"Aldridge, Ray - Filter FeedersV1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Aldridge Ray)

The silence grew less comfortable for Teresa, though her hosts showed no uneasiness. She cast about for something to say -- something not too depressingly banal. "So. . . ." she said. "Is this your first visit to Destin?"

Thomas fixed her with a neutral gaze. "Yes. The harbor is good, but the holding ground is poor." He delivered this remark without any discernible emotional coloration, and Teresa thought: this is a very odd person.

"I've heard that," she said. "Bob -- the guy I work for at the Chandlery -- Bob says the bottom is like thin soup. Whenever Destin gets brushed by a hurricane, he says it's like Keystone Cops out here. Boats dragging back and forth, lots of yelling."

Thomas's faint smile seemed like an artifact permanently affixed to his mouth; Teresa registered the odd fact that the smile seemed to cause no related lines in Thomas's face. "There are no safe harbors in a hurricane," Thomas said, without heat, in fact without any inflection that she could detect.

"Really?"

But evidently Thomas felt no compulsion to explain his assertion. The silence resumed, until Linda said, slowly and dreamily. "That's because of the other boats, Thomas says. No matter how well your boat is anchored, someone else won't have been so careful, and his boat will carry yours away."

It seemed to Teresa that Linda was speaking of Thomas as if he were somewhere else, far away. "That makes sense, I guess," she said. "I guess you need to be the only boat in the harbor, if you want to be safe."

Perhaps it was her imagination, but his smile seemed slightly wider. "An apt observation," he said.

Linda's smile bore an eerie resemblance to Thomas's, though only for a moment, and Teresa shivered.

Thomas stood. "The air chills. We will go down to dinner." He held out his hand to Teresa; she took it. His touch was cool, perhaps from the wine goblet, his palm calloused hard as bone.

He helped her down the companionway ladder into the boat's main cabin, and again Teresa was pleasantly surprised. The cabin seemed much larger on the inside than she would have imagined. Varnished woodwork set off white bulkheads and full bookshelves. To either side was a settee upholstered in russet. Under a gleaming brass trawler lamp, a table had been unfolded from the forward bulkhead. A linen cloth was set with white china and polished silver. She smelled lamp oil and lemons and something Savory.

"Sit," instructed Thomas, and directed her to the side of the table set with one plate.

He served the meal. The next day, Teresa would remember few of the details, since her attention was less on the meal than on the cook, but there was a salad of baby lettuces and satsuma sections, a clear soup with shreds of carrot and scallop arranged in artful swirls, pasta with a sauce of rock shrimp and mushrooms, a crusty bread that must have been freshly baked.

There was no conversation; Linda ate with an intimidating concentration and Thomas responded to Teresa's compliments with that constant smile and nothing more. Thomas ate little, seeming only to taste each course, and Teresa began to wonder if he might be ill, too.

No one asked Teresa about herself, so that she had no need to trot out her literary pretensions.

Occasionally the boat rocked slightly in the wake of some passing vessel, a pleasant motion. It was a little warm in the cabin, and a light gilding of perspiration made Linda's face shine in the lamplight, though Thomas seemed unaffected.

Dinner finished with a pale sorbet, a sweet fruity flavor Teresa couldn't quite identify. "Guava," Linda said.

Afterwards, Thomas cleared away the dishes and served coffee in small delicate cups. "I've never had a meal like that," Teresa said. She looked at Linda with fresh eyes. Perhaps the white-haired woman was not so severely exploited as she had feared. Perhaps they just had a different division of labors than most sailing couples.

Thomas set a bottle of brandy and three shifters on the table, and Teresa noticed that the portholes had grown dark. Night had come suddenly, and again she felt a bit of apprehension. For all his beauty and culinary talent, Thomas was a very strange man, and Linda a strange woman. Still she felt a curious sense of abandon; whatever happened, it would surely be interesting. The direction of her thoughts embarrassed her. She felt a flush rising in her cheeks, she found it impossible to look directly at her hosts for a moment.

Thomas poured brandy generously. "Now, music," he said, and opened a panel, behind which Teresa could see the gleam of expensive-looking stereo components. Sound filled the cabin, some delicate arrangement of strings and woodwinds Teresa didn't recognize. She leaned back against the settee cushions, holding her brandy under her nose so that the fumes rose into her head. Closing her eyes, she drifted into a fantasy: that the glossy wood interior of the ketch was the heart of some great complicated musical instrument and that she waited at its center while it played.

Perhaps she fell asleep, because when next she opened her eyes Linda was taking the empty brandy snifter from her cramped hand and Thomas was gone. "It's very late," Linda whispered: "Stay with us."

Teresa felt a strange mixture of apprehension and anticipation . . . and then disappointment, as Linda continued. "We sleep in the aft cabin, but there's a single bunk in the forepeak, quite comfortable. I've made it up with fresh sheets."

"Well. . . "

"Please," Linda said earnestly. "I wouldn't want to take you ashore now, in the dark. After the restaurants close, the transients come out of their hiding places and walk the shoreline; did you know? I'm afraid of them; some of them seem dangerous."

"I don't want to impose," Teresa said.