"Winter-MoonGarden" - читать интересную книгу автора (Winter Laurel)

"I'll just look around," she said. The woman grunted.

The garage was filled with cracked ice cube trays, handleless shovels, cups
filled with old toothbrushes, half a telephone, Yale locks with broken keys
protruding, and left shoes. Of the few garage sales Susan had actually attended,
this one had the highest percentage of trash and the lowest percentage of
treasures. And everything was drastically overpriced.

A flamingo pink wastebasket with a great rift down one side was marked five
dollars. A sweater that must have nourished generations of moths hung on a rusty
hanger: five dollars. Practically everything was five dollars. Susan shook her
head. She was about to leave, when she saw, in the dimmest corner of the garage,
a rack of books.

She squinted at them, trying to make out their titles. "Do you have a light?"
she called.

The old woman rose from the tattered webbing of her lawn chair and began
rummaging in a cardboard box. "Here," she said, holding out a dented metal
flashlight.

Susan hurried toward her. "Thank you," she said.

"Five dollars," said the woman, clutching the flashlight to her flat bosom.

"I don't want to buy it; I just --" Susan raised her eyebrows and began
searching her pockets. Lint in the left. In the right, way down at the bottom,
was a scrunched, washed, faded five-dollar bill. "Here," she said.

The woman snatched the money and handed her the flashlight. It gave off a
lopsided, watery circle of light. She made her way back to the books.

A hardback edition of Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Three Harlequin romances. Volume M
from the Encyclopedia Americana. A novelization of The Rocky Horror Picture
Show. Journal of a Plague Year. Bring 'Em Back Alive Frank Buck and The Best
Baby Name Book. A scorched copy of Fahrenheit 451. And a thin gray volume with
spidery silver letters on the spine. Susan picked it up. The Moon Garden
Cookbook, she read. Shivers ran down her spine. She looked for a price. Nothing.
She grabbed Finnegans Wake off the shelf. None of the books appeared to be
marked.

Susan shoved the Joyce back. "Excuse me," she said, picking her way safely
through the junk with the help of her "new" flashlight, the cookbook in her
other hand. "How much is this book?"

"Book?" The woman raised her head. "What book? Ah." She smiled fondly at Susan.
"That's not for sale."

"But," Susan sputtered, "but it was in the garage. It was with the other stuff."