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

The clerk thanked her, stamped her ticket, and gave it back together with a
brochure. Nancy put them both in her Ziploc bag and went out to the hallway. The
crowd had thinned. She stood against a wall while the bearded man herded kids
toward the quay. He followed the last one out and paused beside her.

“You on this trip? Come on then, before the damned tourists get here.” One
leg dragged a bit when he walked; he winnowed through a chaos of papers in his
hands.

“This is a school trip?”

“Yeah. Study abroad. Two months.” He looked at her, eyebrow raised, so
obviously waiting for the next question that she asked it: “Oceanography? Marine
bio—”

“English,” he said. “Steinbeck. Voyage of the Sea of Cortez. We retrace the
trip every winter. Costs a shitload. Kids love it, Regents love the money, I get the
hassles.” He stopped at the door, freed his right hand, and thrust it at her. “Al
Scott.”

“Nancy Auletta.”

On the marina the kids, in everything from pony tails to face studs and spiky
hair, crowded before a gate. When Scott showed up, the man guarding the gate let
them through and they poured down stone steps to the wharf, jostling and shouting.
Nancy hung back while Scott dealt the kids into two big Zodiac inflatables and the
guides helped them in. When the kids were seated and struggling with their life
jackets, Scott gestured her into a raft and climbed in after her.

“They flew in yesterday,” he said, stowing papers in a shiny waterproof bag.
“Now I find out who gets seasick. You want a life jacket? You’re not with the
group—you don’t have to.”

But of course she did want one and busied herself with the tangle of straps
and carabiners. The boats’ outboard motors jumped to life, roaring; they moved
away from the dock. She buckled the last strap into place and looked up to see the
quay and hotel falling away behind them. The insistent dark boy of the street sat
beside the guide. He stared at her, expressionless.

She pulled her shoulders in until the life jacket nipped her armpits. She should
insist that they take her back, or transfer her to the other boat. She should complain
to the guide. Warn the boy away from her. What was the Spanish for “stay away
from me?” Atrs? No, that couldn’t be right. Not afuera either. Her stomach felt cold.

In the end she did nothing except turn away from the boy. She stared across
the water toward the Pedregal, the spine of red rock running down the very end of
Baja California. He wouldn’t bother her here, not with all these other people around.
She didn’t want to make a spectacle of herself. It would be all right. The Zodiacs
sped through the harbor, past early dive boats.