"Ball, Margaret - Shadow Gate, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ball Margaret)

minuscule salary Aunt Penny gives you, don't you, Lisa? I meanЧoh, no. She does pay you? You're not kept here in peonage, or in enchanted servitude, or
whatever?" Д , n- j i "I think," Lisa said, "you're trying to put off dealing with those papers. Let's go inside."
As always, when the heavy front door with its leaded-glass panels swung shut behind her, Lisa Celt relieved to be insulated from the blaring world outside. The New Age Psychic Research Center, formerly the Harry James Templeton House, was located less than a block from the last street of windowless black office buildings and empty bank towers that had taken over Austin's downtown; but in mental and spiritual space it was a hundred years away from that world. Thick walls and overhanging eaves and good solid doors, built to keep out the Texas heat and sunlight, now toned down the roar of downtown traffic to a nearly inaudible murmur. The original hanging lamps with their stained-glass shades cast a gentle, multicolored light over the entrance hallway; soothing sounds of wind chimes and ocean waves came from the Harmonic Counseling Center in what had once been a formal dining room, and incense from the Afro-Jamaican Spiritual Fantasy Bookstore in the old library gave the cool air a hint of rose and jasmine.
For once there was no one waiting with a crisis demanding Lisa's attention, and the cabriole-legged mahogany table that she had commandeered for her desk was empty of messages. She hung her purse over the back of the chair, dropped Miss Penny's files in the top drawer of the table and wandered into the incense-scented darkness of the Spiritual Fantasy Bookstore. The curtain of hanging beads and bells tinkled pleasantly as she passed through it, and Mahluli arose from his armchair by the window.
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"Can I help youЧoh, it's you, Lisa. Come to look at the Nielsen pictures again? Be my guest."
^ITI be careful," Lisa promised.
"I know. I wish I could give you the book, butЧ"
Lisa shook her head. "Don't even think about it. I don't know how much you had to pay for a first edition with tipped-in plates of Kay Nielsen's illustrations, and if you teU me I'll just start worrying about your finances as well as Miss Penny's. Some day you'll sell the book to a wealthy collector."
"Who will put it behind glass, in a dimate-controUed environment, and nobody will ever enjoy it again." Mahluli James Robertson O'Connor sighed and shook his beaded dreadlocks over his own prediction. "I ought to donate it to the CenterЧyou wouldn't believe how many people have been dropping in to look at the pictures lately."
"I would," said Lisa. She picked up the old book and gently opened it to her favorite illustration. "They're very ..." But the right word wouldn't come. "Soothing? Inspiring?"
Mahluli grinned. "Yeah. They sure are. Me, if I had to pick a word, I'd say addictive, the way you keep coming back to themЧand the others, too. Go on, girl. Get a fix. Ill just tend to my business."
Lisa barely heard M ah lull's last gentle jab; her eyes were already fixed on the picture, and she was drinking in the feeling of strength and serenity it always gave her.
Compared with some of Nielsen's better-known illustrations, it was deceptively simple: a peaceful forest scene, a small creek running over boulders and shaded by tall trees, with a central grassy clearing framed by an arch of weathered gray stone. But the longer Lisa looked, the more enchanting detail and variety she saw in the picture. The arch of stone was freestanding, and around it the artist had painted
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a misty gray sky in which vague cloud-shapes seemed to dance; but beyond the arch, the forest floor was dappled with sunlight, and the green leaves of the trees formed a complex interlocking mosaic against a sky too brilliantly blue to be real. If she stared long enough, Lisa began to feel that she could actually see the sunlight dancing on the surface of the stream, and that the leaves overhead were stirring in an illusory breeze. With just a little more concentration, she would be able to hear the musical rippling of the water as it tumbled over those white boulders; somehow she knew that would be the sweetest sound in the world, one she had been longing to hear for untold ages . . .
"Lisa! Where are you?"
"Doesn't anybody know what's going on around this place?"
Lisa closed the book quickly and hurried back through the bead curtain. The tinkling of Mahluli's beads and bells was like an echo of the stream; the illusion of the picture clung to her, so strong that she found herself shaking her fingertips free of imaginary droplets of water. J really must stop daydreaming during working hours. She was almost relieved to turn back to the everyday crises and conflicts that were normal working conditions at the New Age Center.
