"Esther M. Friesner - Chestnut Street" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friesner Esther M)

"I wonder what it wants?" Mr. Budd said out loud. He was the neighborhood's
lowest common denominator, an excellent source if you wanted to hear the obvious
stated While-U-Wait.

"Who it wants, more likely," Mrs. Starrett rumbled darkly. "I always knew my
time would come, but I never thought it would come in a yellow cab."

"I don't think -- I don't think it's who -- what you think it is," said Miss
Talmadge, who had read all of Emily Dickinson with no discernible signs of
self-improvement. "I mean, wouldn't it have a scythe or -- or at least a
sickle?"

"Should I go back in the house and bring out the chess set?" Denny asked Sam.
(Denny went to movies. Lots of movies. Even the foreign ones where you had to
read stuff across the bottom of the screen.)

"Badminton," Sam corrected. "Or maybe Twister. Yeah, that's it, Twister!" (Sam
went to lots of movies too; silly ones, no reading required.)

In all this time, no one had opened the door of the Gaye house. They were at
home -- you could tell because both cars were in the driveway. Mr. Gaye worked
from his home office. Mrs. Gaye took care of their only child, an infant. Half
of the neighborhood couldn't tell you whether it was a boy or a girl. They had
seen Mrs. Gaye come home from the hospital two months ago with something wrapped
in a yellow blanket, and that was the last they'd seen of mother or child. Mr.
Gaye did the shopping. If Mrs. Gaye ever took the baby out for an airing, it
must have been at night.

And that was when it all came clear to Mrs. Starrett. "It's not here as Death,"
she declared to the populace. "It's here as Justice!" Most of the people near
her responded with one voice: "Huh?"

"Oh, I see, I get it, I understand what she's saying." Mr. Budd bobbed his
balding head, sending small semaphoring flashlets of light off into the air from
his black-rimmed glasses. "Skeleton in the closet, yeah, that's it. Only it's
come out of the closet, knocking at the door, chickens come home to roost, sure,
I know."

The meatless chicken in question cocked its skull to one side (truly a less than
winsome mannerism when performed without benefit of epidermis) and regarded Mr.
Budd in an inquiring manner. Those persons standing nearest the apparition found
themselves automatically mimicking the gesture, until the neighbors standing
opposite them felt the urge to adjust the horizontal and the vertical hold knobs
on life.

But if the skeleton gave every indication of wanting to hear Mr. Budd's theory
expounded at length, the flesh-bearing bones all around it needed no further
footnotes. They saw, they got it, they understood as well. A wisp of a whisper
passed through the crowd, waxed fat, multiplied itself, and populated Chestnut
Street after its own kind.