"Esther M. Friesner - Chestnut Street" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friesner Esther M)

"-- killed the baby! I always said there wasn't anything right about those
people from the minute they moved into this neighborhood!"

"-- adopted. Illegally! They bought that child on the black market and --"

" -- knows that child is as black as the ace of spades! She used to teach in
Roxbury, you know, and she was up to no --"

"-- his girlfriend's bastard, which he forced his wife to accept! And
girlfriend's the word, because if that little slut was older than sixteen, I'm
a--"

The racket rose. The skeleton stood in the midst of it, an islet of calceate
calm. For the most part, the neighbors continued to bat about various
speculations as to the specific sin which had brought this clattersome caller to
the threshold of chez Gaye, although Denny and Sam McGraw spent their breath in
a slowly heating argument as to whether the skeleton belonged to a man or a
woman. Denny claimed you could tell from the pelvis, but he had forgotten
exactly how you could tell {in much the same way that far too many people refuse
to recall whether it's "Wine before beer, never fear" or "Beer before wine,
everything fine," pace Robert BenchIcy.}. Then Sam made a whole string of very
bad and relatively smutty puns about pelvises and there went that stab at amate
forensics.

It was at the very moment that Mr. Budd was holding forth as to the extremely
snippy way Mr. Gaye had treated him while hustling the little missus to the
hospital (" -- just asking if the baby was planned or, you know, one of God's
blessed little accidents, being neighborly, and doesn't do more than snarl about
what a hurry they're in and --" ) and Denny was trying to get Sam's mind and
mouth out of the gutter through Twelve-Step Noogie Therapy that the door of the
Gaye house o Mrs. Gaye stepped out. She was holding a baby in her arms. A live
ba A white baby [well, rosy peach, to be precise). A cheerful, plump squirmy
baby in possession of its father's eyes, hair, and nose, and mother's
complexion, chin, and mouth.

Mrs. Gaye's mouth. Quite a mouth, there. Especially when Mrs. Gaye's ears
scooped up the last few comments and speculations from the neighbors' overactive
tongues. The things that woman said! The name she called them! {Well, how were
they supposed to know she'd been visiting a sick sister with the infant?
Chestnut Street harbored no Nosy Parkers, nosirree-bob ma'am!) It was a darn
good thing that the bab, was too young to repeat any of it, or the child would
have wound attending nursery school with a bar of Ivory soap permanently lodged
in its mouth.

Mr. Gaye emerged from the house, drawn by the sound of his wife's tirade. He
looked half-asleep -- a normal condition for fathers of infants -- and
half-shaven, but fully alert to the possibility of his hel going into core
meltdown right in the middle of Chestnut Street. He one hand on her shoulder,
divested her of the baby, and asked what wrong.