"Marta Randall - The Dark Boy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Randall Marta)

The Dark Boy
by Marta Randall

A year or two have passed since Marta RandallтАЩs fiction last appeared in
our pages. Actually more than two decades have passed since we ran тАЬThe
View from Endless ScarpтАЭ (but whoтАЩs counting?), so it behooves us to say a
word or two about Ms. RandallтАЩs career. Her debut novel, Islands, was
published in 1976 and she has since published seven more, including
Journey, Those Who Favor Fire, and the mystery Growing Light. She served
as president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and for
most of the current century, she has been teaching writing classes for the
Gotham WriterтАЩs WorkshopтАФcheck out www.writing classes.com/ for more
info on the course.
Her new story sticks to charted waters, but it plumbs the depths oh so
nicely.

****

Nancy stood at the unmarked bus stop on the carretera in front of the resort. She
zipped up her windbreaker against the cool dawn air and peered down the road,
worried that she had misunderstood the conciergeтАЩs directions, that the bus had
changed its route and nobody knew, that she had been misled. But of course she
hadnтАЩt. The bus rattled up. Chattering Mexican hotel maids and gardeners swung off
and, passing her, politely nodded. When she climbed aboard, the driver and
remaining passengers looked surprised. Tourists didnтАЩt ride the local bus, at least
not middle-aged lady tourists, but there was no other way to reach town this early.
She smiled nervously and paid her fare; two men jumped up and offered her the
front bench seat. Cheeks flaming, she took it and stared out the window, and tangled
her fingers together.

She could do this.

The land along the road into Cabo San Lucas reminded her of a
checkerboard: lush tropical plantings interrupted, as though by a knife, by the real
landscape, yellow and dry: cacti and strange parched trees and sawtoothed
mountains in the distance, formed of gigantic bouldery rubble like the leftovers of
some geological building site. Signs in Spanish flashed by. Huge, gated resorts, the
concrete block skeletons of still more resorts, small businesses, occasional
wildflowers to remind her that January is spring in Baja. The bus discharged
passengers at other resorts. Pemex gas stations. Golf courses. Restaurants. A
dilapidated bull ring, buildings pressing closer to each other, and the bus entered the
town. Or, at least, the tourist part of town.

The driver pulled over in front of a supermercado. Nancy sat still for a
moment before stepping down to the sidewalk. She watched the bus pull away.
 She stood blinking in the Mexican sunlight, trying to get her bearings. It was
already getting warm. Boulevard Marina curved away to the right, bordered on the
harbor side by hotels and on this side by storefronts and tiny real estate offices and
restaurants and curio shops and bars, pressed together in a jumble of pinks and
yellows and blues. Grills rattled as merchants pulled them aside or rolled them up,