"Jerry Oltion - Abridged Edition" - читать интересную книгу автора (Oltion Jerry)

JERRY OLTION

ABRIDGED EDITION

QUINOA WASN'T IN THE dictionary. Owen checked twice, but the listings went
straight from quinine to quinoid.

Thinking he must have misspelled it, he looked back to the box of Bengal Spice
tea where he'd read quinoa among the list of ingredients, but now he couldn't
locate it there, either. He'd have sworn he'd seen it after nutmeg and cloves,
but now cloves was the last ingredient.

Nor could he find anything he could have misread to produce the word. That was
odd. Must be the stress, he thought. Seeing words that weren't there wouldn't
be
the first strange thing he'd done since losing both Richard and his job.

He set the dictionary down on the countertop separating the kitchen from the
living room. The walls above the love seat and the stereo didn't look so bare
anymore -- he had stapled up Van Gogh poster prints where Richard's paintings
had been -- but the bookshelves and the CD rack were still full of gaps. Those
would take a while to refill.

The tea's spicy aroma filled the kitchen. Owen lifted the cup, blew across the
top, and took a sip. Something about it did suggest India, or Arabia. Foreign,
anyway. It tasted fine even without quinoa.

He took both cup and dictionary down the hallway into his study. Spreading the
morning newspaper out on his drafting table, he pulled aside the curtain on
the
street-facing window to give him more light and began the morning ritual of
looking through the want ads. He found the usual glut of accounting and auto
body jobs, but once again no draftsmen. Plenty of restaurant jobs and sales
positions, but no openings for surveyors, either. If this kept up, he was
going
to run out of unemployment compensation before he found anything.

Another ad caught his attention: Stevedore. There was no job description, just
a
number to call. Owen tried to remember what a stevedore did, but if he'd ever
known, he'd forgotten it. Well, no problem; he had the dictionary right there.
He flipped it open and paged through the S's.

No stevedore. The listing went from stethoscope to stew. Hmm, he thought.
Wasn't
much of a dictionary, was it? He shook his head sadly. The dictionary -- like
the tea -- had belonged to his housemate, until Richard had left for Calcutta
three months ago to join an eastern religion Owen couldn't even pronounce.
Owen
had sneaked it out of a packing box so he'd have something of Richard's to