"Carol Emshwiller - Day at the Beach" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emshwiller Carol)

DAY AT THE BEACH

by Carol Emshwiller

from Fantasy and Science Fiction

The first Milford Science Fiction Writers' Conference was
held in 1956. Among those invited were a number of artists,
agents, editors, and publishers in the field. So artist Ed "Emsh"
came up for the weekтАФwith his family.

Carol Emshwiller had then published two or three stories;
but she didn't know she was a writer, and the bated-breath
humility with which she asked if she possibly might be allowed
to sit in on workshop meetings has come back to haunt us Older
Hands each summer since. Each summer, I mean, when Carol
pops out of the playpen-and-baby-bottle laden car, an infant (at
least figuratively) under one arm, and her newest manuscript
under the other. (Ed carries two kids and his brushes in his
teethтАФnothing to it when you get the knack.)

The first time I read Day at the Beach was in one of these
workshop sessions. After that, I just waited for someone to
print it first, so I could nextтАж

"It's Saturday," the absolutely hairless woman said, and she pulled at
her frayed, green kerchief to make sure it cov-ered her head. "I sometimes
forget to keep track of the days, but I marked three more off on the
calender because I think that's how many I forgot, so this must be
Saturday."

Her name was Myra and she had neither eyebrows nor lashes nor even
a faint, transparent down along her cheeks. Once she had had long, black
hair, but now, looking at her pink, bare face, one would guess she had
been a red-head.

Her equally hairless husband, Ben, sprawled at the kitchen table
waiting for breakfast. He wore red plaid Bermuda shorts, rather faded,
and a tee shirt with a large hole under the arm. His skull curved above his
staring eyes more naked-seeming than hers because he wore no kerchief
or hat.
 "We used to always go out on Saturdays," she said, and she put a bowl
of oatmeal at the side of the table in front of a youth chair.

Then she put the biggest bowl between her husband's elbows.

"I have to mow the lawn this morning," he said. "All the more so if it's
Saturday."

She went on as if she hadn't heard. "A day like today we'd go to the