"M. Rickert - Cold Fires" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rickert Mary)

"'Should have stuck to cough drops,├втВмтДв she pronounced. (This from a woman who once confided in
me her absolute glee at seeing a famous jigsaw puzzle, glued and framed, hanging in some restaurant in a
nearby town.)
"When all was said and done we had fifteen boxes of those paintings and I decided to hang them in the
room that was half of what had once been a magnificent kitchen. Few people would see them there, and
that seemed right; they really were quite horrid. The sunlight could cause no more damage than their very
presence already exuded.

"When they were at last all hung, I counted a thousand, various shapes and sizes of the same
dark-haired, gray-eyed lady painted in various styles, the deep velvet colors of Renaissance, the soft
pastel hues of Baroque, some frightening bright green reminiscent of Matisse, and strokes that swirled
wildly from imitation of van Gogh to the thick direct lines of a grade schooler. I stood in the waning
evening light staring at this grotesquerie, this man's art, his poor art, and I must admit I was moved by it.
Was his love any less than that of the artist who painted well? Some people have talent. Some don't.
Some people have a love that can move them like this. One thousand faces, all imperfectly rendered, but
attempted nonetheless. Some of us can only imagine such devotion.

"I had a lot of free time in Castor. I don't like to bowl. I don't care for greasy hamburgers. I have never
been interested in stock car racing or farming. Let's just say I didn't really fit in. I spent my evenings
cataloguing Emile Castor's photographs. Who doesn't like a mystery? I thought the photographic history
of this man's life would yield some clues about the object of his affection. I was quite excited about it
actually, until I became quite weary with it. You can't imagine what it's like to look through one man's life
like that, family, friends, trips, beautiful women (though none were her). The more I looked at them, the
more depressed I grew. It was clear Emile Castor had really lived his life and I, I felt, was wasting mine.
Well, I am given to fits of melancholy, as you well know, and such a fit rooted inside me at this point. I
could not forgive myself for being so ordinary. Night after night I stood in that room of the worst art ever
assembled in one place and knew it was more than I had ever attempted, the ugliness of it all somehow
more beautiful than anything I had ever done.

"I decided to take a break. I asked Darlene to come in, even though she usually took weekends off, to
oversee our current high school girl, Eileen something or other, who seemed to be working through some
kind of teenage hormonal thing because every time I saw her she appeared to have just finished a good
cry. She was a good kid, I think, but at the time she depressed the hell out of me. ├втВм╦ЬShe can't get over
what happened between her and Randy,├втВмтДв Darlene told me. ├втВм╦ЬThe abortion really shook her up. But
don't say anything to her parents. They don't know.'

"'Darlene, I don't want to know.'

"Eventually it was settled. I was getting away from Castor and all things Castor related. I'd booked a
room in a B&B in Sundale, on the shore. My duffel bag was packed with two novels, plenty of
sunscreen, shorts and swimwear and flip-flops. I would sit in the Sun. Walk along the shore. Swim.
Read. Eat. I would not think about Emile Castor or the gray-eyed woman. Maybe I would meet
somebody. Somebody real. Hey, anything was possible now that I was getting away from Castor.

"Of course it rained. It started almost as soon as I left town and at times the rain became so heavy that I
had to pull over on the side of the road. When I finally got to the small town on the shore I was pretty
wiped out. I drove in circles looking for the ironically named ├втВм╦ЬSunshine Bed and Breakfast├втВмтДв until in
frustration at the eccentricity of small towns, I decided that the pleasant-looking house with the simple
sign ├втВм╦ЬB&B├втВмтДв must be it. I sat in the car for a moment hoping the rain would give me a break, and