"Nayler, Ray - All The Way West" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nayler Ray)

= All the Way West
by Ray Nayler


She knew he was the one. He leaned against the pump and stared blankly off at nothing while the gas pumped into his tank. He wiped the gasoline from his hand onto his T-shirt...not caring if he smelled of it. He glanced up at her. She felt her cheeks burn as his eyes scanned quickly, professionally, up and down her body. He favored her with a smile as casual as kicking a pebble, and walked into the gas station to pay. Every movement he made told her he didn't care about anything. He would take her where she wanted to go.

Her hands were shaking. She glanced into the station and saw him paying the man at the counter, thumbing a few bills over. She went to his car...an early-model white Mustang...and opened the passenger side door. She slid in, slamming the door shut behind her. That was it...the end of one life and the start of another.

The interior of the car smelled of cigarettes, mixed with medicinal pine from a little tree-shaped air freshener that hung from the rear-view mirror. She glanced out the corner of her eyes at him. He was coming back. He hadn't seen her yet. What if it didn't work? What if he threw her out of the car, thinking she was just some crazy old lady? But she wasn't old yet.

She checked her lipstick in the mirror and watched him come. She liked the way he walked with his head down, looking at the toes of his engineer boots, his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans. He was at the car now, moving around to the driver's side. He opened the door and slid behind the wheel, fishing through the pockets of his jeans, not even seeming to notice her. He came out with a half-crushed pack of cigarettes and the car keys. He stuck the keys in the ignition and turned the key, and the engine roared to life.

Only then did he turn his head and look at her. His eyes were the color of amber, the pupils like insects trapped inside. One of the pupils was misshaped...like an hourglass. It made his face seem somehow lopsided and cat-like and his expression impossible to read. He stuck a cigarette in the side of his mouth and pushed the cigarette lighter in, staring at her until it popped back out and he lit his smoke. Then he turned, blew a blue cloud of smoke out his window, jammed the car into gear, and pulled out of the station.

She gave a last glance at her minivan, parked at the side of the gas station. Then they turned a corner, and it was gone.

When they hit the highway he looked at her again.

"Where you headed?" His voice was baritone and almost emotionless. He placed his accents in the wrong places, like a bad actor rehearsing a script.

She leaned back, pushing her knees against the dashboard. She thought of her husband at home, waiting for her to come back with a can of gas so he could try out his new fucking lawnmower and his new goddamned chainsaw. She thought of her daughter blotting her lipstick on the torn Christmas paper. She thought of the PTA meeting last week, and how she'd compared the men's pot-bellies with the bellies of their pregnant wives. She'd had to run to the bathroom, laughing hysterically...and then crying hysterically, locked in one of the stalls, until one of the other wives had come in and asked her what was wrong, honey?

"I really don't give a shit. Just west."

He glanced over at her with his eyebrow raised over his odd hourglass eye. "Okay." The eyebrow sharpened. "You running from something?"

"Yes."

When she did not elaborate, he turned back to the road. After a few moments, he said. "Merry Christmas, anyway."

"Ha!" The laugh was like a bark. She covered her mouth.

He shook his head and turned back to the road. Evening was coming on. The orangey setting sun glared into the car. She rooted through her purse and pulled out her sunglasses.

"Could you get mine?" he asked. "They're in the back seat, there."

She dug around behind her, finally finding a pair of scratched Ray-Bans under a crescent wrench and a bunch of empty fast-food cups. She handed them to him, and he put them on.

"Thanks. My name is Jason, by the way."

"Shannon." She looked at the side of his face. It was much less confusing with the shades on, hiding that odd eye. He had a good profile...and a square jaw that looked like it could stand up to a punch or two. She liked his jaw. She wanted to bite it. She had a sudden vision of him shooting her husband in the face. It came over her like electricity. She saw her husband twitching on the ground with a crimson hole the size of a half-dollar in his cheek. His dead eyes stared up at her. She shuddered as an odd warmth coursed upwards through her, starting at her knees.

"Where are you going?" she asked. She hated her voice. It was a tiny soprano...like a mouse-squeak. She couldn't say anything without sounding like a dumb child. Men loved it.

He shrugged. "As far as I can."

"Me too." She pulled out the bobby pins that kept her hair plaited along the sides of her skull and shook her head so that her hair spilled down to her shoulders in rich chocolate ringlets. The henna smell of her hair filled the car. She tried to see Jason's eyes behind the dark glasses, but she couldn't make them out.

Outside, the sun was a burning red buoy trying to stay afloat on the horizon. She watched silver grain elevators turn salmon in the setting sun and shrink in the rear-view mirror. She had left. The thought was terrifying and beautiful. She had left it all behind. How soon before they started to get worried about her? Would she go back? She didn't want to, but somehow, she didn't trust herself not to. She could almost see it...crying into a pay phone at some gas station out in the middle of nowhere, begging Jim to come and get her. Begging him in her little, mousy voice.