Читать книгу Behind the Moon - Madison Smartt Bell - Страница 26

She drew the black tab of the zipper down. The tent flap furled outward with a slow liquid motion, the thickness of a banana peel opening, but she didn’t want to think about a banana, she didn’t know why. A sick, excited feeling gripped her by the belly and the throat, but she was hung up on the movement of the tent flap to the point that she couldn’t yet see past it. It reminded her of that curious, fleshy broad-bladed leaf form—but she was seeing that in the cave, not now, not here. The inside of the tent was big as a regular room, high enough that Marko could stand erect inside it, a piercingly bright light cupped in his hand.

Here was the will-of-the-wisp light she had seen from outside the tent, diffused and softened by the fabric of the walls, circling and probing toward the center she realized now, though the light was so bright she couldn’t really see past it, only Marko’s heavy dark silhouette surrounding it.

“Julie.” Marko’s voice was reassuring, or trying to be. “We were hoping you’d come.”

White teeth. His hand cupping the camera dropped, so that the bright point of light that had blinded her softened as it pooled across the tent floor, and she could see Karyn moving out from under Sonny’s shadowy weight, raising herself partway up from the rumpled Indian blanket. Pushed down from her shoulders and pushed up from her waist, her top was a wrinkled band around her ribcage, which somehow made her seem more abjectly naked than if she’d been completely bare. Her glazed eyes, a glistening on her cheek—she wiped at it with the back of her free hand.

“Come on in,” Marko said. “We’re just getting started.”

His hand with the camera rose toward Julie again, maybe an unconscious side effect of his welcoming gesture. The image of Karyn disappeared in the glare, and Julie understood that the light that had been used on Karyn was now intended to be used on her.