Читать книгу Twilight Girl - Della Martin - Страница 2

“You remember that girl, right here at this bar?”

“Oh, yes.”

“You bet me a quarter I couldn’t make her.”

“You didn’t.”

“Oh, didn’t I?”

“I’ll be damned.”

“I’ve got a witness.” The first of them turned to the silent one. “Did I make her, Chuck?”

“If you don’t know, I’m not gonna tell you,”

They roared at this and then the loser paid her bill. “Here’s your goddam quarter. Just tell me one thing. Was she butch or fern?”

“Smorgasbord. By the time she went home I wasn’t sure which I was!” Eyebrows wriggled up and down, implying secrets that could not be unveiled. Regular guys, remembering a girl and laughing it up. Regular guys, flicking kitchen matches with their thumbnails for a light, burrowing hands in the front-zipped pants for a crushed cigarette pack and belting each other in the back to punctuate a bellylaugh. Regular guys, and less than twenty years before, unknowing nurses had checked the wrong box on the hospital form that offered only Male and Female. For perhaps the choice was incomplete …