"Steven Popkes - The Great Caruso" - читать интересную книгу автора (Popkes Steven)

The Great Caruso
Steven Popkes
From Gardner Dozois - The Year's Best Science Fiction 23rd Annual Collection (2006)

A few years ago, there was a spate of novels from independent presses that focused on the future
of cigarette smoking. They bore titles like Smoke Easy and The Last Cigarette and seemed to reflect
widespread vilification of the tobacco industry.

Now we're in 2005 and here we have a story with a different perspective on the future of cigarette
smoking. Those of you who remember M. Shayne Bell's story тАЬAnomalous Structures of My
DreamsтАЭ from a couple of years ago might begin to wonder if there's a theme anthology in the
offingтАФif there is, we'll leave it to anthologists Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois to come up with a
book title that takes our breath away.

Norma gave up smoking when she found out she was pregnant with Lenny. Everybody congratulated her
and said how important it was not to smoke when you were pregnant. It was bad for the baby. Norma
understood and promised herself she'd start the day he was born. But, heck. He looked so small and
wrinkly in the preemie ward of the Albuquerque Hospital and was trying so hard to just to breathe and
stay alive, she decided she'd give him a couple of years. Get him past nursing and stuff. Once he was
strong enough, she'd go back. Tomas didn't approve of smoke inhalation. Nothing that didn't go up the
nose was a good idea. He was ecstatic that she stayed off tobacco. Or, he would have been if he hadn't
been shot down the week before she found out she was pregnant. He was fronting for the Turban-Kings
but had developed a deep affection for their brand of cocaine. Tomas had been pretty but Norma had
always known he wouldn't last long.

With Tomas gone, Norma had to get a job. She sighed and hit the streets. She would have had to find
one anyway. After six weeks of fruitless searching, Norma landed a job as a clerk for Frost Fabrications
near the University.

She contented her lapsed habit by lingering in the cigarette fumes from the Indians selling turquoise
brooches and rings at the corner of Old Town. She could often be found standing in front of the cantina
down the street next to an old Mexican smoking a gloriously obnoxious cigar. With the occasional
secondhand smoke from disgruntled office workers grabbing a quick one on the loading dock, Norma
managed to keep herself on the low end of satisfied. Just a couple of years, she told herself. Then, she'd
light up and everything would be fine.

But when Lenny turned five, a whole series of commercials about how secondhand smoke caused
learning disabilities were broadcast. Norma was pretty sure that once she started back again she
wouldn't be able to keep from smoking in the house. She grimly decided she could stick it out until Lenny
got into the habit of studying.

Norma was fifty when Lenny turned ten: the danger years, said the magazines. When anybody could
suddenly drop dead of a heart attack. Cigarettes caused heart attacks, didn't they? She didn't want
Lenny to have to bury her, did she? Not a ten-year-old boy.

By the time Lenny was thirty and had been on the Albuquerque police force for a while, Norma figured
she'd done enough. If she died, she died. She was seventy now. It was now Lenny's duty to bury her.
He'd do it eventually one way or the other. Her first puff was everything she'd remembered: the burn
down the throat, the tingling all the way to her fingers and toes, the quick, sharp rush up into her face and
behind her eyes. She felt brighter and happier than she'd been in years. It was like the first time she lit up,