"Nancy Kress - Out of all the Bright Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

"Charlie," I say, "what did those government men say to you?"
He looks up from his tapes and scowls. "What do you care?"
"I just want to know."
 "And maybe I don't want you to know," he says, and smiles nasty-like. Me asking has put him in a
better mood, the creep. All of a sudden I remember what his wife said when she got the stitches: "The
only way to get something from Charlie is to let him smack me around a little, and then ask him when I'm
down. He'll give me anything when I'm down. He gives me shit if he thinks I'm on top."
I think again about the blue guy. John.
I do the rest of the clean-up without saying anything. Charlie swears at the night's take -- I know
from my tips that it's not much. Kathy teases her hair in front of the mirror behind doughnuts and pies,
and I put down the breakfast menus. But all the time I'm thinking, and I don't much like my thoughts.
Charlie locks up and we all leave. Outside it's stopped raining but it's still misty and soft, real pretty
but too cold. I pull my sweater around myself and in the parking lot, after Kathy's gone, I say, "Charlie."
He stops walking toward his truck. "Yeah?"
I lick my lips. They're all of a sudden dry. It's an experiment, like, what I'm going to say. It's an
experiment.
"Charlie. What if those government men hadn't come just then and the...the blue guy hadn't been
willing to leave? What would you have done?"
"What do you care?"
I shrug. "I don't. Just curious. It's your place."
"Damn straight it's my place!" Through the mist I can see him scowl. "I'd of squashed him flat!"
"And then what? After you squashed him flat, what if the men came then and made a stink?"
"Too bad. It'd be too late by then, huh?" He laughs and I can see how he's seeing it: the blue guy
bleeding on the linoleum and Charlie standing over him, dusting his hands together.
Charlie laughs again and goes off to his truck, whistling. He has a little bounce in his step. He's still
seeing it, almost like it really had happened. Over his shoulder he calls to me, "They're built like wimps.
Or girls. All bone, no muscle. Even you must of seen that," and his voice is cheerful. It doesn't have any
more anger in it, or hatred, or anything but a kind of friendliness. I hear him whistle some more, until the
truck engine starts up and he peels out of the parking lot, laying rubber like a kid.
I unlock my Chevy. But before I get in, I look up at the sky. Which is really stupid because of
course I can't see anything, with all the mist and clouds. No stars.
Maybe Kathy's husband is right. Maybe they do want to blow us all to smithereens. I don't think
so, but what the hell difference does it ever make what I think? And all at once I'm furious at John,
furious mad, as mad as I've ever been in my life.
Why does he have to come here, with his bird calls and his politeness? Why can't they all go
someplace else besides here? There must be lots of other places they can go, out of all them bright stars
up there behind the clouds. They don't need to come here, here where I need this job and so that means
I need Charlie. He's a bully, but I want to look at him and see nothing else but a bully. Nothing else but
that. That's all I want to see in Charlie, in the government men -- just small-time bullies, nothing special,
not a mirror of anything, not a future of anything. Just Charlie. That's all. I won't see nothing else.
I won't.
"I make so little difference," he says.
Yeah. Sure.

-----------------------

At www.fictionwise.com you can:

* Rate this story