The Life Of Reilly. Sue Civil-Brown
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Название: The Life Of Reilly
Автор: Sue Civil-Brown
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
isbn: 9781408976548
isbn:
“He dug up your yard, too?”
Betty hesitated. “Well, not quite. But he had to rip out a few walls.”
“Walls? Walls?” Rendered speechless, Lynn stared at her bungalow, wondering what she’d have left of it by nightfall.
Betty patted her arm. “Dil Stedman does great drywall. You’ll never know.”
“I’ll never know.” Lynn repeated those words all the way to school, all the way through the day and on the way back home. As she approached her block, however, her trepidation grew so great that her feet dragged. She half expected to find nothing but a hole in the ground where her bungalow had been.
As she rounded the corner, the first thing she saw was the heavy equipment, then the trench running through her front yard and the fact that not a working soul was in sight.
Trepidation gave way to a nub of anger. They couldn’t have left her in these straits.
But they had. The backhoe had dug down to the sewer and water lines, exposing them. Inside the house a tangle of tubing, none of it connected to anything she could see, stuck out from her beneath her sink.
“Gaaaaah!”
She dumped her book bag on the now-dusty table and on leaden feet went to survey her bathroom. The tile wall holding the shower head and faucet had been pulled out, leaving an exquisite view of two-by-fours and pipes.
Hanging from the shower head was a sticky note. She pulled it down and read, “Betty says you can shower at her place. We’ll be back as soon as we have all the parts. HC.”
Slowly, note in hand, Lynn sat on the edge of the tub. “Delphine,” she whispered, “I’m going to get you. Somehow.”
At that, Delphine appeared, sitting on the commode. Her hair was still cherry red, which clashed nicely with the orange dress she was wearing. “I’m not responsible for this.”
“It would have been nice if you had appeared and scared them out of here before they tore my house apart.”
Delphine patted her hair and sighed. “It’s just a minor hiccup, dear. When the plumbers are done, you’ll never have another problem. At least not of this kind.”
That seemed foreboding. “I better not have any more problems at all!”
Delphine sniffed. “You expect too much from life. There are always problems. Plumbing and a ghost are the least of them. You need to alter your perspective.”
“What perspective? How could anyone living in this madhouse have a perspective?”
“It’s really quite easy. Take a deep breath, then laugh. You’ll see.”
At that moment they were interrupted by Jack’s voice calling from the kitchen. “Lynn? Lynn, would you like to go to the tavern with me?”
Lynn was off the edge of the tub like a shot, headed for the kitchen. “Look what he did to me, your plumber.”
“You’re welcome,” Jack said, clearly irritated.
“He tore up my whole house!”
“He must have needed to.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
Jack hesitated, then turned a sharp about-face and headed for the door. “Buy your own beer,” he said shortly.
“There,” said Delphine from behind her. “What did I tell you? You really need to learn some manners. People here are at least trying to be friendly, unlike the other places you’ve lived.” She sniffed again. “Ungrateful girl!”
Lynn turned to glare at her, too, but caught only a glimpse of rainbow hair as Delphine faded from view. There didn’t seem to be anything else to do. Lynn kicked the wastebasket.
What the hell did she have to be grateful for?
SOME EVENINGS JACK WENT to the tavern on the edge of town. It was a great place to socialize with the folks of Treasure Island. Men of the sea tended to be a God-fearing lot, as were their wives, so he saw most of them in his church on Sunday. But that wasn’t the same as befriending them, and Jack had long felt he could do a lot more as a friend than as a preacher. Hence, he spent some evenings at the tavern and some evenings at the ever-running poker tournament on the upper floor of City Hall. And every Saturday he shot hoops with the island’s children, male and female. Between the three, he socialized with nearly everyone.
On this particular evening, he chose the tavern where he was warmly greeted and invited to sit at a table with six of the biggest—literally—fishermen on the island. He felt dwarfed among them, but that didn’t especially bother him until one of them punched him in the shoulder. Jack was no wuss, far from it, but these guys’ idea of a friendly tap would have knocked down sheetrock and two-by-fours.
Before long the conversation turned from the day’s catch to the new schoolteacher.
“There’s something whacked about her,” said Jazz Bingle, a guy tall enough to play for the NBA if he hadn’t also weighed close to three-hundred pounds. “The wife says she’s teaching them about global warming.”
Jack’s interest perked. “What’s wrong with that?”
Jazz shrugged. “Nothing. But it’s kinda weird when your kid comes home as says the earth getting hotter could cause an ice age. Now how do you figure that?”
Bart Abernathy nodded. “Don’t add up, do it? How does hot make cold?”
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