"Nancy Kress - In a World Like This" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

office for commuters grabbing a quick orange juice in the morning, or a quick drink instead of going
home. He has been heading for the Depot every night; I don't know what time he leaves it. I turn my
steps in the other direction, toward my street. I am halfway down it when two police cars dash up to the
Lindstrom house.
They swerve to the edge of the lawn, black-and-white doors fly open, and two cops run to the back
of the house, and two more to the front. The Lindstroms, I remember vaguely, are on vacation. I prepare
to tell this to the cop approaching me when Kitty Sue Cunningham comes running out of her house across
the street and begins babbling in the Georgia accent that somehow becomes thicker each year in New
Jersey.
"Ah saw him go in, just sneak around the side of the house, and Ah called the police right away. Ah
just know he's the one who's been doin' all these horrible robberies...."
She goes on and on, an anxious, syrupy flow, her eyes never leaving the Lindstrom house, hands
twisting the material of a pink dress too young for her lacquered blond beehive. The cop listens stoically.
"...lookin' so long at the window because Ah was cleanin' the glass, because of those horrible fly
spots every time the weather goes and warms up again and the eggs hatch, and that's all just because a
single housefly can lay one hundred fifty eggs at a time, all hatching in just twelve hours-"
"What?" I say. There is lead in my lungs.
"-because the rate they get eaten up by birds and toads and all those bitty creatures is so high-"
"Kitty Sue-"
"Nothing," a cop says to me, in a tone I recognize as intentional reassurance. "The lady must have
been mistaken. There aren't any tracks anywhere, and in that soft mud, there would have to be."
"But Ah saw-"
"No tracks, ma'am," the cop says in the same reassuring tone, but Kitty Sue is not listening. She is not
even there. A faint bluish shimmer, and Kitty Sue Cunningham - pink dress, Georgia drawl, dyed blond
hair, reasons for the mating habits of flies - has vanished.
Another faint shimmer a second later, and she is back, "-might have been the Wozniak boy, he's
breakin' his poor mother's heart with his shenanigans, but that's all because-"
The cop's eyes slide toward mine. I see the shock on his face; but the next moment it, too, is gone,
locked behind a stony blank cop look - Make something of it, buddy - that gives him a jawline like an
erection.
"-stealin' money from his daddy's wallet, and doin' it more than once, Ah was told, because-"
"Just because," I say - loudly, angrily, pointlessly, and with fear. Neither of them answers, and I walk
away, trembling a little. I don't look back but go straight home, where I find Emily in tears: While she was
out at the shopping mall, our house had been burglarized.

"They said it was random," I say to Emily as we prepare for bed. Both of us are exhausted from
talking to the police, soothing the kids, notifying the insurance people, listing the stolen possessions. Who
knows exactly what the stolen possessions are? Months from now we will discover things missing that we
had forgotten we owned.
"Random, Emily. Not personal. They probably didn't know us, or anything about us, You shouldn't
take it personally. It happens."
Emily looks up, shimmers, and is gone.
In a moment she is back, yanking her slip over her head and flinging it into an open drawer. I stand
completely still, unable to speak. Perhaps I hallucinated about Kitty Sue Cunningham; perhaps I am
hallucinating now.... Terrible thoughts chase themselves through my head: Cerebral arteriosclerosis.
Alzheimer's disease. Brain tumors.
Emily, in bra and panties, begins a frenzied straightening of the jars and tubes on her dresser. "The
burglars took my mother's silver candlesticks, because they are worth four hundred fifty-eight dollars with
silver at current market prices. He didn't know my mother because she died in 1978 and never visited us
in Hickory Village because we hadn't moved here yet. He does need the money because he's the only