"Oates, Joyce Carol - Broke Heart Blues" - читать интересную книгу автора (Oates Joyce Carol)

Thank you, Cgod. Nothing has been decided. st's true, and this is fact not conjecture, the Hearts were accident-prone. And so were others in their vicinity.

The workmen--roof-repair, painters, plumbers, electricians, crew-who were hired by Mrs.. Heart, through Skelton Construction, to make improvements on the house at 8 Meridian Place, for instance, one, roofer, fell two storys from the edge of the steep mossy-rotted slate roof to seriously injure himself on the ground, another, a young painter his twenties, grew dizzy in the sunshine and toppled off a second-floor scaffolding, his fall fortunately broken by an evergreen shrub, another was dismissed by Herman Skelton for unprofessional behavior (he'd discovered prowling the upstairs of the house, a silk undergarment Heart's in his overall pocket, having thought evidently that no home), an experienced worker for Moss Lawn & Tree Service lost control of his chain saw (watching Dahlia Heart in white silk shirt, white shorts, white scarf tied around her head, digging in the rock garden? ) and severed a thumb. A cleaning woman hired by Mrs.. Heart, on the recommendation of a new acquaintance, scalded herself scrubbing one of the old, enormous ceramic tubs in the upstairs bathrooms, it would turn out she'd been drinking, stealing sips from Aaron Leander Heart's liquor supply. And there were mysterious instances of pilfering, small items (like Dahlia Heart's champagne-colored silk negligee with matching lace panties) missing, with no way of tracing the thief. Crudely hand-lettered notes in the Hearts' mailbox, addressed to

"MISS DAHLIA"-You know I lovve you.

I could eat your juicy Heart.

Dahlia called Matt Trowbridge of the Willowsville Police Department, he came at once to the house to examine the note but declared that, far as he knew, whoever'd written it had not broken any law and could not arrested--"But if we can find out who it is, I could possibly with him unofficially," Matt Trowbridge said grimly, clenching his fists.

"I could possibly discourage him from harassing you further, Mrs..

Heart. ") "It's as if some force is trying to drive my family and me away from Willowsville, Dahlia Heart was overheard complaining to Skip Rathke, and manager of the Village Food Mart on Spring Street, who on mornings, his busiest morning, stood at the front of the store greeting customers and chattering like a master of ceremonies, "--but it won't succeed." Mrs.. Heart spoke bravely and defiantly, as if well aware that her words were being overheard and memorized by strangers, primarily women, who, assessing her in her stylish oyster-white silk-and-linen pants suit, cork-heeled shoes with straps that tied around her naked ankles, ropes of pearls around her neck and her bright makeup flawless as if she'd just strode onto the stage of a Las Vegas casino nightclub, did not wish her well.

"Yes. An actual force. But it won't succeed." And one day, approximately eight months after the Hearts moved their new house (still known generally as the Edgihoffer house) while the Edgihoffer suit was still pending and extensive repairs were being made on the property of which not everyone in the Village approved including all sixty-four members of the Village Historical Society who signed a petition to Mrs.. Heart delivered by certified mail protesting the robin's-egg-blue paint, the felling of many beautiful trees and

"grotesque disfigurement" of the formerly prize-winning rock garden), Heart in her usual white costume, white satin pillbox hat with a dottedswiss veil perched on her lustrous white-blond hair fashioned a French twist, was the conspicuous guest of Willowsville businessman and entrepreneur Jerry Bozer for lunch at the Willowsville Country Club other diners stared ("That fool! Does he think we're supposed to believe he's having a 'business lunch' with the blackjack woman? "), and the youthful middleaged Negro waiter serving the couple in the sun-filled dining overlooking the golf course suddenly grunted, staggered, dropped the tray of plates he was carrying, gasped for air and fell heavily t, o the floor began to shake, writhe, kick, and the beautiful Mrs.. Heart leapt up, crying, "He's having a convulsion! He's an epileptic! Call an ambu]ance!

" While every other woman in the dining room looked on in terror and repugnance, Heart squatted beside the writhing man, whose eyes were rolling back in his head and whose lips were covered in froth, lowering herself so abruptly that her tight-fitting white skirt rode up her thighs, and her thighs and calves were revealed thickened with muscle, causing her stockings to myriad runs. With strong capable hands, not minding if her elaborately lacquered nails broke, Mrs.. Heart held the writhing man down and forced his jaws open and with "a wicked-looking long-handled steel comb" (as it was described) from out of her handbag pressed his tongue down flat to him from swallowing it. And all so fast! Without missing a beat!

the time the emergency medical crew arrived from Amherst General Hospital a minutes later, the crisis had passed. The black man was breathing again, al. most normally, his face, grayish, mottled with sweat, resembled face again and not a death mask. Panting, Dahlia Heart rose to feet. No one thought to assist her. The pillbox hat was crooked on her head and a strand of synthe ic-looking blond hair had slipped loose from her twist. Both her stockings were ruined. Her stylish white suit the bolero top and skirt slitted at the back was damp and smudged, as if by the black mzan's mahogany-dark skin. It was only when Mrs.. Heart glanced up to see the dining room of white faces still staring at her, and Mr..

