had been so appalled at the thought of swimming in that soup of sewage and dead fish and spilled diesel that she had said something insulting, which had driven him away.

Just as well, she thought. There were terrible diseases now. And the whole business would certainly have been as messy and forgettable as it had always been in the past.