If You Could See Me Now

Начало книги

“Winter has already started,” said Alison.

“Huh?”

“Winter started a month ago.”

“I don’t get you.”

“What day is it?”

“The twenty-first of July. Thursday.”

“God, look at those stars,” she said. “I’d like to take a big step off the planet and just go sailing through them.” He and Alison, cousins from opposite ends of the continent, lay side by side on their grandmother’s lawn in that part of rural Wisconsin nearest the Mississippi River, and looked up past the dark massive heads of the walnut trees to the sky. Oral Roberts’ country voice came drifting to them from the porch of their grandmother’s house. “My spirit is passing into you,” Oral Roberts was shouting, and Alison’s mother, Loretta Greening, softly laughed. The boy turned his head sideways on the coarse, springy grass and looked at his cousin’s profile. It was fox-sharp, ardent, and if will could lift her off the earth she would already be sailing away from him. He caught her smell of cold, bracing water. “God,” she repeated, “I’d just buzz around up there, wouldn’t I? I feel that way sometimes when I listen to Gerry Mulligan. Do you know about him?”

Читать дальше →