"Tina Wainscott - Dreams of You [rtf]" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wainscott Tina)

"Yes, I do." It seemed so strange to talk about what she loved with her brother.
"Mother seems to think your photography is silly, but you're serious about it."
"Very."
"Well, I have to give you one thing: You're doing what you want, not what Mother wants."
Nikki had never felt close to Devlin, but for some reason she felt compelled to open a tiny bit of herself to him. "And my prize for doing that is I eternally disappoint her."
"Everyone disappoints her." His lips thinned, then he smiled. "I got to thinking that I've never seen your work. I don't even know what you take pictures of. So I came up here to see."
"I didn't think anyone cared to see my work, so I only showed them to Dad."
"You miss him, don't you?"
"More than anyone will ever know."
"You were his favorite. I could always tell that." At her protest he said, "It's okay. I got used to it." He smiled, not that persuasive or cocky smile, but a genuine one. "I don't even know you. I knew you took pictures, but didn't realize how much it meant to you until I saw that look on your face when you saw me up here."
"We live separate lives, even though we live under the same roof."
УWhen Jack and I get together, he tells me this and that about you, and it sounds like he's talking about a stranger. Maybe we can remedy that before one or both of us finally gets enough nerve to move out of this house and loses complete touch."
"Okay," she'd whispered, totally stunned.
That was three months before her life was ripped apart. She'd never been able to figure out exactly what he'd been getting at.
Adrian sat at the oak table, his black boots propped on the edge, studying the black-and-white prints. His gaze kept wandering back to the picture he'd taken of Madame Blue-Nicolina.
"This is crazy, Wilde." He stood, pacing the tile floor. "I'm a thousand miles from what I should be doing, asking about some woman whose soul is supposedly connected to mine. Maybe my aunt is crazy, like Ma's been saying all these years." His ride through the tunnel, his feeling as though he had sunk through Nicolina's flesh and into her bloodstream, and the visions he'd had through her eyes since, they were real. He glanced at Nicolina again. Though her face was somewhat obscured, he knew- knew-it was her. He looked at the photographs again. And he also knew, somehow, that she'd taken these pictures. So maybe he was crazy.
Adrian dropped down in the chair with a sigh. His fingers found the print again. If he could find her, just to know that she really existed, then he could go back to his life. He would just leave it at that.
The ten framed pictures were scattered over the table's surface. Adrian picked up the one of the black man having an animated conversation with the air. The man at the art gallery said the pictures had been there for years. His strange behavior from the moment he'd seen the sketch had Adrian wondering. And the man had actually seemed reluctant to part with the pictures that should have been an eyesore after all that time with no sales.
The glass in the picture reflected Adrian's face, showing his thick eyebrows furrowed in thought. He picked up another picture, a rundown building with boarded up storefronts and two doors flung open. Inside two black people sat on folding chairs, dressed in their Sunday best. Above the doorway a sign read, "The Dedicated Deliverance Church of Jesus, Inc."
Besides theme, the photographs all seemed to have something else in common: location. They were taken in a deserted-looking area of town, maybe across the waterway in nearby West Palm Beach. Another picture showed an impromptu sidewalk sale in front of a used car lot. In the background an old Buick was pulling out of the lot. It was obviously not a test drive, because the car had a license plate.
Adrian held the picture closer, trying to read the date on the expiration sticker. If only he could get a handle on how long ago these had been taken, he could believe the gallery owner and assume Nicolina had taken off for parts unknown. He extracted the print from the frame, then removed his loupe from the camera bag. Holding it under the bright lights in the kitchen, he studied the numbers. His heartbeat stopped for a second. The tag expired the following year. These prints had been taken recently.
Within a few minutes, Adrian was in his rental car, the framed photographs on the seat beside him. It only took a few inquiries to ascertain the area where they had been taken. He left the clean, pristine area of Palm Beach and drove into West Palm Beach just a few minutes away. Not far from the mansions and elegance lurked the poor area of town. His sense of familiarity came from the pictures he'd studied. Many of the stores were permanently closed and boarded up, with weeds growing rampant where landscaping had once flourished.
When Adrian passed the black man with the stroller, he nearly slammed on his brakes. He pulled into the nearest parking lot and grabbed the photograph Nicolina had taken of him. Pulling on his leather jacket, Adrian stepped out of his Mustang and walked over to the man who was humming faintly.
"Hello?" he asked. "Excuse me?"
The black man slowly turned his head to Adrian, then smiled absently, Adrian noticed first the stench of the man, who hadn't bathed in some time. The man was wearing a dingy, worn sweater, and shivered from time to time in the chilly air. Adrian didn't want to notice anything else, and pulled the print from behind him.
