The Best American Mystery Stories 2006
- Автор: Дивер Джеффри, Хантер Эван
- Год: 2006
- Язык: английский
- Год: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
- ISBN: 978-0-618-51746-6
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Best American Mystery Stories 2006». Краткое содержание книги:
“I won’t watch, promise,” he told her. “In fact, I’ll go get a big ol’ beach towel outta my car. I bought it in Galveston, never used it, and you can dry off with it afterward.”
“Well, maybe,” she allowed, and by now, somehow, all of Boomer’s unpredictability was part of a general charm.
“We’ll do it this way,” he said. “Wait until I bring the towel to you, then I’ll go away again. I’ll go wait for Mary Beth and Luke and when you’re finished you can show me upstairs. Or we can walk off some of the land. How about it?”
“Sounds okay,” she agreed. “I’ll wait for you.”
He hurried off and while he was gone Carla listened to a dove’s familiar call from the glade. The sun sank low behind the cottonwoods and the last of the wildflowers — so lush in the springtime that they blanketed the hillsides — now filled what remained of the day with their sweet decay. She wondered if someone like Boomer could possibly become her fate: an odd guy, never quite on cue. The money, of course, would make a difference, and she speculated for a moment about a life where sapphires came as easily as Cracker Jack prizes. Awkward endearments would be the routine, not romance, she knew, but romance never worked anyway. And she wanted somebody to love and care for; her mother had sensed the vacuum in her life, so had become too demanding and the only things that moved in her apartment were the mechanical sculptures. Such thoughts — and a chorus of dove calls from the darkening trees — occupied her until Boomer came back with the beach towel, grinned, shuffled his feet, backed away, and excused himself.
“You just take your time,” he assured her. “I’ll be out front. When you’re all done, you can show me the rest of the house.”
After he disappeared she stripped off quickly, left her clothes draped over the stall, stepped in, and turned on the tap. A little shriek came out of her when the cold water hit her; skin, then she stood there, getting used to it, and noting that the beach towel said Welcome to Biloxi, so that she wondered how Boomer came to buy such a thing in Galveston.
She wished she had soap. Then, holding her face up to the spray, her thoughts going nowhere in particular, she felt his arms encircle her.
“Boomer!” she cried out with another burst of nervous laughter. “You lied to me, you devil!” And to herself: Okay, here it is, deal with it, stupid, because you’re bare-assed and helpless.
She spoke to him again, but he didn’t answer and she could feel his naked body pressed against her backside, feel his chest rising and falling with excited breathing, and feel, distinctly, his pubic hair pressed against her hip. He turned her slightly, cupping a breast in his giant hand, saying nothing, and she felt him trembling as if all his timid wires had come loose.
A moment passed, then she said softly, “There, Boomer, steady,” and she felt strangely motherly and helpful as if he hadn’t deceived her, as if he hadn’t circled back and slipped out of his clothes again. She took his free hand in hers and felt its shudder. For all his boldness he was sexually frightened, she sensed, and in this knowledge her own fear lessened.
“Boomer?” she murmured again, gently, urging him to say something. But he kept his silence. She knew she couldn’t fully express her apprehension: He had stepped over the line into this heavy sexual move, but couldn’t go on. Dozens of times in her life Carla had experienced this, a sad thing, really: The aggressive mating male often boldly lurches forward into an embarrassing sexual paralysis and requires soothing out.
“Boomer? There, it’s all right,” she heard herself say.
“Very well,” he said in rasp. And his voice became strangely formal again, clipped, the Texas drawl gone. “Touch me.”
With this request — or was it a command — she felt curiously in charge and decided to obey. As he bent forward, dipping his head into the stream of water so that his lips touched her shoulder, she let her fingers move down his body. He was limp and pitiful, nothing there at all, and she decided that the cold water pouring over them caused this so began to lead him out of the stall. She even managed a smile and let him gawk at her nakedness, then she saw that her clothes were gone. “Boomer, Honey,” she said gently and carefully, “where are my clothes?” and she managed to still keep her calm although this was definitely a little crazy.
“You’re very pretty naked,” he told her, and his voice was someone else who used considerably more proper diction. “I knew you would be.”
“Here, let me get the towel,” she said, and she pulled it off the stall as he led her by the hand. They padded across the deck, leaving wet footprints, passing through the tiled kitchen and into the den where he took the towel from her and spread it onto the plush carpet. Fine, all right, he’s gaining confidence, she told herself, and we’re going to do it now, okay, and she thought about her sexual history — how many boys and men? Fifteen? A husband and two lovers of some duration and all the others — and she decided that she hadn’t been promiscuous, not really, maybe it was sixteen or twenty, it was the way of the world, the adventure and the desperation, and she settled on the towel and pulled Boomer down beside her. Pressed against him, she could still feel his indecisiveness so she tried to kiss him — to say, yes all right, with a kiss — but he wouldn’t have it.
And where was Mary Beth? And the only sounds now were the distant three-part notes of the dove and his labored breathing, that deep rasp, and he turned her on her side and settled himself against her thigh and began grinding himself against her, so that she thought, no, wait, should 1 help him out here? And from his mouth came a deep n sound, an unexpected, doleful, creepy subtext to his breathing: “Nnnnn, Nnnnn.” She felt her lower lip tremble and knew she might cry, but held on.
He had no erection, but moved against her thigh in a wild impersonation of the act, and she felt her heart go out to him even as she wanted to weep for herself. She prayed to the wall, oh, God, please, don’t let him be the one, and she didn’t even know what she meant, exactly, but the prayer spilled out of her along with a sob. She clasped her hand over her mouth, so he wouldn’t hear her cry, and his movement went on and on, accompanied by that same “Nnnnn” that he made with his teeth clenched and in what seemed to be a prolonged agony that he couldn’t release.
At last something in him was finished and he lay beside her, his arm draped across her rib cage, and she fought for control, trying to recover, until finally she managed, to say, “Boomer? If it’s all right now, I’d like to get my clothes. Where are they? You can tell me now.” And she spoke to him as if he were a child, she realized, with a parent’s calm, but it didn’t sound right, he wasn’t stupid, she knew, and the condescension was unmistakable.
“Go look out that window,” he told her evenly with his strange new voice.
“Which window?”
“That one in front of you. Tell me what you see.”
She got to her feet, wrapping her arms around her breasts, and padded over to the window, bent and covering herself. The final slant of a red sunset touched the trees and for a moment the view comforted her.
“What?” she asked, looking out. “See what?” He came and stood beside her.
“Here, put this on,” he said, and she turned to see that he held the sapphire ring. Obediently, she allowed him to slip it on her index finger.
“There we are. My signature,” he announced, smiling, and his voice, she decided, was like a trained actor’s, a voice that could project or dive into a whisper and that knew exactly its effect.
“You’re not from Texas, are you, Boomer?” she asked, and her own voice trembled with the question.
“Sure I am,” he told her. “Same as the Bowie knife. Like the drought in summer or the blizzard in winter. A force of nature. Like the tornado. Like the rattlesnake and scorpion. Same as the blinding dust storm. That’s exactly who I am and where I’m from.”