The Butterfly Kid

Начало книги

This is especially true of Greenwich Village, where most of this story happens. Do not be deceived: there is no Greenwich Village. Never was. Pure fiction, all of it. Ask anyone who’s lived there.

Chester Anderson

THE TROUBLE with most warlocks is that they talk too much. That’s how I happened to notice the kid in Washington Square: he wasn’t saying anything. He just sat there, quietly making tropical butterflies, while the teenyboppers rippled past, unnoticing.

Okay, I thought, I’ll play your silly game. I parked myself on the bench across the walk from his and elaborately ignored him, which wasn’t all that easy.

He was a pretty ordinary-type kid, by Greenwich Village standards: yellow hair, darker eyebrows, longish face not quite finished yet, blue unbelieving eyes — a sufficiently good-looking kid, but most Village kids are good-looking. The eyebrows gave him a touch of distinction, but there were already three or five other kids making the two-tone scene that summer, so he was going to have to find himself some other trademark. Those butterflies, I thought, would probably do it for him. They were vulgar butterflies, too big and too flashy, but good taste doesn’t matter much in miracles, and anyhow, he’d learn.

Читать дальше →