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Bag of Bones :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 148 из 425I’m always curious about what people are reading; the only better insight into them is the contents of their medicine cabinets, and rummaging through your host’s drugs and nostrums is frowned upon by the better class.
The books were different enough to qualify as schizoid. One, with a playing-card bookmark about three quarters of the way through, was the paperback edition of Richard North Patterson’s Silent Witness. I applauded her taste; Patterson and Demille are probably the best of the current popular novelists. The other, a hardcover tome of some weight, was The Collected Short Works of Herman Melville. About as far from Richard North Patterson as you could get. According to the faded purple ink stamped on the thickness of the pages, this volume belonged to Four Lakes Community Library. That was a lovely little stone building about five miles south of Dark Score Lake, where Route 68 passes off the TR and into Motton. Where Mattie worked, presumably. I opened to her bookmark, another playing card, and saw she was reading “Bartleby.”
“I don’t understand that,” she said from behind me, startling me so badly that I almost dropped the books. “I like it—it’s a good enough story—but I haven’t the slightest idea what it means. The other one, now, I’ve even figured out who did it.”
“It’s a strange pair to read in tandem,” I said, putting them back down. “The Patterson I’m reading for pleasure,” Mattie said. She went into the kitchen, looked briefly (and with some longing, I thought) at the bottle of wine, then opened the fridge and took out a pitcher of Kool-Aid. On the fridge door were words her daughter had already assembled from her Magnabet bag: KI and MATTIE and HOHO (Santa Claus, I presumed). “Well, I’m reading them both for pleasure, I guess, but we’re due to discuss “Bartleby’ in this little group I’m a part of. We meet Thursday nights at the library. I’ve still got about ten pages to go.”
“A readers’ circle.”
“Uh-huh. Mrs. Briggs leads. She formed it long before I was born. She’s the head librarian at Four Lakes, you know.” “I do. Lindy Briggs is my caretaker’s sister-in-law.” Mattie smiled. “Small world, isn’t it?”
“No, it’s a big world but a small town.” She started to lean back against the counter with her glass of Kool-Aid, then thought better of it. “Why don’t we go outside and sit? That way anyone passing can see that we’re still dressed and that we don’t have anything on inside-out.”
I looked at her, startled She looked back with a kind of cynical good humor.
The books were different enough to qualify as schizoid. One, with a playing-card bookmark about three quarters of the way through, was the paperback edition of Richard North Patterson’s Silent Witness. I applauded her taste; Patterson and Demille are probably the best of the current popular novelists. The other, a hardcover tome of some weight, was The Collected Short Works of Herman Melville. About as far from Richard North Patterson as you could get. According to the faded purple ink stamped on the thickness of the pages, this volume belonged to Four Lakes Community Library. That was a lovely little stone building about five miles south of Dark Score Lake, where Route 68 passes off the TR and into Motton. Where Mattie worked, presumably. I opened to her bookmark, another playing card, and saw she was reading “Bartleby.”
“I don’t understand that,” she said from behind me, startling me so badly that I almost dropped the books. “I like it—it’s a good enough story—but I haven’t the slightest idea what it means. The other one, now, I’ve even figured out who did it.”
“It’s a strange pair to read in tandem,” I said, putting them back down. “The Patterson I’m reading for pleasure,” Mattie said. She went into the kitchen, looked briefly (and with some longing, I thought) at the bottle of wine, then opened the fridge and took out a pitcher of Kool-Aid. On the fridge door were words her daughter had already assembled from her Magnabet bag: KI and MATTIE and HOHO (Santa Claus, I presumed). “Well, I’m reading them both for pleasure, I guess, but we’re due to discuss “Bartleby’ in this little group I’m a part of. We meet Thursday nights at the library. I’ve still got about ten pages to go.”
“A readers’ circle.”
“Uh-huh. Mrs. Briggs leads. She formed it long before I was born. She’s the head librarian at Four Lakes, you know.” “I do. Lindy Briggs is my caretaker’s sister-in-law.” Mattie smiled. “Small world, isn’t it?”
“No, it’s a big world but a small town.” She started to lean back against the counter with her glass of Kool-Aid, then thought better of it. “Why don’t we go outside and sit? That way anyone passing can see that we’re still dressed and that we don’t have anything on inside-out.”
I looked at her, startled She looked back with a kind of cynical good humor.