JК
The Colorado Kid :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 7 из 81“You picked a pair, Missy,” she said.
“They’re all right,” Stephanie said.
“Sure, and after this you’ll probably go straight to theNew York Times,” Helen said. She picked up the plates, added, “I’ll be back for the rest of the riddingup,” and sailed away.
“When she finds that forty dollars in her pocket,” Stephanie said, “will she know who put it there?” She looked again at the patio, where perhaps two dozen customers were drinking coffee, iced tea, afternoon beers, or eating offthemenu chocolate cherry cake. Not all looked capable of slipping forty dollars in cash into a waitress’s pocket, but some of them did.
“Probably she will,” Vince said, “but tell me something, Steffi.”
“I will if I can.”
“If she didn’t know, would that make it illegal tender?”
“I don’t know what you—”
“I think you do,” he said. “Come on, let’s get back to the paper. News won’t wait.”
2
Here was the thing Stephanie loved best aboutThe Weekly Islander, the thing that still charmed her after three months spent mostly writing ads: on a clear afternoon you could walk six steps from your desk and have a gorgeous view of the Maine coast. All you had to do was walk onto the shaded deck that overlooked the reach and ran the length of the newspaper’s barnlike building. It was true that the air smelled of fish and seaweed, but everything on MooseLook smelled that way. You got used to it, Stephanie had discovered, and then a beautiful thing happened—after your nose dismissed that smell, it went and found it all over again, and the second time around, you fell in love with it.
On clear afternoons (like this one near the end of August), every house and dock and fishingboat over there on the Tinnock side of the reach stood out brilliantly; she could read the sunoco on the side of a diesel pump and theLeeLee Bett on the hull of some haddockjockey’s breadwinner, beached for its turnoftheseason scraping and painting. She could see a boy in shorts and a cutoff Patriots jersey fishing from the trashlittered shingle below Preston’s Bar, and a thousand winks of sun glittering off the tin flashing of a hundred village roofs. And, between Tinnock Village (which was actually a goodsized town) and MooseLookit Island, the sun shone on the bluest water she had ever seen. On days like this, she wondered how she would ever go back to the Midwest, or if she even could.
“They’re all right,” Stephanie said.
“Sure, and after this you’ll probably go straight to theNew York Times,” Helen said. She picked up the plates, added, “I’ll be back for the rest of the riddingup,” and sailed away.
“When she finds that forty dollars in her pocket,” Stephanie said, “will she know who put it there?” She looked again at the patio, where perhaps two dozen customers were drinking coffee, iced tea, afternoon beers, or eating offthemenu chocolate cherry cake. Not all looked capable of slipping forty dollars in cash into a waitress’s pocket, but some of them did.
“Probably she will,” Vince said, “but tell me something, Steffi.”
“I will if I can.”
“If she didn’t know, would that make it illegal tender?”
“I don’t know what you—”
“I think you do,” he said. “Come on, let’s get back to the paper. News won’t wait.”
2
Here was the thing Stephanie loved best aboutThe Weekly Islander, the thing that still charmed her after three months spent mostly writing ads: on a clear afternoon you could walk six steps from your desk and have a gorgeous view of the Maine coast. All you had to do was walk onto the shaded deck that overlooked the reach and ran the length of the newspaper’s barnlike building. It was true that the air smelled of fish and seaweed, but everything on MooseLook smelled that way. You got used to it, Stephanie had discovered, and then a beautiful thing happened—after your nose dismissed that smell, it went and found it all over again, and the second time around, you fell in love with it.
On clear afternoons (like this one near the end of August), every house and dock and fishingboat over there on the Tinnock side of the reach stood out brilliantly; she could read the sunoco on the side of a diesel pump and theLeeLee Bett on the hull of some haddockjockey’s breadwinner, beached for its turnoftheseason scraping and painting. She could see a boy in shorts and a cutoff Patriots jersey fishing from the trashlittered shingle below Preston’s Bar, and a thousand winks of sun glittering off the tin flashing of a hundred village roofs. And, between Tinnock Village (which was actually a goodsized town) and MooseLookit Island, the sun shone on the bluest water she had ever seen. On days like this, she wondered how she would ever go back to the Midwest, or if she even could.