"Harvey Jacobs - The Retriever" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jacobs Harvey)

"Compliment accepted," Aurora said. "It was nice seeing you, Mr.
Luna."
"Call me Joe. Oh. One more thing. This is for you, on the house." Luna
handed her a small package wrapped in brown paper and carton tape.
Then he turned and walked away.
Puzzled, Aurora put the package into her carry bag. She couldn't begin
to imagine what Joe Luna had given her and she was in no hurry to find
out. Back in the apartment, she stripped off her clothes and took a quick
bath. When Henry got home he found her naked, doing jumps, twirls and
summersaults, the routine she'd learned way back when.
"Go team go," she said to him. Henry got out of his suit and had her on
the living room carpet. "That was awesome," Aurora said. "Positively
psychedelic."
They sent out for Chinese food and after dinner he went to work at his
computer checking on their stocks and bonds. While Henry pecked at the
keyboard, Aurora found the package Joe Luna pressed into her hand. She
used a scissor to cut through heavy tape, then unrolled the brown paper.
Inside the wrap Aurora found one of Luna's cards pasted to a matchbox.
On the back of the card he'd written, "Hi, cutie. Thought you might like to
have this. Luv, Joe."
She slid open the matchbox. Inside, on a cotton blanket, she saw a tiny
gold hoop earring. "My God," Aurora whispered. Her husband asked her if
she'd said something to him and she told him no, that she was only
muttering to herself.
Aurora went to her bedroom and searched out a plastic bag where she
stored all kinds of meaningful junk. She spilled the bag's contents onto her
bedspread. There were medals for gymnastics, a pin that dangled a pair of
miniature ice skates, old credit cards, several dead pens, cigarette lighters,
colored perfume bottles, berets, lipstick tubes, coins she'd brought back
from her honeymoon in Europe, a variety of memorabilia, some items so
ancient that their memories had detached. She sifted through the pile
and, sure enough, there was the mate for the earring Joe Luna returned.
Aurora held the reunited gold circles in a cupped hand. She sat on the
bed and closed her eyes. Her mother gave her those earrings on her 15th
birthday. The day before, when her father found out that she'd had her
ears pierced without parental sanction, the shit hit the fan. She
remembered him howling at her from a crimson face then slapping her
hard on the cheek when she yelled back. Her mother also threw a fit,
yelling about rushing the clock, then went upstairs with a migraine.
By the next morning tempers cooled. That afternoon, when Aurora got
home from school, her mother handed her a white porcelain music box
decorated with pansies. The box played "Strawberry Fields" with its lid
lifted. Inside, she found the gold hoops cradled in tissue. Her mother made
it clear that the gift was their little secret. It took six weeks before she
could wear the earrings. One of her pierced ear-holes infected so badly she
had to go to a doctor. Her father seemed vindicated by the oozing wound
and resigned himself to having a child with pitted lobes.
How one of those coy earrings managed to lose itself Aurora had no
idea. It just did. She never mentioned that disaster to her mother and
nothing was ever said about it. Now, more than twice the age she was