"Alice Hoffman - Turtle Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hoffman Alice)

It isn't the humidity, or even the heat, which is so fierce and sudden
it can make grown men cry. Every May, when the sea turtles begin their
migration across West Main Street, mistaking the glow of streetlights
for the moon, people go a little bit crazy. At least one teenage boy
comes close to slamming his car right into the gumbo-limbo tree that
grows beside the Burger King. Girls run away from home, babies cry all
night, ficus hedges explode into flame, and during one particularly
awful May, half a dozen rattlesnakes set themselves up in the phone
booth outside the 7-Eleven and refused to budge until June.
At this difficult time of the year people who grew up in Verity often
slip two aspirins into their cans of Coke; they wear sunglasses and
avoid making any major decisions. They try not to quit their jobs, or
smack their children, or run off to North Carolina with the sertticeman
who just fixed their VCR. They make certain to stay out of the ocean,
since the chemical plant on Seminole Point always leaks in the first
week of May, so that the yellow film float to the surface, bringing
sharks closer to shore. In the past few years, there has been an
influx of newcomers, lured by the low rents and wild hibiscus. As a
result, Verity is now home to more divorced women from New York than
any other town in the state of Florida.

None of these women had any idea of the sort of mess the month of May
in Verity could make of their lives, any more than they knew what daily
exposure to cMorine could do to their hair. There were now dozens of
green-headed women all over town, all addicted to Diet Dr. Pepper, and
each and every one of them was shocked to discover that in Verity
mosquitoes grew to the size of bumblebees and that the sea grape, which
grew wild along the beach, could pull their children right into the
thicket if they didn't keep to the wooden paths.

After midnight, when the heat was almost bearable and anole lizards ran
fearlessly across quarry tile floors, these women never wept but did
their laundry instead. While the bleach was added to the white wash
and the laundry softener doled out, it became clear that although some
of the children these women had transplanted were doing well, most were
not. There were toddlers who called out for their fathers in the
middle of the night, and boys who dreamed so deeply of the houses where
they grew up they'd wake damp with sweat, smelling of cut grass. There
were sullen teenage girls running up astronomical phone bills, and
babies so accustomed to ranch houses they got hysterical at the sight
of an elevator.

At 27 Long Boat Street, just off West Main, in a pink stucco
condominium facing the flat blue bay, there lived a twelve-year I old
boy, a mean little Scorpio named Keith Rosen, who would have liked
nothing better than to knock someone's block off. He was so mean he
could cut his own finger with a serrated steak knife and not flinch.

He could drop a brick on his bare foot and not cry out loud. Last