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

hanging clothes and carried them over to the big press. "It's just something
I've been thinking about."

She didn't speak, sing, or hum for fifteen minutes. She just hurled clothes
around like curses: yanked them onto the press, jerked down the cover, threw
them onto hangers when they were done. Kaplan wheeled in a basket filled with
dirty clothes from up front and parked it by the spotting bench. He beamed
when he saw the long line of finished orders ready for bagging.

"I should've gotten you two together weeks ago." He rubbed his hands. "This
is great; I really mean it. Look, it's been a tough day. Go ahead and finish
up the shirts and you can knock off a half hour early."

Olive twills.

"Thanks Louis," said Celeste. She watched him go with a lemon expression on
her face. "Half an hour early? Shit, we should go home now. We've already
done a hell of a lot more than he had any right to expect." Then she chuckled;
Celeste wasn't built to pout. "Well, if you'll bag up the cleaning, I'll move
over to shirts."

"Sure."

"You're an odd one, you know that, Henry? At first I thought that you didn't
like me. Then Jerry said you didn't like anyone. But we talked today and you
survived. My guess is that you're just shy."

He hung the last pair of pants.

"Mind if I ask you a question?"

He sighed.

"What are you doing after work?"

***

It had been three years since Henry had last ridden in a car -- not since he
first started having bad thoughts. Now he remembered why. The bus might be
crowded and slow but it was safe as the living room couch. Cars were vicious.
The streets seethed with tense, drunk, angry, worried, impatient drivers.
They were lost, late, stuck in traffic and their windshields kept fogging up.
There was no place to park, some scut had just cut them off, so they screamed
back at their radios. He could see them jittering behind the steering wheels
of their weapons, feel the darkness inside him feasting on their anger.

He should have known better than to disrupt the routines. The monster was
back.

"It's because they think I'm their mother," said Celeste, who drove as if she