"Hoffman-KeySignatures" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hoffman Abbie)

up a few tales from Kelly and Bill, though she couldn't always understand their
accents or their habit of speaking almost too softly to hear. Kelly and Bill had
driven taxis together in San Diego after they left the navy following World War
II, and before that they had both come from Arkansas, though they hadn't known
each other when they were younger, had only met after they had gone around the
world. They had both moved to Spores Ferry in the late fifties, raising their
children as friends, their grandchildren as mutual.

Zita had met Kelly on one of his visits to the fiddle class, and she liked him.
She and Kelly sometimes made faces at each other at the granges. Kelly, whose
hair was thick and white, who wore silver tips on the points of his collar and
sported a turquoise bolo tie, could roll his eyes faster than anybody else Zita
had ever seen.

Waiting for Bill to pick her up and take her to Kelly's, Zita took her fiddle
down from the wall (one of the first things Angus told his class was, "Hang your
fiddle on the wall, where you can grab it and play any old time. Don't make it
hard to get to.") and thought of her lives in other places, how she had made an
effort to meet people but usually ended up spending all her nonwork time in her
apartment, communing with the television and all the friends there who never
answered when she spoke to them. In her various foster families there had been
brief sparks of warmth -- a gentle haircut from one woman, a secret alphabet
with a foster sister they could write coded notes to each other in, a treasured
doll for her eleventh Christmas -- and brief sparks of violence, shock,
disillusionment. And long stretches of sadness.

She nested the fiddle in its case and looked at its battered face. "Tell you
what," Angus had said when he sold the fiddle to her, "this fiddle used to
belong to Jack Green. I think he got it from his granddaddy. Saw him play it
many a time. After his death his widow sold it to a pawn shop, and I found it
there. You take good care of it and don't leave it where the sun can get it,
specially not in a locked car, hear met"

Her fiddle had a longer history than she did.

But then, most instruments probably outlasted their players.

The door bell rang, and she closed and picked up her fiddle case. Never before
had she had a date to go to someone's garage. She opened the door and smiled at
Bill, and he smiled back.

Kelly's house was just another small suburban house in a neighborhood full of
such houses. She had lived in houses like that herself. Grinning, Kelly pushed
the garage door up to let Zita and Bill duck under, and inside there were six
chairs arranged in a circle, and three other old men sitting with instruments on
their laps.

"Hey, it's a girl," said the one in the cowboy hat and flowing white beard. His
blue eyes gleamed behind his glasses.