"Alexander Jablokov - Market Report" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jablokov Alexander)

Ice cubes clinked in my empty glass and she refilled it. "Known what, Bertram?"

"That you and Dad could turn the most wholesome of carefully planned and secure communities into something disturbing. And here I thought, while driving around, that you two had finally settled down, so that I could visit you without fear. Nice neighborhood, Old Oak Orchard."

She looked off at the glowing tents of the neighbors. "It is a nice neighborhood. Do you smell roasting joints from oxen and goats hissing fat on ancient sacrificial stones? Hear the minor-key chants of the priests as they

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rip open the jugulars of bellowing kine with their bronze blades? Does that make you afraid?"

"Lulubelle." My father broke a branch on a for-sythia as he wrestled a heavy bundle out of the garage. My mother winced. "You're frightening the boy with all this pseudo-biblical 'kine' stuff. That's cows, Bert, if you don't know. Herefords, Black Anguses. Besides, Lulu, you know our whole concept's not really about.. . that sort of thing. That's not the point."

"I thought we had agreed to disagree on the point, Franklin." I noticed that my mother had scratches up and down her arms, and that one of her little fingers was in a splint. Both Dad and I heard the danger in her tone.

He held up the tent. "It's canvas, Bert. White duck. Heavy as hell. You know, I saw some hunters out in the Gila with one of these once. They packed in on horses, and fried up a mess of potatoes in a cast-iron pan two feet across. My friend and I ate some kind of reconstituted gunk out of a plastic bowl. They were hunting elk with black-powder rifles. The things looked like can-

He'd told me the story before, but the actual physical tent was a new element. It was as if he now needed some real substance behind the memory. My father swore under his breath as he put the thing up. I knew better than to try and help him. It had all sorts of complicated ribs and locking joints. He pinched some skin and got real quiet. You could hear him breathing through his nostrils.

"Oh, come on, Bertram." My mother chuckled. "You won't see any animal-headed gods in the Lopezes' backyard, so quit staring. I was just... kidding."

She was really being hard on me. She'd noticed Stacy's absence, but wasn't going to ask about it. I was sure it pleased her, though.

"It's late, Lu." My father looked hungrily at my

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mother. Men should not look at their own wives that way, and particularly not at the mothers of their sons.

"Yes," she said. "It's time for bed."

It was a peacemaking gesture of some sort. They'd been at war, but my arrival had brought them together. My mother smiled at me over her shoulder as she followed him into their dome tent. It was the same old story. My parents had always disappeared behind their locked bedroom door, sometimes in the middle of the day, sometimes when I was sitting down in the living room with uncomfortable shoes on, waiting to go to some relative's house, and I wasn't even allowed to turn the TV on.

1 woke up. 1 hadn't really slept- It was quiet. Still dark. I was thirsty. I walked across the lawn to the back door. The cut ends of the grass tickled my bare feet. It was a great feeling, a suburban feeling. The stars were weirdly bright. The Milky Way was something you wanted to wipe off with a sponge.

The sliding glass door to the kitchen wasn't locked. As a child, I'd always asked for kitchen water rather than bathroom water. My mother would go downstairs for me. The stairs creaked and I would hear her and know that she loved me. My father would go into the bathroom, make a lot of noise so I knew he hadn't gone anywhere, even flush the toilet, and then come back and tell me that it was the finest kitchen water there was. If 1 was thirsty enough, I would believe him.

The kitchen was dark. I felt the edge of a Corian countertop. I worked my way toward the sink. I saw the high faucet silhouetted against the window. Wet on my fingers. Something was soaking in the full sink. The water did not feel soapy. The glasses would be in this cabinet over here.

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d at me. For a second I thought it was air-conditioning after all, despite how hot it was in the kitchen. Then I saw the eyes.

"What is that thing he's got in his mouth?" my father said. He peered up above the cabinets, into the shadows cast by the lamp. "A vole? Do we have voles? Or is that a star-nosed mole? Native or ... recreated?"

"Franklin," my mother said.

From a cookie jar shaped like a squat Chrysler Building she gave me a Tollhouse cookie. It couldn't have been baked more than a couple of hours before, probably about the time I was landing at O'Hare. The chocolate chips were still a little liquid. They unfurled themselves across my tongue. I lay on the textured floor. I didn't want to get up.

A magnet on the white dishwasher said CLEAN. The symbol for CLEAN was the smoking rubble of a city. I reached up and turned it over. DIRTY was that city whole, veiled in a haze of smog. A typical example of one of my father's deep ecology jokes. Smog is one of those antique sixties-type symbols he's always using as if they were arguments.