Bozer's among them, that it might have occurred to her she'd made a blunder.

There's a melancholy story in the background of John Reddy's life our suburb that has to do with Dahlia Heart expecting to be invited one day to join any of our private clubs. After all, her affluent, influential business associates Mr.. Bozer, Mr.. Skelton, Mr.. Wells, Mr.. Pepper, Mr.. Riggs and others belonged to these clubs and occasionally took her to them as their guest, * the Willowsville Country Club, the Glenside Tennis Club, the Union Club, the Buffalo Athletic Club, the Country Club of Buffalo.

there was the Gardeners' Club of Buffalo, even the Village Women's League.

And others. But even before the Riggs scandal, when the few she'd cultivated would drop her cold, this just wasn't going to happen.

That day at the country club when the Negro waiter went into convulsions sealed Heart's social fate in Willowsville--though she hadn't known, of course. ) Months later, Herman Skelton had a near-fatal accident, never explained, on the Peace Bridge returning to the United States. It was past midnight of a weekday when Mr.. Skelton's newly purchased somehow skidded out of control at the crest of the long, magisterial bridge, swerved across the median and narrowly missed an oncoming car before it crashed into the railing, the car would have plunged hundreds of feet down into the rushing Niagara River if the railing hadn't held.

Unconscious, badly bleeding, Mr.. Skelton was rushed by ambulance to Buffalo General Hospital, he'd suffered a concussion, his collarbone and several ribs were broken and his handsome ruddy-freckled face was lacerated and would be badly scarred.

The damage done to his car and his marriage of twenty-six years was more serious, for Herman had lied to his wife Irma, telling her he was attending a business dinner in Buffalo when in fact, as it immediately came out, there had been no business dinner, and there'd been a woman the car with him at the time of the accident--Dahlia Heart. Herman had taken Mrs..

Heart "sightseeing" in Fort Erie and Niagara Falls, Ontario, they'd had a engthy dinner at the Top of the Flame, the twentieth-floor revolving dining room of the Niagara Tower, and had gone drinking and dancing afterward at the Horseshoe Lounge, overlooking Horseshoe Falls from the shore, to add to his other injuries, Herman would be charged with driving and driving while intoxicated. Dahlia Heart, his companion, who'd chosen not to ride with him in the ambulance to the hospital, but, for his own good, to return directly to her home, by some miracle hadn't been injured at all.

Yet Dahlia Heart was prone to accidents herself. A number of times in the years this mysterious woman lived among us, Mrs.. Heart conspicuous dark glasses in public because--we surmised one or both eyes might be blackened. These glasses were Hollywood style white-plastic frames with very dark lenses--"shades." These glasses had the of riveting a guy's attention almost as much as Mrs.. Heart's face itself.

Once John Reddy began playing varsity basketball we saw her sometimes at home games, usually with John Reddy's grandpa (a character, white-haired and wearing a cowboy hat even indoors) and maybe with John Reddy's younger brother Farley and sister Shirleen (not that we knew their names, we didn't), she'd get to the game on time but often leave at the point no matter how exciting the game was or how spectacular John was that night. Every one watched Mrs.. Heart enter the gym, clad trademark white, in cold weather a luscious white (ermine? though moms swore it was fake) fur coat to her ankles, making her way in spikeheeled white shoes or in cold weather spike-heeled white boots the reserved seating, and everyone watched her leave. Possibly she'd take time to shake hands with sweaty Coach McKeever and congratulate him in her husky, honeyed voice--"Coach, these boys are terrific. John-ny tells me you are the best"--leaving Coach blinking and shaken as if he'd been hit on the head with a sledgehammer. Possibly she'd exchange a few cheery with our principal, Mr.. Stamish, who came to all home games, Mr.. Cuthbert, Mr.. Larsen, Mr.. Dunleddy, Mr.. Schoppa. We men staring at Dahlia Heart, the more transfixed if she was dark glasses, and we liked it that, for those fleeting seconds, teachers' thoughts were identical with our own and the "generation gap" was bridged.

Speaking for his less articulate buddies, Dougie Siefried rolled his eyes, moaning, "That woman is sex-y," making suggestive motions like he was trying his damnedest to keep his hands off his crotch. "You can smell her at one hundred yards. You got to wonder--who's banging her around, she's got a black eye she has to hide? Who's banging her?" Sometimes we'd trail her checking out the Avenue of Fashion, Saturday afternoon. We'd sighted her in the Bon Ton Shop, in the Village Tearoom, in Nico's or the Crystal--alone or with her stumpy daughter. In a brave platoon of several cars we the cul-de-sac of Meridian Place, hoping to catch sight of Mrs..

Heart working in the infamous rock garden (we thought the two-foot gnomes, freaky green frogsx and sunbonneted little girls with sprinkling cans fashioned from wood Mrs./Heart had placed amid the rocks and flowers were a touch--"Like E)isney's Fantasia," Blake Wells said thoughtfully.

"It allows you to peer into the woman's mind"). We hoped to hell the nosy old who lived on either side of the Hearts, Mrs.. Thrun and Mrs..

Bannister, wouldn't call the cops on us. We hoped to hell John Reddy wasn't around to n@tice us.