"Marta Randall - The Dark Boy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Randall Marta)

preparing for the day; a few cars chugged past. There were no Americans visible.
She took another calming breath. She could do this. A week spent hiding in her
room, huddled behind sunglasses or newspapers on the resort’s beach, calling for
room service so as not to face anyone ... it was ridiculous. Ginny would have
laughed at her.

She had her money and papers in a Ziploc bag in the pocket of her jeans, and
a rolled-up five-dollar bill for tips. She took out the ticket she had bought for the
dawn whale-watching tour. The back of the ticket showed a map of downtown Cabo
San Lucas. She looked at it, oriented herself, and started walking the five blocks to
the marina. Except for the shopkeepers she was alone on the sidewalk; a few of them
gestured toward their shops, but smiled and shrugged when she shook her head.

The shopkeepers’ interest was practical and commercial, unlike the tourists
back at the resort. There, she felt exposed and in jeopardy, a woman alone amid the
couples, families, groups of friends. Ginny’s kids had insisted that a week off would
do her good, a chance to relax, to regroup, as though the week in Cabo was some
consolation prize for the loss of their mother, her partner for twenty years. The
tourists kept looking beyond her for the missing other, husband or child or friend,
before turning their gazes back to her. She hated it. She felt as though she were on
show. But Ginny’s kids couldn’t have known it would be like this, they with their
snug families. She loved them. They loved her. They thought it would help. They
had grown away into their own lives as she and Ginny had grown into each other’s
lives, and now Ginny was dead and she felt as though her leg had been amputated
and her balance become perilous, and the people around her waited for her to fall.

She pulled her shoulders in and crossed a slanting street, up two steps to the
next sidewalk, past a verandah restaurant with chairs upside down on the oilclothed
tables. She slowed to peer at the menu painted above the bar.

In the next minute she was surrounded by children, so close that she almost
tripped. They gathered and scattered around her, crying “Chiclets!” in high voices,
holding out tiny bright boxes of gum. She caught her balance, pushing her palms out
to ward them off, appalled at the attention. They jittered and bobbed and chattered
like small, hungry birds.

“No, por favor,” she said in her broad American accent. “No, please, no
quiero, no.”

An older boy appeared among them, almond-eyed over broad, dark Indio
cheekbones. The other children fell back as he thrust a handful of bright pottery
marlins at her, each one no bigger than his thumb.

“Ver’ cheap,” he said, unsmiling. He was perhaps eleven or twelve, and
almost as tall as she. She shook her head and tried to walk around him. The marlins
disappeared, replaced by four small crystal dolphins on silver chains. He held them
so close that she had to pull her head back to avoid them. The children giggled.

“Delfines,” he said, shaking the necklaces a little. “You like.” But she didn’t
like, Ginny was the one who had loved the sea.