"Kress, Nancy - Out of All Them Bright Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

Well, she's a flake. Always has been.
"The National Enquirer," Kathy goes on, "told how they have all this firepower up in the big ship that hasn't landed yet. My husband says they could blow us all to smithereens, they're so powerful. I don't know why they even came here. We don't want them. I don't even know why they came, all that way."
"They want to make a difference," I say, but Kathy barrels on ahead, not listening.
"The Pentagon will hold them off, it doesn't matter how much firepower they got up there or how much they insist on seeing about our defenses, the Pentagon won't let them get any toeholds on earth. That's what my husband says. Blue bastards."
I say, "Will you please shut up?"
She gives me a dirty look and flounces off. I don't care. None of it is anything to me. Only, standing there with the disinfectant in my hand, looking at the dark windows and listening to the music wordless and slow on the radio, I remember that touch on my arm. And I think, they didn't come here with any firepower to blow us all to smithereens. I just don't believe it. So why did they come? Why come all that way from another star to walk into Charlie's diner and order a green salad with no dressing from an ordinary earth person?
Charlie comes out with his keys to unlock the cash register and go over the tapes. I remember the old couple who stiffed me and I curse to myself. Only pie and coffee, but it still comes off my salary. The radio starts playing something else, not the sad song, but nothing snappy neither. It's a love song, about some guy giving and giving and getting treated like dirt. I don't like it much.
"Charlie," I say, "what did those government men say to you?"
He looks up from his tapes and scowls. "What do you care?"
"I just want to know."
"And maybe I don't want you to know," he says, and smiles nasty-like. Me asking has put him in a better mood, the creep. All of a sudden I remember what his wife said when she got the stitches: "The only way to get something from Charlie is to let him smack me around a little, and then ask him when I'm down. He'll give me anything when I'm down. He gives me shit if he thinks I'm on top."
I think again about the blue guy. John.
I do the rest of the clean-up without saying anything. Charlie swears at the night's take -- I know from my tips that it's not much. Kathy teases her hair in front of the mirror behind doughnuts and pies, and I put down the breakfast menus. But all the time I'm thinking, and I don't much like my thoughts.
Charlie locks up and we all leave. Outside it's stopped raining but it's still misty and soft, real pretty but too cold. I pull my sweater around myself and in the parking lot, after Kathy's gone, I say, "Charlie."
He stops walking toward his truck. "Yeah?"
I lick my lips. They're all of a sudden dry. It's an experiment, like, what I'm going to say. It's an experiment.
"Charlie. What if those government men hadn't come just then and the...the blue guy hadn't been willing to leave? What would you have done?"
"What do you care?"
I shrug. "I don't. Just curious. It's your place."
"Damn straight it's my place!" Through the mist I can see him scowl. "I'd of squashed him flat!"
"And then what? After you squashed him flat, what if the men came then and made a stink?"
"Too bad. It'd be too late by then, huh?" He laughs and I can see how he's seeing it: the blue guy bleeding on the linoleum and Charlie standing over him, dusting his hands together.
Charlie laughs again and goes off to his truck, whistling. He has a little bounce in his step. He's still seeing it, almost like it really had happened. Over his shoulder he calls to me, "They're built like wimps. Or girls. All bone, no muscle. Even you must of seen that," and his voice is cheerful. It doesn't have any more anger in it, or hatred, or anything but a kind of friendliness. I hear him whistle some more, until the truck engine starts up and he peels out of the parking lot, laying rubber like a kid.
I unlock my Chevy. But before I get in, I look up at the sky. Which is really stupid because of course I can't see anything, with all the mist and clouds. No stars.
Maybe Kathy's husband is right. Maybe they do want to blow us all to smithereens. I don't think so, but what the hell difference does it ever make what I think? And all at once I'm furious at John, furious mad, as mad as I've ever been in my life.
Why does he have to come here, with his bird calls and his politeness? Why can't they all go someplace else besides here? There must be lots of other places they can go, out of all them bright stars up there behind the clouds. They don't need to come here, here where I need this job and so that means I need Charlie. He's a bully, but I want to look at him and see nothing else but a bully. Nothing else but that. That's all I want to see in Charlie, in the government men -- just small-time bullies, nothing special, not a mirror of anything, not a future of anything. Just Charlie. That's all. I won't see nothing else.
I won't.
"I make so little difference," he says.
Yeah. Sure.

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