"James Patrick Kelly - The Ice is Singing" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kelly James Patrick)

by james patrick kelly


The man in the ice is wearing a blue three-piece suit. He is facing up at you
and the bright sky and his eyes are open. What does he see? Nothing. He's dead,
no? You look around the lake. None of the other skaters seem to realize that
there's a man frozen in the ice on Christmas Day. Someone could do a sit spin
right on his nose, a triple lutz from his head to his black, tasseled loafers.
Except nobody on the lake is that good a skater. Certainly not you.
The ice is singing today. It whoops under strong light and moans when the
sun goes behind a cloud. Something to do with expansion and contraction. Beth
called the sounds whale songs. You think they'd have to be whales the size of
skyscrapers. Sometimes the ice cracks under your weight with a sound like a
gunshot, but don't worry about falling through. It's thick here, thick as a man.
 So what to do about your man in the ice? You are already thinking of him as
yours. No one is going to find him, way over here in Brainard's Cove. The
Brainards are summer people. They're in Lauderdale, waiting for the early-bird
dinner special at the Olive Garden. Is the Olive Garden open on Christmas?
You could dial 911, but it's a little late for CPR. His skin looks gray against the
white button-down shirt. One of those Escher ties, green geometric birds turning
into blue fish, tucks into the vest. Now that you're branch manager, you wouldn't
mind having a three-piece suit.
Then why didn't you tell Beth? She buys all your clothes.
The man in the ice isn't going anywhere and you're cold. It takes you 20
minutes to skate home.
The house is full of Beth's absence. You should have bought a tree anyway.
Strung the damn lights. It wasn't as if you couldn't find the ornaments. They're in
the attic, behind the golf clubs. Next to the unopened presents you piled there. If
she were here, there would be sugar cookies and a turkey and the ghost of Bing
Crosby would be on the couch, drinking her eggnog.
You try to imagine how a man could get caught in the ice like that. If he
were dead, he'd sink to the bottom. And even if he were floating, wouldn't he be
face down? When you were a kid, summering on the lake, you perfected the
dead-man's float. You actually got your grandma to scream once. Maybe your
man lies down on the ice. He's tired after a long day of selling single-premium
deferred annuities or designing large-span roof trusses or calculating the useful
lives of general fixed assets. His body is warm; he melts into the ice. Then it
closes over him.
Maybe it's a miracle. A Christmas miracle. Yeah, right.
Or maybe you're fucking crazy.
The walls of your home office are the color of walnut shells. That was
Beth's favorite joke. "I see you're in a brown study," she would say. You can
picture her in the doorway, hip cocked against the jamb. How many times did
you kiss her there? The moose framed on the wall was never amused by her
joke. Neither was the otter or the winged blur you're sure is a bald eagle. Beth
gave you a digital camera for your 34th birthday. You need to repaint your
office soon. This spring, when the weather warms up. You sit at the computer
and type ice into Google. You read about black ice and snow ice and water ice
and large-grain ice and small-grain ice and cobblestone ice. There is nothing
about businessman ice.