"What-UncleGorby" - читать интересную книгу автора (What Leslie)

LESLIE WHAT

UNCLE GORBY AND THE BAGGAGE GHOST

*
Leslie What's short stories have appeared in Asimov's, F&SF, and several
regional publications. She has just finished a mainstream novel, and promises
more short fiction soon.

*
About "Uncle Gorby & the Baggage Ghost," she writes, "The search for self
sometimes begins too late. My father's death made me feel as if the one resource
I needed was locked away in a private library, closed until further notice. I
sometimes wonder if ghosts aren't reference materials, accessed by memory,
imagination, and wishful thinking. In any case, I believe in ghosts, and always
look forward to hearing from them -- especially when they bring me good story
ideas."

Katya had been thinking about the little boy next door since the day last week
when she had learned he had been fathered by a turkey baster. This knowledge had
left her unable to enjoy her vacation, spent birding in Death Valley.

She deplaned and walked through the airport concourse. The carpeting, a deep
blue, looked more like sky than the sky. Katya stared past the floor-to-ceiling
windows to the outside, where a commuter plane taxied in a shimmering haze of
incomplete combustion. A plane circled and she watched, as if viewing a mirage
from inside a glass of water. She imagined her goldfish, Vlad, saw the world
this way: as liquid reality.

Vlad, with his tail rot and red-rimmed eyes, an unwelcome gift from Katya's
ex-lover. The fish had managed to survive her benign neglect for over a year.
Vlad was probably at that moment peering out his curved bowl, begging the little
boy next door for a serving of fish flakes. The boy had volunteered to watch
Vlad while Katya was away.

She walked toward the baggage claim, but paused when she noticed several sets of
imported Matryeshka dolls on the other side of the gift shop window. She slipped
inside the shop to browse. One set of Matryeshkas, with Gorbachev on the
outside, had been marked down by half. The newer sets featured Yeltsin, with a
smaller Gorbachev nested inside his belly. Soon those sets would be marked down,
Yeltsin moved inside instead of out.

Gorbachev had always reminded Katya of her father, who was born in Russia but
had moved to the States in the fifties. She had not yet bought him a Father's
Day present, yet here it was, already the November after. She might have
forgotten entirely about Father's Day, if not for her obsession with the boy and
his turkey baster father.