"Pat Murphy - Rachel In Love" - читать интересную книгу автора (Murphy Pat)

one of the shelves in the janitor's storeroom.

Her plans to run away and go home are disrupted by the idea that she is in love with Jake, a notion that
comes to her slowly, fed by the stories in the confessions magazines. When Jake absent-mindedly
strokes her, she is filled with a strange excitement. She longs for his company and misses him on the
weekends when he is away. She is happy only when she is with him, following him through the halls of the
center, sniffing the aroma of tobacco and whiskey that is his own perfume. She steals a cigarette from his
pack and hides it in her cage, where she can savor the smell of it at her leisure.
She loves him, but she does not know how to make him love her back. Rachel knows little about love:
she remembers a high school crush where she mooned after a boy with a locker near hers, but that came
to nothing. She reads the confessions magazines and Ann Landers' column in the newspaper that Jake
brings with him each night, and from these sources, she learns about romance. One night, after Jake falls
asleep, she types a badly punctuated, ungrammatical letter to Ann. In the letter, she explains her situation
and asks for advice on how to make Jake love her. She slips the letter into a sack labeled "Outgoing
Mail," and for the next week she reads Ann's column with increased interest. But her letter never
appears.

Rachel searches for answers in the magazine pictures that seem to fascinate Jake. She studies the naked
women, especially the big-breasted woman with the purple smudges around her eyes.

One night, in a secretary's desk, she finds a plastic case of eye-shadow. She steals it and takes it back to
her cage. The next evening, as soon as the Center is quiet, she upturns her metal food dish and regards
her reflection in the shiny bottom. Squatting, she balances the eye shadow case on one knee and
examines its contents: a tiny makeup brush and three shades of eye shadowINDIAN BLUE, FOREST
GREEN, and WILDLY VIOLET. Rachel chooses the shade labeled WILDLY VIOLET.

Using one finger to hold her right eye closed, she dabs her eyelid carefully with the makeup brush, leaving
a gaudy orchidcolored smudge on her brown skin. She studies the smudge critically, then adds to it,
smearing the color beyond the corner of her eyelid until it disappears in her brown fur. The color gives
her eye a carnival brightness, a lunatic gaiety. Working with great care, she matches the effect on the
other side, then smiles at herself in the glass, blinking coquettishly.

In the other cage, Johnson bares his teeth and shakes the wire mesh. She ignores him.

When Jake comes to let her out, he frowns at her eyes. --Did you hurt yourself? he asks.

--No, she says. Then, after a pause. --Don't you like it?

Jake squats beside her and stares at her eyes. Rachel puts a hand on his knee and her heart pounds at
her own boldness. --You are a very strange monkey, he signs.

Rachel is afraid to move. Her hand on his knee closes into a fist; her face folds in on itself, puckering
around the eyes.

Then, straightening up, he signs, --I liked your eyes better before.

He likes her eyes. She nods without taking her eyes from his face. Later, she washes her face in the
women's restroom, leaving dark smudges the color of bruises on a series of paper towels.

Rachel is dreaming. She is walking through the Painted Desert with her hairy brown mother, following a