"Nancy Etchemendy - Want's Bridge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Etchemendy Nancy)

crossing the low bridge above us.
I clear my throat. "What's your name?"
"Ha!" she says. "You think you know it already, doncha?" I hear the peppermint
break. She must have more than one tooth after all. "I'll give you something to call
me. Shameless. You can call me Shameless."
I raise an eyebrow. "What kind of name is that?"
All traces of amusement evaporate from her face. Her eyes turn to slivers, and her
chin jabs forward. She unwraps the remaining peppermint frenetically, watching me
all the while.
"Real name, sonny boy. It's a real name. You think you know every goddamn thing,
but you don't know jack shit. You don't even know your own name. You think it's
Mike or Steve or Jerry or some stupid thing. Well it's not. It's Want. I never seen
anybody who stank so much like Want in all my life. Is there anything in this world
that you don't want?"
She palms the candy into her mouth and sucks it loudly, still glaring. My hand
squirms in my pocket, clamps around the gun, which no longer feels reassuring, just
depressingly familiar. She has a lot of nerve talking about the stink of want. I can
smell her from where I sit, in spite of the wood smoke and the peppermint. She
probably hasn't taken a bath in a year.
"Yes, there is something I don't want. I don't want to be here," I say, though I'm
sure my biting wit is wasted on her.
She shrugs, and smiles again. "Ha! Then why are you? You sure as hell don't belong
here. Who forced you to come? You're a real bad liar."
What should I tell her? That I'm here because God wants it? That isn't quite right,
after all. I believe He wanted me to do the other things, but not this. On this matter,
He has remained silent. Maybe she has a point. I want, all right. I want God to make
this easier for me, but He won't. Earning eternal happiness isn't easy, nor should it
be.
That thought helps me make up my mind. I don't seem to have convinced her that
I'm homeless, so what's the point in continuing to pretend? "Okay, okay. I just want
to ask a few questions, that's all."
She pulls the rotting blanket around herself more tightly and nods as if to say Now
we're getting somewhere.
"Somebody told me you saw the murders," I say.
"Yeah." She rocks gently toward the fire and back, her dark eyes continuously on
my own. "I watched 'em. In a shameless way, you might say. Everybody knows."
The air in my lungs burns as it rushes out. The chirp of crickets in the nearby
undergrowth becomes a chaos of noise. How much did she see?
So quickly that it startles me, she scuttles to my side and pushes her face up close to
mine. Now I see it's not exposure; it's age that has caused the wrinkles. She must be
ancient. "I could ask for a lot," she whispers. The peppermint overlays something
else--an odd marshy scent I would never expect to come from a human mouth.
I cannot keep myself from pulling out the gun and crying, "Get away!"
But instead of moving back, she opens her lips in the cave-like grin. "What exactly
do you think I have to lose? I have nothing, you see. Not even my shame. It doesn't
matter what I have or don't have. Whatever it is or isn't, it's all I damn well want."
She suddenly sounds quite different, and I realize with a start that she, too, has been
pretending. Who is this woman?
I have a ready answer. She's a lunatic, probably schizophrenic. Nobody would
believe anything she says, not a policeman, not a psychiatrist, certainly not a court of