"Who took this picture of you?"
The man squinted, his watery brown eyes trying to focus. "It was warmer back then. Gets colder every year."
Adrian glanced at the photograph. "How long ago was this taken? Do you remember a pretty lady taking this picture of you?"
The man smiled, though Adrian couldn't tell if it was because he remembered her, or for some reason unknown to Adrian. He did look at the picture again, his yellow teeth showing in his smile.
"Pretty," he said.
"Yes, she's very pretty." Adrian pulled out the sketch he'd drawn. "She looks like this. Have you seen her? Listen, I don't want to hurt her. IЕ I just want to find her."
The man smiled again, then scratched his oily hair with grimy fingers; "Camera," he stated, as if proud he could remember the name.
"Yes, camera." Adrian took out his own camera and took a picture, hoping to jar the man's memory more. "She took a picture of you like this." He looked around. "Maybe right here. This picture."
The man didn't look at Nicolina's picture, but seemed fascinated with Adrian's camera. As his gnarled fingers reached for the shiny equipment, Adrian pulled it away.
"Picture. Pretty." Then his smiled disappeared, and the yellowed whites showed when his eyes widened. His voice rose. "Ship capsized. Men screaming. Pray. Pray!" He dropped his head down. "Nothing left."
Adrian didn't know what to say to the man, but somehow didn't feel right just walking away from him. "Are you all right?"
"All dead." He looked down at his trembling fingers. "Seamus hungry," he said in a plaintive voice, his hand over his stomach. Then he clutched the cracked handles of his baby stroller and turned away, mumbling.
Adrian had always been annoyed by beggars, but this man wasn't begging. He caught up with Seamus and handed him a ten-dollar bill. The man looked questioningly at Adrian.
"Get something to eat," Adrian ordered, then quickly returned to his car.
He sat there for a few minutes, staring at the photograph of the man who called himself Seamus. Adrian had worked hard for financial security, wanting to get as far away from his past and those fears as he could. But what if his mind went and he squandered his money? He shook away the fears and pulled out of the parking lot.
Adrian returned to the pink house he'd rented, exhausted after hours of walking the streets. He didn't care about the hundred dollars he'd paid for information, but it had reaped nothing but dead ends. And there was the streetwalker who'd been pissed off because he'd asked her about another woman instead of taking her up on a twenty-five-dollar blow job. Most people had nothing to say to him, scared off by his outsider looks. He looked down at his designer jeans, his leather boots and jacket. No, he didn't fit in. He didn't want to fit in.
Adrian got a cold chill when he realized something. What would Nicolina's reaction be to him when or if he found her? He looked at her picture. She obviously lived somewhere down there, though it was still hard to believe after seeing the mansion in that tunnel. But she was there somewhere, and that gallery owner was lying to cover her existence. Why? Had that explosion of heat and fury shattered her life and sent her to the streets?
He looked at the prints again, knowing the answer to finding Nicolina lay in them. The only way to get any answers on her whereabouts was to become one of them, to blend in. His Uncle Carlo had taught him about blending into the background when he followed fraudulent workers' compensation claimants. Adrian's fingers clenched on the leather armchair at the thought of living that life, even if only in pretend. To occupy them, he pulled a cigarette out of the pack and lit it with the gold lighter Rita had given him for Christmas, even allowing himself a third drag before crushing it out.
He stood up and walked to the window, looking at the lighted yard across the street from him. Here beauty and cleanliness surrounded him-everything he'd been used to for the last several years. There, on the streets of West Palm Beach, he would be surrounded by the fears that haunted his early childhood.
He thought of Seamus, the hooker, and the dozen characters he'd asked about Nicolina. Could he really live among them, as if he were one of them? It seemed so much easier to go back to New York City. Back to his life, his job. Surely Stan Fiske, his agent, would be having fits by now, realizing Adrian was out of town without a trace. But if he called Stan, he'd have to give him some explanation, Adrian also knew that he couldn't walk away from Madame Blue. Not now, when he'd found she really existed. He at least had to find her, to satisfy his years of curiosity. It was easier to forget and go back home, but Adrian knew that wasn't a choice. So tomorrow, he would become a homeless person and find Nicolina.

Chapter 3

That is dark and scary to you is my home; though you call it ugly and dangerous, it is my sanctuary.
In two days Adrian had the makings of a beard and a new wardrobe from Goodwill. He'd had everything washed twice, raising more than one eyebrow as he'd taken the ratty clothes to a laundromat to wash and fold the clothes for him. When he'd handed the girl behind the counter a fifty, his hand was shaking a little.