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

She told him.

Mr. Gaye listened and nodded, then walked down his front steps, baby still on
one shoulder. He walked through the front yard, out the in the stone wall fence,
and right up to the skeleton. As for the bones, they. remained motionless and
silent. If some cosmic force had sent them to #34 to embody Justice, said cosmic
force had some change coming.

"Did my agent send you?" Mr. Gaye inquired.

The skeleton was mute on that subject.

"Guess not," Mr. Gaye murmured. "Should've listened; everyone misses a deadline
now and then. Oh well. Never mind." He started back toward the house, but paused
and turned before he reached the stone wall. "Is there anything I can do to help
you?" he called to the skeleton.

A loud snort from his wife overrode any reply the bones might have given. She
strode down the steps, over the jolly greensward, past her husband and
offspring, and past the skeleton as well. Her goal, like that of Mrs. Halpern
before her, was the cab. Unlike Mrs. Halpern, she was neither cowed nor quailed
by the sight of a driver's seat sans driver. She didn't give a frilled fig for
what wasn't there; she was only concerned with what was. Or what should be. She
was practical, was Mrs. Gaye, in all matters save the one long-ago bout of March
Hare madness that had allowed her to marry a writer.

Something stuck out from under the front seat on the passenger's side. Mrs. Gaye
yanked open the cab door and made a swan dive for it. She stood up brandishing a
clipboard in a nice recreation of Perseus with the Head of Medusa.

"Thirty-four Chestnut Place, goddamit!" she hollered at the skeleton. She then
flung the clipboard back into the cab, slammed the door, strode back into her
house and slammed that door for good measure.

Silence took out a rent-to-own lease on Chestnut Street.

Still holding the baby, Mr. Gaye shrugged. It might have been intended as an
expressive shrug, but if so it badly wanted the attentions of an editor. The
baby cooed and gurgled, then spit up on Daddy's shoulder just to reestablish who
was who and what was what. Mr. Gaye grinned sheepishly at the neighbors. "Heh,"
was all he had to say before he too went home. It wasn't much of an expository
passage, but since this was one occasion where he wasn't being paid by the word,
who could blame him?

The bare bones seemed to take their cue from Mr. Gaye's retreat, for while the
neighbors thrummed and mumbled amongst themselves, the skeleton eased itself
back into the cab and closed the door after it.
The cab glided away up Chestnut Street just as the school bus came barreling
down. The cab drove straight and true up the very middle of the street, avoiding