"John Kessel - The Pure Product" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kessel John)

switched the bottle to my left hand and put my arm around her shoulders in
a fatherly way. We got into the front seat, beneath the trees on a street at
the edge of the park. It was quiet. I reached over, grabbed her hair at the
nape of her neck and jerked her face toward me, covering her little mouth
with mine. Surprise: she threw her arms round my neck, sliding across the
seat and awkwardly onto my lap. We did not talk. I yanked at the shorts; she
thrust her hand into my pants. Saint Augustine asked the Lord for chastity,
but not right away.

At the end she slipped off me, calmly buttoned her blouse, brushed
her hair back from her forehead. “How about a push?” she asked. She had
a nail file out and was filing her index fingernail to a point.

I shook my head, and looked at her. She resembled my grandmother.
I had never run into my grandmother but she had a hellish reputation. “No
thanks. What’s your name?”
 “Call me Ruth.” She scratched the inside of her left elbow with her
nail. She leaned back in her seat, sighed deeply. Her eyes became a very
bright, very hard blue.

While she was aloft I got out, opened the trunk, emptied the rest of
the chardonnay into the gutter and used the funnel to fill the bottle with
kerosene. I plugged it with part of the cork and a kerosene-soaked rag.
Afternoon was sliding into evening as I started the car and cruised down
one of the residential streets. The houses were like those of any city or
town of that era of the midwest USA: white frame, forty or fifty years old,
with large porches and small front yards. Dying elm trees hung over the
street. Shadows stretched across the sidewalks. Ruth’s nose wrinkled; she
turned her face lazily toward me, saw the kerosene bottle, and smiled.

Ahead on the left-hand sidewalk I saw a man walking leisurely. He
was an average sort of man, middle-aged, probably just returning from
work, enjoying the quiet pause dusk was bringing to the hot day. It might
have been Hector; it might have been Graves. It might have been any one
of you. I punched the cigarette lighter, readied the bottle in my right hand,
steering with my leg as the car moved slowly forward. “Let me help,” Ruth
said. She reached out and steadied the wheel with her slender fingertips.
The lighter popped out. I touched it to the rag; it smouldered and caught.
Greasy smoke stung my eyes. By now the man had noticed us. I hung my
arm, holding the bottle, out the window. As we passed him, I tossed the
bottle at the sidewalk like a newsboy tossing a rolled-up newspaper. The
rag flamed brighter as it whipped through the air; the bottle landed at his
feet and exploded, dousing him with burning kerosene. I floored the
accelerator; the motor coughed, then roared, the tires and Ruth both
squealing in delight. I could see the flaming man in the rear-view mirror as
we sped away.

****

On the Great American Plains, the summer nights, are not silent. The fields