"Alan Dean Foster - Impossible Places" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

nearly all the ski traffic back down near Mammoth. U.S. 395’s easier when you don’t have to dodge the
idiots from L.A. who never see snow except when it comes time for ’em to drive through it.
The Department of Transportation had the road pretty clear and it hadn’t snowed much in a couple of
days, which is why I picked that day to make the fast run north. After Smokeys, weather’s a trucker’s
major devilment. It was plenty cold outside; cold enough to freeze your BVDs to your crotch, but nothing
like what it would be in another month or so. It was still early, and the real Sierra winter was just handing
out its first calling cards.
Thanks to the crosses I kind of floated onto the front porch of a little place called the Prospector’s
Roost (almost as much gold left in these mountains as trout), 20 percent of the town’s restaurant industry,
and slumped gratefully into a booth lined with scored Naugahyde. The window behind me gave me
something besides blacktop to focus on, and the sun’s last rays were just sliding off old Mono Lake.
Frigid pretty. The waitress gave me a big smile, which was nice. Soon she brought me a steak, hash
browns, green beans, warm rolls with butter, and more coffee, which was better. I started to mellow as
my stomach filled up, let my eyes wander as I ate.
It’s tough to make a living at any one thing in a town the size of Lee Vining. If it don’t take up too
much floor space, some folks can generate an extra couple of bucks by operating a second business in
the same building. So the north quarter of the Prospector’s Roost had been given over to a little gift shop.
The market carried trinkets and so did the gas stations, so it didn’t surprise me to see the same kind of
stuff in a restaurant. There were a couple racks of postcards, film, instant cameras, bare necessity fishing
supplies at outrageous prices, Minne-tonka moccasins, rubber tomahawks for the kids, risk-kay joke
gifts built around gags older than my Uncle Phil, Indian turquoise jewelry made in the Philippines. That
sort of thing.
Plus the usual assortment of local handicrafts: rocks painted to look like owls, cheap ashtrays that
screamed MONO LAKE or LEE VINING, GATEWAY TO YOSEMITE. T-shirts that said the same
(no mediums left, plenty of extra large).
There was also a small selection of better-quality stuff. Some nice watercolors of the lake and its
famous tufa formations, one or two little hand-chased bronzes you wouldn’t be ashamed to set out on
your coffee table, locally strung necklaces of turquoise and silver, and some wood carvings of Sierra
animals. Small, but nicely turned. Looked like ironwood to me. Birds and fish mostly, but also one
handsome little bobcat I considered picking up for Elaine. She’d crucify me if I did, though. Two kids in
college, a third considering. And tomorrow Slewfoot would be thirsty again.
The tarnished gold bell over the gift shop entrance tinkled as somebody entered. The owner broke
away from his kitchen and walked over to chat. He was a young fellow with a short beard, and he
looked tired.
The woman who’d come in had a small box under one arm that she set gently on the counter. She
opened it and started taking out some more of those wood carvings. I reckoned she was the artist. She
was dressed for the weather, and I figured she must be a local.
She left the scarf on her head when she slipped out of her heavy high-collared jacket. I tried to look a
little closer. All those white crosses kept my eyes bopping, but I wasn’t as sure about my brain. She was
older than I was in any case, even if I’d been so inclined. Sure I looked. It was pitch black out now and
starting to snow lightly. Elaine wouldn’t have minded—much. Contented or not, a man’s got to look once
in while. It’s just a—what’d they call it?—a biological imperative.
I guessed her to be in her mid fifties. She could’ve been older, but if anything she looked younger. I
tried to get a good look at her eyes. The eyes always tell you the truth. Whatever her age, she was still a
damn attractive woman. Besides the scarf and coat she wore jeans and a flannel shirt. That’s like uniform
in this kind of country. She wore ’em loose, but you could still see some spectacular countryside. Brown
hair, though I thought it might be lighter at the roots. Not gray, either. Not yet.
I squeezed my eyes shut until they started to hurt and slugged down another swallow of coffee. A man
must be beginnin’ to lose it when he starts thinking that way about grandmotherly types.
Except that this woman wasn’t near being what any man in his right mind would call grandmotherly,