Checker and the Derailleurs. Lionel Shriver

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      They sat in silence.

      “I’ve never figured out how she stands it,” Caldwell remarked.

      “It’s very delicate,” said Howard, his delight in analysis getting the better of his loyalty. “Like photosynthesis. A perfectly balanced chemical process that by all rights shouldn’t work—”

      “Where you get that?” asked J.K.

      “The point is”—Howard glared—“if plants can turn air to branches, anything is possible.”

      “Howard’s right, Big J.,” said Caldwell. “There’s something real incredible about those two. Like, it’s a miracle little Jackless hasn’t killed herself.”

      “Where is Checker Secretti?”

      A shadow cut the length of the club.

      “What you want with Check?” braved J.K., whose voice sounded strangely high for a 210-pound bass player.

      “His ass in my glassworks.”

      She stepped into the light and the whole band subtly recoiled. Even Eaton wasn’t inclined to say anything smart and private-school. Once more the woman was in her apron and earthy, ancient, unwashed clothes. She hadn’t bothered with a coat, nor had she taken off her dark glasses. Her hair, askew as usual, glittered with sleet. She appeared like the Wicked Witch of the West and Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother all wrapped into one enthralling but appalling creature. You did not know whose side she was on.

      “He got business,” said J.K.

      “He has business with me,” Syria boomed. “You tell him he’s late. You tell him I don’t have time to chase him down in his little clubhouse. You tell him he shows or I throw him in with the next load of cullet. Got that?”

      “Cullet,” Caldwell repeated softly.

      “What?”

      “Check taught us the word yesterday,” he explained meekly. “Broken glass.”

      “My, my,” said Syria. “A for the day, rock star.” She stopped and looked down at him. “You’re cute.”

      “Thank you,” said Caldwell formally.

      “You tell your drummer friend, one more hour, he’s fired.”

      Bang. She vanished.

      “The Towering Inferno!” exclaimed Caldwell.

      They marveled over the apparition until Checker returned.

      When told of his employer’s visit, Checker seemed pleased. Before he hurried out again, Check assured the band that Rachel was all right now—once more, air had been turned to branches.

      Sorry I’m late,” Checker panted. “I had a problem.”

      “What do you know about problems?”

      “Plenty.”

      She took off her glasses, sifting Checker up and down through a queer mesh; her eyes were green. She seemed to see him differently from other people. Checker felt exposed, and pulled his jacket closed, raising its collar around his neck.

      “Sweep.” She handed him a broom.

      “When do I get to work with the glass?” Check shouted. All their conversation was loud. It had to be. The roar of the furnace was voracious.

      She didn’t answer, and from then on, apart from giving him orders, she ignored him completely. Once again she was at her own work, which soon sufficiently absorbed her that she didn’t notice he’d run out of things to do. Checker settled quietly behind her to watch.

      Syria gathered a lump of molten glass, then swung the pipe like a pendulum until the glob elongated; it cooled and darkened, and she returned it to the top of the furnace, propping the pipe on a stand and rolling it in quick, regular circles until the shaft was warm again. She repeated this process until the glass stretched into a rod with a knob on its end; she hung it glass down and made another form like it on a separate pipe. After reheating the first, she plunged the two shafts together, filed into the glass on one pipe, and cracked it off clean with a rap on the metal. Though working with a huge amount of material that must have been heavy, she manipulated the now three-foot-long piece like balsa wood, swinging it with grace and, he could see, pleasure, feeling its momentum, finding the fulcrum point on the pipe. All her motions were rapid and sure, without excess; they reminded him of good basketball. They reminded him of good drumming. They reminded him of anything he had ever done right.

      Syria hefted the pipe over to a chair with flat arms and rolled it in front of her with her left palm, all the while shaping the middle knot with a wet wooden cup. Steam rose from the glass, hissing at her touch, a whisper of pain—cold water and hot glass don’t mix, but Syria would marry them, anyway. Checker remembered how she tended his cut: this will hurt but it will heal you. She was a person who would do something terrible for your own good.

      It was only when she’d cracked the shaft into the annealer that Check realized that while he’d been waiting for her to blow a vase, a bowl, she wasn’t making a vessel. She was making a bone.

      At last Checker noticed a dark corner room, and ducked inside to turn on the light. There they were. All over the walls, stacked shelf after shelf: glass bones. Clear, glistening femurs. Ice-blue rib cages, fragile, almost breathing. Strange assemblages of knuckles and kneecaps, like remnants of a mass grave turned mysteriously to crystal—deep sad greens and buried ambers. Some of the longer bones were distorted, curved, as if they were melting.

      Checker felt dizzy. It was like walking into a glass morgue, shuddering and deadly, but beautiful, too, shimmering in the glow of the low-wattage bulb. The walls hurt to look at. Nothing should be that disturbing and that attractive. As his intestines began to gather, he closed the door tightly behind him, like shutting the top of Pandora’s box.

      Checker felt woozy and weaved to a nearby bench.

      “So what was so funny?”

      “What?”

      “When I was working. You laughed.”

      “The way you moved,” he remembered. “I played a song in my head and you danced to it.”

      She smiled. “Which one?”

      “‘Burning Down the House.’”

      “Three-hun-dred-six-ty-five-de-grees. It’s hotter than that.”

      “You know the Heads!”

      “What do you think I grew up on, Frank Sinatra?”

      “Sorry.” Checker took a deep breath.

      “You don’t look well.”

      “Give me a second.” The sensation was receding, but not quickly enough, as if he’d woken a sleeping dragon—even if it only yawned and went back to sleep, the ground rumbled.

      “So СКАЧАТЬ