"Wilhelm,_Kate_-_The_Day_of_the_Sharks" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

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The Day of the Sharks
by Kate Wilhelm
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Copyright (c)1992 Kate Wilhelm


Fictionwise Contemporary
Contemporary Fiction


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Her tranquilizer is wearing off, Gary thinks, when Veronica begins to tell him about it again. He stops listening almost immediately, and watches the road.
"...that thin voice coming in my ears, hour after hour. You know, he doesn't dictate it like that. He pauses and goes out, has coffee, sees other patients, but day after day, having that box talk to me..."
The road is a glare, the sun straight ahead, centered in the dazzling whiteness of the concrete; the bay they are skirting is without a ripple, an endless mirror of eye-hurting brilliance. It will be beautiful when the sun is actually setting, he thinks, but now his eyes burn, and the damn air-conditioning in the rented car is malfunctioning, alternately shocking them with random cold blasts, or leaving them sweltering in the airless machine that smells of deodorizers and cleaning fluids.
"...and they weren't people. Not after a while. They were gall bladders and thyroids and kidney stones. I began to wonder if there were any people even connected to them. You know? Free-floating kidney stones."
A flight of birds catches his attention; they just clear the water, almost touching the surface with their broad wings that look tattered, old, as if they have been at war, are flak-torn.
"...system's supposed to help with the filing, for the computers, or something. Everything by number, not even parts of the anatomy any longer. Just numbers and prices. Case histories of numbers."
Her voice is getting high, tight, the way it does these days. Her posture has become rigid, her gaze fixed on a point straight ahead; she can stay this way for hours, unmoving, seeing what? He can't imagine what she sees. He grasps the steering wheel harder, wishes she would take another damn tranquilizer and be done with it. She will eventually. But she is afraid of them throughout the day until after dinner when it doesn't matter if she falls asleep. She took two at breakfast and dozed on the flight from Chicago to Tampa; it was a peaceful flight.
Ahead, a squat, ugly complex comes into view, black against the glaring sky, his next landmark. He slows to make the turn off the highway over a bridge onto a narrower road. Now, with the sun to his right, he can drive faster. The islands have nothing on them, a few palm trees, some dunes, scrub that looks like felled palm trees, more birds. Sea gulls, he thinks, with near triumph. At least he knows sea gulls. Six miles farther.
His thoughts turn to Bill Hendrix and his wife Shar. And then he is thinking only of Shar. For a time after she and Bill moved down here she pleaded with him to come visit. He could fake a business trip. He could meet her in Tallahassee, or Miami, or somewhere. Then no more begging, no more anything, until the call from Bill. "If you're going to the Bahamas, hell, man, you've got to come for the weekend, at least. You can fly on from Tampa on Monday."
"We should have gone straight on to Grand Bahama," Veronica mumbles, facing the arrowlike road that seems to plunge into the blue water in the distance. A low dense clump of green rises on the left. The greenery expands, becomes pine trees, motionless in the still, late afternoon. "Turn again just after the pines," Bill's instructions went on. There is only one way to turn, left. They enter the subdivision under construction.
Unfinished houses are ugly, Gary thinks, obscenely ugly, naked, no illusions about them, the land around the buildings cluttered with junk that will be hidden away by the bulldozers, but there, always there. The landfill is dazzling white: sand, shells, the detritus dredged from the bay to create land, brought up long enough ago to have bleached to snow white.
"We should have gone straight on to Grand Bahama," Veronica says again, louder, still not looking at him.
"I told you, I have this business with Bill. We'll leave first thing Monday morning."
They wind through the subdivision, following instructions. A short causeway, to the end of the street, on to the point. There is Bill's house, with a yard fully landscaped, green and flowering. Gary's eyes narrow as he looks at it. The house is almost hidden from the street, but what shows is expensive, and the landscaping cost a fortune.
