"Sheri S. Tepper - The Fresco" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tepper Sherri)

down the hill while her brain skipped here and there like a dud kernel of popcorn, badly overexcited but
unable to explode. The best her legs could manage was a wavering stroll, but at least they kept going until
she reached the car. The familiarity of it, the dents, the rust spots, the smell of the inside of it, fast food
and dog, mostly, settled her a little.
She leaned on the open door, still trying to think. Lord. She couldn't just get in the car and drive off
with no plan, nothing decided. And she couldn't just go home, either. Though it was remotely possible
that Bert had crawled out of his boar's wallow of a bed and found someone to give him a ride to work, it
was far likelier he'd stayed in bed, watching baseball and making his way through the rest of the case of
beer he'd talked Larry Cinch into bringing him last night. Larry was an open-hearted man whose kindness
used up all the room in his head, leaving no space for either evil intentions or good sense. One would
think that since Bert had been convicted of DUI five times, his friends would begin to catch on that he'd
be better off without beer!
And one would think when he did it five times, the last time killing somebody, they'd put him in jail!
Other places, maybe. Not in New Mexico, where at least a third of the male population considered getting
drunk a recreation and driving drunk an exercise of manly skill, something like bull fighting. The judge
had put Bert on house arrest, sentenced him to an electronic anklet that set off an alarm at the station
house if he wasn't within fifty feet of the monitor at home or at his so-called job in the Alvarez salvage
yard. He was supposed to call the station before he went from one to the other and they gave him thirty
minutes to arrive. Most of the time, Bert figured it wasn't worth a phone call to get to work, especially on
weekends when Benita was home and he could get some fun out of bedeviling her.
The rest of the week was bearable. Ten to nine, Monday through Friday, she was at The Written
Word, doing more than a bit of everything. Marsh and Goose, the owners, were casual about their own
work hours and pretty much left it to her. She'd been there part time for two years, starting when Carlos
was three and Angelica was one, then full time for fourteen. The first two years were mostly learning the
job, stocking shelves, unpacking, doing scut work. Gradually she progressed, and after they put her on full
time she read reviews and ordered books and paid the bills and sent back the unsold paperback covers and
did the accounts. She took adult education literature courses so she could talk to customers about books,
and computer courses so she could use bookkeeping systems and inventory systems. When she ran out of
anything else to do, she read books. Considering the correspondence courses, the books and the Internet,
PBS, Bravo and the History channel, she'd soaked up a good bit of education, maybe even a hint of
culture, occasionally comforting herself with the thought she was probably as well read as some people
who came into the store, people who had obviously not hung their lives out on the line like an old, ragged
dish towel.
 Sometimes it was hard to remember how she'd felt more than twenty years before, a kid, a high
school senior madly in love with an older man. Among her friends, there'd been a little cachet in that, his
being older. She'd been too naive to wonder why an older man, a self-described artist, would be interested
in someone just turned seventeen. She was pretty, everyone said so, and artists were romantic, everyone
knew that, and the label wasn't an actual lie. Bert had never claimed to make a living as an artist, and he
had won a few third prize ribbons or honorable mentions at regional shows.
A man of minor talents and major resentments. The marriage counselor had said that, quietly, to
Benita. It had been a revelation, not the fact that Bert had major resentments, she couldn't have missed
knowing that after all these years. But the bit about the minor talent, yes, that was a revelation. Somehow,
Benita had come to think of him as being too lazy to live up to his potential. After that, she'd fretted over
it, wondering if he thought he had no potential, and if he drank rather than admit it. She felt sad for him
and wanted to comfort him, and that coincided with a few days when Bert wasn't drinking so they had a
weeklong second honeymoon, not that she'd ever had a first one. It made her feel better until the next time
he got drunk and knocked her down.
It was really hard to be understanding or sympathetic with Bert.
When he was sober, he would sit at the table listening as she begged him to talk to her. He would
grunt or utter a monosyllable, or he'd grin, that infuriating grin that told her he was teasing her, goading