"Charles de Lint - Make a Joyiful Noise" - читать интересную книгу автора (De Lint Charles)

We’re curious, yes, but not really all that snoopy, for all that it might seem the exact opposite. We’re only
chasing the ghosts and echoes of lives that we could never have.

So as I continued past Stanton Street, I forgot that I was looking for Zia. My gaze went up the side of
the apartment building that rose tall above me and I chose a unit at random. Moments later I was inside,
taking in the old lady smells: pot pourri, dust and medicine. I stood quietly for a moment, then began to
explore.
***

“Maddy?” an old woman’s voice called from a room down the hall.

It was close enough to my name to make me sit up in surprise. I put down the scrapbook I’d been
looking at and walked down the short hall, past the bathroom, until I was standing in the doorway of a
bedroom.

“Is that you, Maddy?” the old woman in the bed asked.

She was sitting up, peering at me with eyes that obviously couldn’t see much, if anything.

I didn’t have to ask her who Maddy was. I’d seen the clippings from the newspaper, pasted into the
scrapbook. She’d been the athletic daughter, winning prize after prize for swimming and gymnastics and
music. The scrapbook was about half full. The early pages held articles clipped from community and city
newspapers, illustrated with pictures of a happy child growing into a happy young woman over the years,
always holding trophies, smiling at the camera.

She wasn’t in the last picture. That photo was of a car, crumpled up against the side of an apartment
building, under a headline that read “Drunk Driver Kills Redding High Student.” The date on the clipping
was over thirty years old.

“Come sit with Mama,” the old lady said.

I crossed the room and sat cross-legged on the bed. When she reached out her hand, I let her take mine.
I closed my fingers around hers, careful not to squeeze too hard.

“I’ve missed you so much,” she said.

She went on, but I soon stopped listening. It was much more interesting to look at her because, even
though she was sitting up and talking, her eyes open as though she was awake, I realized that she was
actually still asleep.

Humans can do this.

They can talk in their sleep. They can go walking right out of their houses, sometimes. They can do all
sorts of things and never remember it in the morning.

Zia and I once spent days watching a woman who was convinced she had fairies in her house, cleaning
everything up after she’d gone to bed. Except she was the one who got up in her sleep and tidied and
cleaned before slipping back under the covers. To show her appreciation to the fairies, she left a saucer
of cream on the back steps–that the local cats certainly appreciated–along with biscuits or cookies or