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.She checked her watch."And fortyminutes.""Not even two days?" In spite of herself, Kate's shoulders shook."Jesus, Mandy, get a grip." She waved a hand toward the window."Besides, what used to be my transportation is buried beneath four tonsof scrap metal.And it's breakup, I've got a thousand things to do.""Like what?""Like finish my income taxes."Momentarily diverted, Mandy said, "You left it to the last minute againthis year?"Kate bristled."You got a problem with that?""No, it's just that last year you swore-" At Kate's expression Mandyfloundered."It's just that you're usually such a planner, Shugak, I'dthink-" She looked at Kate again and steered the conversation back towhere she wanted it in the first place."You can use my truck to ferrythem up to the mine, and drop me off at my trailhead on the way."Kate's expression did not noticeably soften, and Mandy dropped her voicea persuasive octave."Look, if you could just show them around theplace, tell them some of the good old stories.Shove them off the edgeof the glacier.Just kidding," she added quickly when Kate's brows rose."Ha.Ha ha ha.Seriously, Kate.If you could just get them off our backsfor three or four hours, I'd sacrifice a goat in your honor.Please, Kate."Kate put her hands on her hips and demanded, "Did you hear a word I said?"Mandy glanced over at her parents and lowered her voice further to awhisper, as if she thought that if she did her parents couldn't hearevery word she said in a twenty-five-foot-square cabin."They actuallythink I'm going to come home.Can you believe it? It's like they'redeaf, Kate! When am I coming home, Amanda dear, Dad says, and I say, Iam home, Dad.Next fall, perhaps? he says, and I say, I am home, Dad.There's this man at home, Amanda44 dear, Mother says, he's a Cabot and so suitable, and I say, I'm notgetting married, Mother, and I'm sure as hell not coming home to getmarried, and Mother says, He's so charming, Amanda dear, you'll adorehim.You'd think I was some kind of witless little deb, fresh from hercoming-out party!"Her voice, having risen over the last words, stopped abruptly as Mandywaged an obvious battle for self-control.Kate looked at her, at theweathered skin that made her look older than Kate, though she was twoyears younger, at the neatly trimmed cap of thick brown hair, the deeplyset gray eyes surrounded by wrinkles that came from years of squintinginto an Arctic sun from the back of a dopsled She was mostly muscle andbone, and she was dressed in a fashion to wring her mother's heart, ormuch as Kate was, in plaid flannel shirt, jeans and tennis shoes.Shedidn't look much like a Boston Brahmin debutante, and in fact she wasn'tone, but only because she had made her escape the instant she was oflegal age.Mandy had been born in Hyannis, Massachusetts, on Valentine's Daythirty-two years before.The day after her birth her father, a bankerwho inherited one fortune from a Carnegie forebear and made a secondlending overpriced money to Israel and Argentina, put her name down forVassar, eighteen years hence.That same day her mother, a great-niece ofHenry Cabot Lodge, began making plans for her daughter's coming-outparty, also eighteen years hence.The interim was taken up with pianoand ballroom dance and French lessons, instruction at a private,exclusive girls' school and private, exclusive parties given in private,exclusive homes to which children of only the most private, exclusivefamilies were invited.Somewhere along the line the Bakers must have slipped up in theirindoctrination.No one knew it better than Mandy, who during childhoodand adolescence was able to conceal her deplorable preference for.Bean over Halston (who had been dressing Mrs.Baker since her comingout), Robert Service over Robert Lowell (a second cousin once removed)and hiking the Appalachian Trail over sailing off Cape Cod (Mr.Bakermaintained a45 sloop in Newport), but the day she turned twenty-one and came intoher trust fund she came out of the closet."I'm moving to Alaska," sheannounced at breakfast.Their maid Carlotta nearly dropped the bowl of muesli she was handingaround.Her father laughed comfortably from behind his paper."Don't be silly,Amanda dear, you're graduating from Vassar next year.""I'm moving to Alaska instead," she said, and her mother said, "What doyou think of this shade of taffeta for your ball gown, Amanda dear? Toopink?""I don't know and I don't care, Mother," Mandy said."I won't be wearingit.I'll be in Alaska.""It is too pink," her mother decided."I'll have to ask Roy for moreswatches.""Whatever, Mother, but you'd better get it sized to fit you, becauseI'll be in Alaska when they strike up the first waltz."Carlotta, who had been with them since before Mandy was born and who atthat point knew her rather better than her parents did, burst intotears, threw her apron over her head and ran from the room.Mandy wentupstairs to pack.They trailed after her all the way to Logan International Airport, shein a Yellow Cab and they in the Bentley, driven by Carlotta's husband,Alfonso (a Bentley because Mrs.Baker said that Rolls-Royces weregetting positively common when bourgeois entrepreneurs like Donald Trumpdrove around in one).They protested her decision in louder and loudervoices right up to the time the hatch on the jet shut in their faces.Mandy changed planes in Seattle and arrived in Anchorage on a cold,snowy day in March.She transferred her trust fund to an account at alocal bank, found a real estate agent with a pilot's license and beganflying into remote properties in the Bush.It took her two months tofind exactly what she wanted.When she did find it, an abandoned lodgeon Silver Bottom Creek and 130 acres, she bought it, along with threenearly feral dogs, without haggling.She knew from the real estateagent's face that she'd overpaid."I46 don't care," she told Kate."At least for the first time in my lifethat damn trust fund is being used for something besides bachelor bait [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]