"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Nutball Season" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

"Okay," I said. "Whatta you want me to do?"

"I want you to go see her," he said, "and make her promise not to shoot me tomorrow night."

"You think that much hate is going to keep a promise?" I ask.

"She's a fanatic, isn't she?" he said. "She should keep a holy vow."

Right. Like I could extract a holy vow from a woman who hated Santa Claus. But it wasn't the hardest
thing I'd ever had to do on this job.
So like an idiot, I agreed.




·····



Christmas Eve, my shift started at noon, and since I didn't have a family, I was thinking maybe I'd work
late and then pick up some hours Christmas Day. I wasn't lying to myself that one day was like another; I
knew Christmas was special. I just figured if I worked through it, I wouldn't notice.

When I was a kid, the festivities started with the whole Advent season. The second the decorations went
up in church, they'd go up at home. My mom did the Advent calendars and the whole nine yards, and it
made December something else. I'd felt the lack ever since I moved from home—it wasn't the same after
I'd left, and it got worse after she died—but it was never so bad as on Christmas and Christmas Eve.

I probably shoulda gone to midnight Mass. I had it in my head I'd do it when I got off work, but I wasn't
sure I wanted to see all them folks and their families in the red velvet and the fake fur coats, and me
coming in in my uniform. I didn't figure it'd look right, you know?

And that's what I was trying not to think about as I drove up to this Prudence Billings' house. She lived in
one of them ritzy areas of town—you know, those colonial houses with the columns and the eight miles of
lawn before you even get to the front door. Santa had not just his choice of roofs, but he had his choice
of chimneys here.

I didn't like her even worse than I didn't like her before, and that was before I got outta the squad.

I walked up that long sidewalk alone, noting that whoever shoveled didn't do a fine job as there was still
a thin layer of ice that cracked beneath my boots. Someone had salted the steps, and the salt had melted
through the ice, but no one'd bothered to kick the ice away, which I did, just as a courtesy.

Then I rang the bell.

The door opened and there was this kid wearing a pair of red shorts and a Santa hat, and grinning like
there was no tomorrow. In that face, I saw every devil that ever walked, and I knew that the geezer lied.

This kid wasn't good, he was hell on wheels, and I was just about to give him flight.