"Marta Randall - Islands" - читать интересную книгу автора (Randall Marta)

revision and its readers will, I hope, agree.
Petaluma, California
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*2001*
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*1*
Far below me invisible surf smashed against invisible rocks, ebbing
with a vast, sucking rush over the stones. The night wind was cold under
frigid stars; the moon, breaking through clouds, cast a diffused glow across
the sea. Deep in the base of my spine, something twinged and nagged and sent
out a familiar, exploratory shaft of pain. I gripped the textured redwood of
the rail with both hands and willed the cold to move in a straight line
through me, up to my back and heart and mind, but the numbness reached only to
my knees before it ebbed again. The pain blossomed.
Paul and Jenny, two stories below me, curled around each other in the
large transparent bed and made love quietly so that I, presumably in the room
just below them, would not hear. Considerate of them. I had heard them as I
passed their room on my way to the roof balcony, the small gasps of pleasure,
the sound of Paul in orgasm. Still the same, that sound, after all the years.
Remembering, I clung to the rail until the pain lessened and I could breathe
again. It was a mistake to invite them here, I told myself. Stupid to think
that it wouldn't bother me, stupid to think that I was over it, over wanting
at all. Idiocy, and I am well punished for it.
Eventually I stopped shaking and the pain became a small reminder,
never gone but not, now, bigger than the world. I released the railing and
slipped down the spiral stairs, past the murky glow of the sea-facing windows,
past the landing by the guest room door. I closed and locked my door behind me
and spoke to the lights. As they came up my reflection leaped at me from the
large window and there I stood, Tia in the flesh, the drug-resisting meat. Tia
the anomaly, the freak. Flat stomach crossed again and again by lines, breasts
hanging low but never large enough to make much difference; ass wrinkled,
thighs sinewy and shrunken, calves the same; skinny arms ending in big,
square, capable hands. Face weathered around brown eyes, skin parched and
lined as driftwood, hair streaked with grey and dry from constant exposure to
the sun. Dry lady, driftwood hag. I must age but I would not disguise it, no
creams, plastic surgeries, cosmetics. Let them be uncomfortable at the sight
of Tia Hamley, growing ungracefully old in a world of the forever young.
But I would hide this unexpected torture at the memory of Paul's sounds
of pleasure, at the thought of my former lover and his current lover coupling
in my guest room. A secret, yes, held close between me and my window and the
beast at the base of my spine. Hush.
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*2*
Fifty years ago he was my lover, when I was seventeen and he
twenty-seven. He was easy in his youth, looking as he does now: grey-green
eyes muted to hazel brown in the evenings; long gold and brown hair swept
around a strong-boned face; a slight build, narrow about the shoulders and
hips; quick in his movements, in his words. A good, pleasing body, and he had
not opted to have it changed.
And I? Portrait of the freak as a young girl? Rounded and firm, masses