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

"So? You're smart. All you need is a rich uncle. Or else hit the lottery. I
play my birthday and Madonna's every week. 7/28/56 and 8/16/58. Tell you
what: when I win, I'll stake you. Only you have to name the store after me.
Sloboda's Cleaners."

Brown gabardines were next on the rail. He said nothing.

"Because it's nice work," she said, "drycleaning. I mean, it's fun because
there's progress. You can see what you've done at the end of the day, not
like bagging groceries or stitching shoes. You start with something ugly and
it ends up pretty. How many jobs are there where you try to make the world a
more beautiful place?"

Henry had no idea; he cared zero for the world. He liked the iron tang of
steam hissing from the presses, the furriness of wet wool, the backbeat of the
spinning drum, the way silk clung like caterpillars to his rough skin, the
perfect chemical luster of nylon, the attic smell of shirt cardboards, leather
jackets as heavy as raw steak, the airiness of rayon, the delicate crinkling
of plastic bags fresh off the roll and especially the intoxicating palette of
chemicals at the spotting table. He liked sweating through his tank top in
the numbing heat of July and basking in the cozy humidity of the back room at
Christmas. What mattered to Henry was that the job filled his senses and kept
away the bad thoughts. Mostly.

"Yeah," she was saying, "I like it here just fine even though it's not exactly
what I want to do for the rest of my life." She waved her finger at him.
"Don't you dare tell Kaplan I said that. I'm trusting you."

A pair of tan suit pants.

"No, what I really want to be someday is a travel agent. That way I'll get to
go all over so I can tell people where the best times are. You know, like a
librarian has to read all those books? Because I'd love to see the pyramids
and China and San Francisco and the Disneys -- all the Disneys. I read where
they have one in France now. And learn to ski. And I'm going to try all
those warm places where you just lay around on the beach in your bikini and
waiters bring you drinks with cherries in them."

The idea of Celeste in a bikini made him laugh. She'd need to buy a third
piece to cover her hump.

"Yeah, what's so funny?" She was suddenly brittle, as if a cruel word might
shatter her. "You don't think I could do it?"
He had never seen her fold up like this; maybe she had never told him anything
that mattered before. He sensed that if he said what he really thought, she
might never speak to him again. A couple hours ago he would've killed for
this chance. Now he let it pass. "Don't you have to go to school for that?"
He waved vaguely toward downtown.

"Probably. I don't know. Never mind." She picked an armful off the rail of