Читать книгу Five Quarters of the Orange / Пять четвертинок апельсина онлайн
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Paul looked cynical.
“If you don’t believe in wishes,” he pointed out, “then what’re you doing it for at all?”
I shook my head.
“Dunno,” I said at last. “Just for something to do, I expect.”
He laughed.
“That’s you, Boise,” he said between gusts of laughter. “That’s you all over, that is. Catch Old Mother for something to do!”
And he was off again, rolling alarmingly close to the edge of the platform in his incomprehensible hilarity until Malabar, tied with string at the foot of the tree, began to bark sharply and we fell silent before our cover was blown.
5
Soon after that, I found the lipstick under Reine-Claude’s mattress. A stupid place to hide it, really-anyone could have found it, even Mother-but Reinette was never imaginative. It was my turn to make the beds, and the thing must have worked its way under the bottom sheet, because that was where I found it, tucked between the lip of the mattress and the bedboard. At first I didn’t recognize it. Mother never used makeup. A small golden cylinder, like a stubby pen. I turned the cap, encountered resistance, opened. I was experimenting rather gingerly on my arm when I heard a gasp behind me and Reinette jerked me round. Her face was pale and contorted.