"Wilhelm,_Kate_-_And_the_Angels_Sing(1)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

"Right now, and bring plenty of film." He hung up.
A few seconds later his phone rang; he took it off the receiver and laid it down on the table. While he waited for Mary Beth he surveyed the room. The house was small, with two bedrooms, one that he used for an office, on the far side of the living room. In the living room there were two easy chairs covered with fine, dark green leather, no couch, a couple of tables, and many bookshelves, all filled. A long cabinet held his sound equipment, a stereo, hundreds of albums. Everything was neat, arranged for a large man to move about easily, nothing extraneous anywhere. Underfoot was another Navajo rug. He knew the back door was securely locked; the bedroom windows were closed, screens in place. Through the living room was the only way the kid on his bed could get out, and he knew she would not get past him if she woke up and tried to make a run. He nodded, then moved his two easy chairs so that they faced the bedroom; he pulled an end table between them, got another glass, and brought the bottle of bourbon. He sat down to wait for Mary Beth, brooding over the girl in his bed. From time to time the blanket shook hard; a slight movement that was nearly constant suggested that she had not yet warmed up. His other blanket was under her and he had no intention of touching her again in order to get to it.
Mary Beth arrived as furious as he had expected. She was his age, about forty, graying, with suspicious blue eyes, and no makeup. He had never seen her with lipstick on, or jewelry of any kind except for a watch, or in a skirt or dress. That night she was in jeans and a sweatshirt, and a bright red hooded raincoat that brought the rainstorm inside as she entered, cursing him. He noted with satisfaction that she had her camera gear.
She cursed him expertly as she yanked off her raincoat, and was still calling him names when he finally put his hand over her mouth and took her by the shoulder, propelled her toward the bedroom door.
"Shut up and look," he muttered. She was stronger than he had realized, and now twisted out of his grasp and swung a fist at him. Then she faced the bedroom.
She looked, then turned back to him red faced and sputtering. "You ... you got me out ... a floozy in your bed ... So you really do know what that thing you've got is used for! And you want pictures! Jesus God!"
"Shut up!"
This time she did. She peered at his face for a second, turned and looked again, took a step forward, then another. He knew her reaction was to his expression, not the lump on the bed. Nothing of that girl was visible, just the unquiet blanket, and a bit of darkness that was not hair but should have been. He stayed at Mary Beth's side, and his caution was communicated to her; she was as quiet now as he was.
At the bed he reached out and gently pulled back the blanket. One of _her_ hands clutched it spasmodically. The hand had four apparently boneless fingers, long and tapered, very pale. Mary Beth exhaled too long and neither of them moved for what seemed minutes. Finally she reached out and touched the darkness at the girl's shoulder, touched her arm, then her face. Abruptly she pulled back her hand. The girl on the bed was shivering harder than ever, in a tighter ball that hid the many folds of skin at her groin.
"It's cold," Mary Beth whispered.
"Yeah." He put the blanket back over the girl.
Mary Beth went to the other side of the bed, squeezed between it and the wall and carefully pulled the bedspread and blanket free, and put them over the girl also. Eddie took Mary Beth's arm and they backed out of the bedroom. She sank into one of the chairs he had arranged and automatically held out her hand for the drink he was pouring.
"My God," Mary Beth said softly after taking a large swallow, "what is it? Where did it come from?"
He told her as much as he knew and they regarded the sleeping figure. He thought the shivering had subsided, but maybe she was just too weak to move so many covers.
"You keep saying it's a she," Mary Beth said. "You know that thing isn't human, don't you?"
Reluctantly he described the rest of the girl, and this time Mary Beth finished her drink. She glanced at her camera bag, but made no motion toward it yet. "It's our story," she said. "We can't let them have it until we're ready. Okay?"
"Yeah. There's a lot to consider before we do anything." Silently they considered. He refilled their glasses, and they sat watching the sleeping creature on his bed. When the lump flattened out a bit, Mary Beth went in and lifted the covers and examined her, but she did not touch her again. She returned to her chair, very pale, and sipped bourbon. Outside, the wind moaned, but the howling had subsided, and the rain was no longer a driving presence against the front of the house, the side that faced the sea.
From time to time one or the other made a brief suggestion.
"Not radio," Eddie said.
