"James Patrick Kelly - Monsters" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kelly James Patrick)

this relaxed in weeks. What harm had been done, really? Phil would wake up
with a headache and a story he'd exaggerate down at the corner bar for years.
So Henry would have lunch at Our Lady of Mercy for a while. Or find an even
darker church.

"Hail Mary, full of grace," he said to a parking meter. "The Lord is with
thee." He fished a dime from his pocket, cranked it into the slot and the
violation flag clicked down. "Deliver us from evil." He laughed. "Amen."

By the time he got back to Kaplan's, he had convinced himself that for today,
at least, he'd left the nightmare behind.

***

It rained that afternoon on everyone but Henry; he was still shining hours
after lunch. Even Celeste's yattering failed to rile him, perhaps because she
talked mostly about drycleaning instead of her cats and rice pudding and the
world's tallest woman. And she worked much harder than Jerry; he was secretly
impressed. She may have been a rattletongue, but when Celeste started
something, it got done.

He was pressing pants and she was hanging whites. "How long ago did you start
in cleaning anyway?" she said. "Ten years, twenty?"

"Before your time."

"Really?" She brightened. "How old do you think I am?"

He didn't understand why she was still honeying up to him, now that she had
what she wanted. Henry pulled a pair of gray pinstripes off the rail and
ignored her.

"Don't be such a gentleman. The answer is thirty-six, same age as you. Or at
least that's how old Jerry said you were. Unless he was making it up."

"No."

"So how come you never opened a store of your own?"

He stepped on the compressor pedal; steam billowed through the pants. His own
shop? That's what his dad used to say. But the thought had never appealed to
Henry; he had enough to worry about.

"After all," said Celeste, "you know the business."

"Twenty-five pounder is the smallest rig they make." He nodded at the
drycleaning machine. "Cost Kaplan thirty grand." He took his foot off the
steam pedal and the pants deflated. "You've got to be smart to play for those
stakes."