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

of imagination.

He knew that the reason Celeste kept honeying up to him was that she wanted to
switch over to the cleaning side. Kaplan kept crabbing that there was no
money in shirts, that he only took them so that shirt customers would bring in
cleaning business. If Kaplan axed shirts, he'd have to axe Celeste too -- or
else move her over to Henry's side. But Henry already had a helper and, even
though Jerry was a jack-around, at least he left Henry alone.

Celeste perched on a stool, steaming shirts on the form press they called the
susie. The laundry had delivered just three mesh bags; usually there were
between five and eight. "Guess what I had for breakfast today?" she said.

Henry, at the spotting bench, did not reply. In the six months Celeste had
been at Kaplan's, he'd learned to pretend that he couldn't hear her over the
rumble of the cleaning drum.

"Broccoli in Velveeta sauce. I know you think that's weird but then you think
everything I do is weird. Besides, I like leftovers for breakfast. Meat
loaf, potatoes, lasagna, I don't care. When I was a kid I knew this girl
poured root beer on her corn flakes so I guess broccoli for breakfast isn't so
bad."

Henry followed a trail of coffee splatters up the placket of a silk blouse,
sponging them with wet spotter. He blotted the blouse and set it aside for a
few moments.
"What if our bodies don't wake up all at once? I mean, the eyes are always
last, right? Ears wake up before. I swear I can smell coffee brewing even
though I'm asleep. So maybe my taste buds have insomnia or something. Say
they're up at two in the morning. By six-thirty, it's lunch time. I can't
remember the last time I ate bacon and eggs. What did you have for breakfast,
Henry?"

He scraped the splotch on the lapel of a charcoal suit jacket with his
fingernail. Some kind of wax -- a candlelight dinner gone sour? The cleaning
machine buzzed and the drum creaked to a stop.

Celeste cupped a hand over her mouth. "I said, what did you have for
breakfast?"

"You talking to me?" He flushed the wax away with the steam gun. "Cheerios."
He tossed the jacket into a basket filled with darks. "With milk." There were
enough clothes in it to make a new load. "Jerry," he called. "Yo, Jerry!"

"He's pretending he can't hear you." Celeste giggled. "Probably trying to get
into Maggie's pants."

That was his squawk with Jerry. When something needed doing, Jerry was either
at the front counter flirting with the cashier or in the bathroom. Henry
ducked around the coat hanging beside the spotting bench, grabbed an empty