"Ballingrud-SheFoundHeaven" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ballingrud Nathan)

NATHAN BALLINGRUD

SHE FOUND HEAVEN

She found heaven lying like a crippled animal by the side of the road. It was
small and glowing, and looked rather like a phosphorescent armadillo in the
deep-morning darkness. She got out of her car to examine it. She looked up, but
the sky was a vast desert of stars, and she could not see the place from which
it fell. She poked it with her finger, and it rolled slightly, although she felt
no physical substance beneath her touch. She did, however, feel a warmth that
coursed through her bones and her blood, and she caught a scent of Ireland, a
place she had been once as a child and had never forgotten. She gathered it up
in her arms and brought it to the car. She stuck it in the glove compartment so
that its light would not reflect off the windshield and interfere with her
driving; but the light that bled out around the edges of the glove compartment
door, silver and wavering, with the oily ripples of gasoline or of heat rising
off pavement, proved to be equally distracting, and she almost died twice when
the temptation to gaze upon it stole her attention from the road. * * *

A week later she placed an ad in the St. Petersburg Times; although her first
inclination had been to keep the piece of Heaven (and she was convinced it was
only a piece; she could not fathom a Heaven so small and disposable), she felt
that it probably belonged to somebody who lost it on the freeway, and she did
not want to incur the wrath of God in only her first week in Florida by stealing
it.

*
FOUND:

One piece of Heaven, about a
foot long, slightly crumpled;
call Sally Baxter at 555-8264

Since the Heaven had been found only an hour out of town, she hoped its owner
would see the ad and call her. In the meantime, she folded it in half and set it
in an old shoebox, which she stored in her closet.

Sally had moved down from Virginia to Florida because she wanted a taste of what
she called "real life." She had no solid idea of what this "real life" entailed,
but she knew that it must be dirty and filled with Cuban drug dealers. She was
twenty-four years old, fresh out of college, and filled with a righteous flame
that compelled her to repair all that was damaged in the world. Florida seemed
as good a place to start as any, and the beaches didn't hurt.

Hello, you've reached the horn e of Sally Baxter. I'm not in right now, but if
you leave your name and number at the sound of the beep, I'll get back to you as
soon as I can.