Bill said only three houses were finished, and that one is still vacant. The buyers will move in on the first of the month. They have not passed the other completed houses.
"I hardly even know them," Veronica says, not quite whining although a petulant tone has entered her voice. Gary doesn't know what that is supposed to mean. They were friends for more than five years. Gary wonders if she ever suspected Shar, if Bill ever did. He is almost certain no one did, but still, there is the possibility. Veronica knows there was someone. She always knows.
He parks in the driveway, but before they can get out of the car, they are suddenly chilled by a last effort of the air conditioner. He feels goose bumps rise; Veronica's skin takes on a bluish cast. Bill and Shar are coming out to meet them.
She has a beautiful tan, the same dark gold all over her legs, her arms, her face. Her hair is blonder than it was before; she might have been a little thinner before, but otherwise she looks exactly the same. There is a sheen on her skin, as if she has been polished. She is tall and strong, a Viking type, she calls herself. Nothing willowy about her, nothing fat or slack. She has long, smooth muscles in her legs; her stomach is as firm and flat as a boy's. She wears white briefs and a halter, and rubber thongs on her feet. Bill is a bit shorter than she is, thickly built, very powerful, with thick wrists and a thick neck. Size seventeen. They are both so tanned that Gary feels he and Veronica must both look like invalids.
"My God! Ghosts!" Shar cries, as Gary and Veronica get out of the car. She embraces them with too much enthusiasm and warmth, and Gary can sense Veronica's withdrawal. Next to Shar, Veronica appears used up, old. She is only thirty-one, but she looks ill, as she is, and she looks frightened and suspicious, and very tired. There are circles under her eyes; he feels guilty that he has not seen them before, that only now, contrasting her with Shar does he recognize the signs of illness, remember that this isn't simply a vacation.
"Hey, it's good to see you," Bill says, putting his arm across Gary's back. "Come on in. A drink is what you people need. And tomorrow we'll get out in the sun and put some color in your cheeks."
It should be warm and friendly, but it isn't. It is like walking into a scenario where every line has been rehearsed, the stage sets done by art majors; even the sky has been given an extra touch of the brush. It is gaudy now with sunset, the ambient light peach colored, and out back, visible through a wall of sliding glass doors, the bay is brilliant, touched with gold.
"Two hundred sixty-five thou," Bill says, waving his hand as they enter the house where the furniture is either white or sleek, shiny black. He goes to a bar and pours martinis already made up, and they sit down where they can watch the lights on the bay. Between them and the golden water are red and yellow flowering bushes, an Olympic-size swimming pool, a terrace with enough seating and tables to serve as a cafe. "Too much, isn't it?" Bill says, grinning. "Just too goddam much."
"Are you hungry?" Shar asks. "Dinner won't be until pretty late. We're having a little party, buffet about ten. How about a sandwich, something to tide you over?"
"Oh, Gary," Veronica says, stricken.
"No sweat," Bill says. "It's a business party. You know, people I owe. Just happened to coincide. Don't feel you're interrupting anything."
Still, Veronica looks at Gary as if pleading with him; he shrugs. "It'll be all right," he says, trying to make his impatience sound like patience. "She hasn't been feeling very well," he adds, glancing at Shar.
"It won't be too much of a drag, I hope," Shar says lightly. "Wind us up and watch us entertain. Isn't that right, Bill?"
He laughs and pours more drinks. "You'll fit right in, Gary. Just watch how their eyes gleam when I tell them you're an investment counselor." He laughs again.
* * * *
The party is little more than an excuse to get loud and drunk, Gary admits to himself later, wandering on the terrace with a drink in his hand, tired from the over-long day, bored with people he doesn't know, doesn't want to know. He knows their types, he thinks, watching a heavy-set man in a flowered shirt mock-push a nearly bare-breasted woman into the pool, laughing, leering, lusting. Shar touches his arm.
"Dance?"
They dance, his hand warmed by her golden back that is almost too smooth to be human. "Can I see you alone later?"
She smiles and doesn't answer.