Broken Monsters. Lauren Beukes
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Название: Broken Monsters
Автор: Lauren Beukes
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Триллеры
isbn: 9780007464623
isbn:
‘Mom!’ Layla dies inside. If it’s that transparent to her mother, then the whole world knows. Which means it’s obvious to Dorian as well, and that’s too hideous to contemplate.
‘All right, all right. Truce. I bought you some lipgloss.’
‘Swell.’ Layla says. She sits up, pulls out her phone and starts typing a text to Cas.
>Lay: Finally! 3 HOURS late!
>Cas: More time for loooo-oooobe with Dorian
>Lay: Excuse me?!?
>Cas: Aaargh! Loooooove. Love! Not lube! Autocorrect.
>Lay: Freud much?
>Cas: :) :) :)
‘I had to use some of it,’ her mother says. ‘Hope you don’t mind.’
‘Mom, this stuff’s a con. It dehydrates your skin so you have to keep applying it.’
But the thought of the soft, sweet slick of the gloss is suddenly very appealing. She presses her lips together to see how dry they are. Pretty dry. She runs her tongue along the edge of her incisors which makes her super-aware of how her teeth are part of her skull. She feels a little queasy at the thought of the exposed bone, right there in the open. The inside-out. She drags her mind back to the last thing her mom said through the warm blur of the weed. Lipgloss. Right. ‘What flavor is it?’
‘Cherry. Don’t you want to know what I used it for?’
‘Putting on your lips?’ Layla says. Drop-down menu: maximum sarcasm.
‘To cover the smell of a body.’
‘That doesn’t work. I saw it on the crime channel. Anyway, gross. I don’t want to hear about some dead person.’
>Lay: Disgusting cop stories #Yay #notyay
>Cas: U like it
>Lay: Little bit
‘You sure? Not even the part where I punked the rookie? Who, unlike you, does not watch the crime channel.’
‘If you’re so desperate to talk about it, go ahead.’
‘I shouldn’t tell you. It was messed-up.’
‘Or don’t. Whatever. I’m not your therapist.’
‘I’ll give him this. He turned green, but he didn’t spew.’
‘That’s pretty cold, Mom.’
>Lay: OMG. She’s SO immature
‘Poor guy. Guess he should watch more TV.’ She turns thoughtful. Enough for Layla to lower the phone. ‘Poor kid, too.’
‘It was a kid?’
‘Like I said, it was messed-up.’ Her mother glides away from the conversation like Dorian on his skateboard.
>Lay: Shit. Dead kid
>Cas: What! What!?!?!?!? All the deets. I wantz them
>Lay: Later
‘Someone I know?’
‘I don’t think so, baby. And you know we don’t talk shop.’
‘I thought we just were.’
‘Yeah, I know. That was indiscreet of me.’
‘So be indiscreet. Who am I gonna tell?’
‘Layla, we haven’t even notified the family yet.’
‘Fine. Whatever. You started it.’
‘It’s been a rough day. Sorry.’
‘Me too.’ She throws herself back in the seat and picks up her phone again. A force-shield against parental stupidity.
He heard Louanne was back in Michigan, but it took Clayton the better part of two weeks and a lot of driving to find her. You got to concentrate driving at night, but it keeps your mind occupied.
He downs those Monster energy drinks to keep him awake and to counteract the effect of the OxyContin and some kind of super-strength Tylenol in red gel caps he buys from a dealer in Hamtramck, who gets them from Mexico, because he’s wrecked his back and doctors are all full of shit.
And even though he doesn’t sleep, he has dreams. Crazy dreams. Sometimes while he’s driving, his brain summons shapes up out of the darkness. Like tonight. He drove through a pile of wet leaves, and it was like a mush of crows, all rotten feathers and pointy beaks.
He wonders if his old man ever saw things on the road when he was trucking long-distance across the country. He never asked him. Sometimes he would take Clayton with him on the shorter hops, to Chicago or Buffalo. They didn’t talk on those trips. Clayton was too scared to say the wrong thing, in awe of the man who chewed gum non-stop because tobacco would give you the cancer, and they’d drive for hours like that, both of them silent, watching the miles peel past. Eventually his old man stopped taking him, because he couldn’t miss school. But when he graduated and said he wanted to make art, his father shrugged and said, so do it then, long as you can feed you and yours.
When the cancer got him anyway, forty-eight years old, younger than Clayton is now, hiding in the recesses of his pancreas, he left his son the house and enough money to do some courses and live for a while just working on his art. For years he made the visions in his head, dragged them out with paint or an acetylene torch, and even sold some of them. He used to work in the early hours, carried by inspiration and the dwindling supply of bank notes from whatever scrounge job he’d done last. Better than any clock, those bank notes, ticking off the days until he’d have to put down his brush or his chisel or his torch.
His versatility comes from doing jobs that could feed his art. He learned how to weld working on armor-plated cars right here in Detroit before they were shipped off for the first Iraq war. Learned woodwork in a sign factory. But the last while he’s had to take anything he can get to bridge the gaps, which seem to be getting shorter and shorter, because the money doesn’t last as long, and the guys doing the hiring look past him to younger, stronger men. Everyone’s always looking for the new thing, as if his age and experience count for shit. He’s only fifty-three. He’s still strong enough to work, any job you like, and he’s just as good as those kids. He’s got perspective.
It’s what he told that shrimpy little curator Patrick Thorpe. Practically begged him for a chance to be included in the group show – got down on his knees like a marriage proposal, in the middle of Honey Bee supermarket. Patrick hemmed and hawed and said he’d have to СКАЧАТЬ