"Nina Kiriki Hoffman - Home for Christmas" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hoffman Nina Kiriki)

HOME FOR CHRISTMAS
Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Nina Kiriki Hoffman has earned a reputation as one of the best of
the new generation of speculative fiction writers, with work that
ranges from fantasy (like the following story) to darker stories of pure
horror. Hoffman lives in Eugene, Oregon, and has published many
stories in magazines and anthologies over the last few years. Her dark
fantasy novel, The Thread that Binds the Bones, set in modern-day
Oregon, is highly recommended, as is its sequel, The Silent Strength of
Stones.
“Home for Christmas” is a poignant tale of contemporary magic, and
Hoffman’s young heroine is a character who lingers in the mind long
after the story is done. It comes from the January [1995] issue of The
Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.
—T.W.
Matt spread the contents of the wallet on the orange shag rug in
front of her, looking at each item. Three oil company charge cards;
an auto club card, an auto insurance card; a driver’s license that
identified the wallet’s owner as James Plainfield, thirty-eight, with
an address bearing an apartment number in one of the buildings
downtown; a gold MasterCard with a hologram of the world on it; a
gold AmEx card; six hundred and twenty-three dollars, mostly in
fifties; a phone credit card; a laminated library card; five tan
business cards with “James Plainfield, Architect” and a phone
number embossed on them in brown ink; receipts from a deli, a
bookstore, an art supply store; a ticket stub from a horror movie;
and two scuffed color photographs, one of a smiling woman and the
other of a sullen teenage girl.
The wallet, a soft camel-brown calfskin, was feeling
distress.—He’s lost without me—it cried,—he needs me; he could be
dead by now. Without me in his back pocket he’s only half
himself.—
Matt patted it and yawned. She had been planning to walk the
frozen streets later that night while people were falling asleep,
getting her fill of Christmas Eve dreams for another year, feeding
the hunger in her that only quieted when she was so exhausted she
fell asleep herself. But her feet were wet and she was tired enough
to sleep now. She was going to try an experiment: this year, hole
up, drink cocoa, and remember all her favorite dreams from
Christmas Eves past. If that worked, maybe she could change her
lifestyle, stay someplace long enough to… to… she wasn’t sure. She
hadn’t stayed in any one place for more than a month in years.
“We’ll go find him tomorrow morning,” she said to the wallet.
Although tomorrow was Christmas. Maybe he would have things to
do, and be hard to find.
—Now!—cried the wallet.
Matt sighed and leaned against the water heater. Her present
home was the basement of somebody’s house; the people were gone
for the Christmas holidays and the house, lonely, had invited her in
when she was looking through its garbage cans a day after its