"Lisa Goldstein - Cassandra's Photographs" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goldstein Lisa)

Cassandra’s Photographs
Lisa Goldstein
Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine
August 1987

The best car to smuggle reptiles in is a Subaru station wagon,”
Aurora said at the wheel of the car. “Because it’s got four-wheel
drive, and great brights so you can see them on the road at night,
and because the panels come out easy. So you can hide the snakes
and stuff behind them. I’m gonna get one when I can afford it.”
I was sitting in the back seat of the car (which was,
unfortunately for Aurora, only an old VW squareback) wondering
how things had progressed this far. We had been on our way to get
burgers when Aurora decided that, since it was such a nice summer
day and everything, we should go down to Mexico and see if we
could find some snakes to round out Aurora’s collection. After all,
she said, it was only a few hundred miles away. So we made a stop
at the corner J.C. Penney’s to buy pillowcases to put the snakes in,
and headed out on Highway 5 to Baja California.
Cassie, Aurora’s sister, was sitting up front next to Aurora.
Cassie was the reason I was on this trip in the first place. I had
noticed her the minute she walked into my class in beginning
calculus at the college. Everyone says you shouldn’t date your
students, and everyone is probably right, but within a month we
were going out two or three times a week. And since I was just the
teaching assistant, and not responsible for grades, we had nothing
to quarrel about at the end of the semester when Cassie got a C in
the class. She didn’t even seem to mind all that much.
I sat still and looked at Cassie’s orange-red hair flying out the
window and tried to figure out if there was something I needed to
do in the next few days. School was over, so I didn’t have classes. I
badly wanted to take out my small pocket diary and flip through it,
but I knew what Cassie would say if I did. “Stop being so
responsible all the time,” she’d say. “We’re on vacation. Put that
book away ”
Lately all our arguments had been about how obsessive (her
word) I was, and how childish (my word) she was. She was
constantly late, not just once or twice but every single time. I
hadn’t seen the beginning of a movie since I started going out with
her. So I didn’t say anything when Aurora suggested going to
Mexico. I wanted to prove that I could be as open to adventure as
the rest of Cassie’s crazy family. It occurred to me that Cassie had
to go in to work tomorrow (she cleaned up at a day care center), but
I said nothing and looked at her hair, brilliant in the sun. The sight
of her hair made it all worthwhile.
“Did you bring the book?” Chris said. Chris was in Aurora’s grade
in high school and, like half the class (if the phone ringing day and
night was any indication), found it impossible to resist Aurora’s
manic energy, her wild schemes. If Aurora was going to collect and
trade illegal reptiles then she, Chris, was going to collect and trade