"Dead Head" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harris Rosemary)

Three

The wedding was a gaudy, over-the-top affair that was desperate to be featured in the Vows section of the Sunday New York Times. It wasn’t. I was happy to escape early on Sunday before the last round of ostentatious celebrating, which over the course of the weekend had me alternating between feeling pathetically single, righteously indignant about all the waste, and shockingly poor. I hadn’t shared my financial concerns with Lucy, but that five-year-old black sleeveless sheath I wore told the tale.

I dropped Lucy at her apartment, not intending to stay, but she dragged me upstairs and forced three glossy shopping bags into my hands. Recent acquisitions or retail therapy gone awry, many of the items still had tags on them.

“It’s too late to return these, but they’ll look better on you than they do on me anyway.” I peeked in one of the bags-a sequined jumpsuit, a velvet miniskirt, and a huge red patent-leather handbag with so many grommets on it I’d be surprised if they’d let me through airport security with it. Not that I was going anywhere. What did she think my life was like these days? Could I weed in a sequined jumpsuit? The next bag was more promising-a few sweaters and a huge white fur hat, which would come in handy if I happened to get the lead in the local theater group’s production of Dr. Zhivago, but would otherwise just collect dust in my closet. I thanked her.

“Call me. I don’t want you trapped in the hinterlands all winter. You’ve got new clothes. You need places to wear them!” I tried to think of that quote about avoiding activities that required new clothes, but it escaped me. Lucy hugged me, then I hit the road.

If I was no longer the downtown, all-in-black girl or the uptown I-have-so-many-names-on-my-clothes-I-look-like-a-Nascar-driver gal, I wasn’t the Junior-League-let-me-take-my-kids-to-a-playdate woman. I was a hybrid. A false something, like the false lamiums I’d be planting in Babe’s garden. A city girl in the suburbs and a suburbanite in the city. That observation gave me a lot to think about. And I did, all the way back to Connecticut.

The sun was setting over the river, and the orange glow was reflected on the limestone buildings on Riverside Drive. Farther north, I passed the Cloisters, a four-acre shrine to the Middle Ages that the Rockefellers shipped from Europe piece by piece, and that small Pantheon-like structure where I always imagined it would be fun to dance or drink or just sit and watch the river.

What did I care if some woman I used to know just got married? Good for her. And her husband seemed like a nice guy, once you got over the fact all his relatives were named Weena or Bitsy-nicknames that after a few drinks sounded vaguely like dwarves or euphemisms for genitals. For goodness sake, they’d named their dog Patrick. Couldn’t they find human-sounding names for their children?

Once I crossed the bridge I felt the big city trappings slip away. And the snarkiness. The clothing from Lucy would probably make their way to Goodwill, except the hat-she’d ask about that and expect to see me in it. And one of the sweaters she’d most likely bought after seeing Michele Obama wear one just like it, even though I’m of the opinion that argyle is for socks or golfers or Japanese schoolgirls carrying Hello Kitty backpacks. And I was none of those. I thought about my new fall wardrobe until I hit the Merritt Parkway.

At that time of day and that time of year the odds of seeing wild turkeys or deer on the highway were pretty good. I had the gardener’s natural antipathy toward deer, but I got a huge kick out of seeing a rafter of turkeys. I had planned to stop at Babe’s for coffee and one of Pete’s desserts-what the hell, I’d passed on the wedding cake-but when I got there the diner was closed. Babe rarely kept regular hours, so I thought perhaps Neil had surprised her and come home sooner than expected. That made four people I knew who were getting lucky that night, including the newlyweds. Alas, I wasn’t one of them.

I made a wide U-turn in the empty parking lot and out of the corner of my eye noticed it wasn’t entirely empty. Something had moved behind the lattice enclosure and donut sign.

Probably the Terminator raccoons again, who feel no remorse and won’t be bargained with, or maybe wild turkeys living it up in the last few heady weeks before Thanksgiving. I’d make sure to tell Babe next time I saw her so that she could put out the Havahart traps.