"Right." said Mary Beth. She was a stringer for NPR. "Not newsprint," she said later.
Eddie was a stringer for AP. He nodded.
"It could be dangerous when it wakes up," she said.
"I know. Six rows of alligator teeth, or poison fangs, or mind rays."
She giggled. "Maybe right now there's a hidden camera taking in all this. Remember that old TV show?"
"Maybe _they_ sent her to test us, our reaction to _them_.
Mary Beth sat up straight. "My God, more of them?"
"No species can have only one member," he said very seriously. "A counterproductive trait." He realized that he was quite drunk. "Coffee," he said, and pulled himself out of the chair, made his way unsteadily to the kitchen.
When he had the coffee ready, and tuna sandwiches, and sliced onions and tomatoes, he found Mary Beth leaning against the bedroom door contemplating the girl.
"Maybe it's dying," she said in a low voice. "We can't just let it die, Eddie."
"We won't," he said. "Let's eat something. It's almost daylight."
She followed him to the kitchen and looked around it. "I've never been in your house before. You realize that? All the years I've known you, I've never been invited here before."
"Five years," he said.
"That's what I mean. All those years. It's a nice house. It looks like your house should look, you know?"
He glanced around the kitchen. Just a kitchen, stove, refrigerator, table, counters. There were books on the counter, and piled on the table. He pushed the pile to one side and put down plates. Mary Beth lifted one and turned it over. Russet colored, gracefully shaped, pottery from North Carolina, signed by Sara. She nodded, as if in confirmation.
"You picked out every single item individually, didn't you?"
"Sure. I have to live with the stuff."
"What are you doing here, Eddie? Why here?"
"The end of the world, you mean? I like it."
"Well, I want the hell out. You've been out and chose to be here. I choose to be out. That thing on your bed will get me out." She bit into a sandwich.
From the University of Indiana to a small paper in Evanston, on to Philadelphia, New York. He felt he had been out plenty, and now he simply wanted a place where people lived in individual houses and chose the pottery they drank their coffee from. Six years ago he had left New York, on vacation, he had said; he had come to the end of the world and stayed.
"Why haven't you gone already?" he asked Mary Beth. She smiled her crooked smile and shook her head. "I was married, you know that? To a fisherman. That's what girls on the coast do, marry fishermen, or lumbermen, or policemen. Me, Miss Original No-talent, herself. Married, playing house forever. He's out there somewhere. Went out one day and never came home again. So I got a job with the paper, this and that. Only one thing could be worse than staying here at the end of the world, and that's being in the world broke. Not my style."
She finished her sandwich and coffee, and now seemed too restless to sit still. She went to the window over the sink and gazed out. The light was gray. "You don't belong here any more than I do. What happened? Some woman tell you to get lost? Couldn't get the job you wanted? Some young slim punk worm in front of you? You're dodging just like me."
All the above, he thought silently, and said, "Look, I've been thinking. I can't go to the office without raising suspicion, in case anyone's looking for her, I mean. I haven't been in the office before one or two in the afternoon for more than five years. But you can. See if anything's come over the wires, if there's a search on, if there was a wreck of any sort. You know. If the FBI's nosing around, or the military. Anything at all."
Mary Beth rejoined him at the table and poured more coffee, her restlessness gone, an intent look on her face. Her business face, he thought.
"Okay. First some pictures, though. And we'll have to have a story about my car. It's been out front all night," she added crisply. "So, if anyone brings it up, I'll have to say I keep you company now and then. Okay?"
He nodded, and thought without bitterness that that would give them a laugh at Connally's Tavern. That reminded him of Truman Cox. "They'll get around to him eventually, and he might remember seeing her. Of course, he assumed it was the Boland girl. But they'll know we saw someone. Even if no one asks him directly, he knows if a flea farts in this town."
Mary Beth shrugged. "So you saw the Boland girl and got to thinking about her and her trade, and gave me a call. No problem. "
He looked at her curiously. "You really don't care if they start that scuttlebutt around town, about you and me?"
"Eddie," she said almost too sweetly, "I'd admit to fucking a pig if it would get me the hell out of here. I'll go on home for a shower, and by then maybe it'll be time enough to get on my horse and go to the office. But first some pictures."
At the bedroom door he asked in a hushed voice, "Can you get them without using the flash? That might send her into shock or something."