"Lisa, you've let the storeroom run out of sea salt again," complained Ginevra of Ginevra's Crystal Healing and Meditation Room. "How am I supposed to cleanse my new crystals of their previous owners' karma?"
"Lisa, I need $4.59 out of petty cash immediately, and you've gone and left the box locked again!" That was johnny Z., last name unknown, who sold T-shirts with inspirational messages out of what had once been the butler's pantry. "How do you expect me to
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give this lady her change if you keep the cash box locked?"
"I have an appointment with Miss Templeton," announced a heavyset man in a business suit. His dark hair was combed back with too much oil, and his black eyes looked over what he could see of the front rooms with an acquisitive gleam that made Lisa uncomfortable. Real estate, she thought automatically. Developer. "Doesn't anybody tend to business around here?"
Lisa unlocked the top drawer of her desk and took out a spiral-bound notebook. "Mr. Simmons?"
The dark man nodded. "Clifford J. Worthington Simmons III. Well, where is the old lady? I don't have time to waste."
"It is now ten minutes to eleven," Lisa said. "Your appointment is at eleven. If you'll please take a seat, Miss Templeton will be with you shortly." She stared at Clifford J. Worthington Simmons III, fighting down the desire to drop her eyes as she usually did when strangers looked so hard at her, until he backed away and took one of the striped Regency chairs against the wall.
"Hey, nice notebook," said Mahluli, who had come out of his bookstore room to see what all the fuss was about. He took the spiral-bound book out of Lisa's hand and looked closely at the cover design of unicorns dancing on a rainbow. "I don't stock anything like that. Where'd you get it? Whole Foods? Grok Books? How come you don't keep it on the desk?"
"I bought it at the stationery counter at Safeway, and I keep it locked away because otherwise someone like you would wander away with it and I wouldn't be able to keep track of Miss Penny's schedule," Lisa answered, twitching the notebook out of Mahluli's hand and dropping it back in the desk drawer. "And that's why the cash box is locked, too, JohnnyЧ
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because too many people have been taking money for change and not leaving me a note of what they took when. Here's your $4.59." Johnny reached for the money and Lisa held her hand back. "Uh-uh. You write a note first, remember?"
While Johnny Z. was scribbling his receipt, Lisa turned to Ginevra. "I'm sorry about the sea salt; we seem to have been using more than usual this month, and Whole Foods was closed this morning."
"It just cakes up so fast," Ginevra agreed. "There must be a lot of bad karma in the air these days."
"Mmm," Lisa agreed. "That does seem to happen whenever the humidity is over 90 percent, have you noticed? Anyway, I bought you a box of Morton's Kosher Coarse at Safeway. You can use that today, or wait till tomorrow and I'll pick up some more authentic salt at Whole Foods."
"Yes, butЧ"
Lisa glanced at her notebook again. "Don't you have a client waiting for consultation now? Amy Du-val. Crystal healing and meditation to strengthen her spirit against a bad situation at the office, 10:45."
"Oh!" All at once the reception hall emptied. Ginevra disappeared in a flutter of hand-painted silk chiffon to placate her waiting client. At almost the same time Miss Penelope Templeton appeared at the door to the back hall, a small white-haired figure enveloped in voluminous white Indian cotton garments, and beckoned to the mysterious Clifford Sim-mons. Johnny Z. had taken his customer back to examine the T-shirt selection and Mahluli had returned to his reading in the Spiritual Fantasy Bookstore. Judith Templeton, leaning against the front door, raised her hands and applauded with great silent mimed claps.
"I don't know how you do it," she said, "but you begin to give me hope of reducing Aunt Penny's
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affairs to some sort of order. How do you cope with this mob? Are all the secrets of the universe in that notebook of yours?"
Lisa closed the unicorn notebook and slid it back into the top desk drawer. "Oh, well, it's not as bad as it seems," she said. "I was trained to be preciseЧto keep good records. ..."
"Must have been one hell of a good secretarial school if it prepared you to deal with the likes of this crew," Judith said. "Where did you say you went to school?"
"Oh, here and there. UTs a pretty good school, isn't it? Do you teach there?"
Judith shook her head. "One year. Never again. If you think these people are nuts, you wouldn't believe what goes on in faculty meetings! I prefer working for myself. No pressure to publish, and I get an interesting variety of jobs. Mostly I help people to computerize their businessesЧlike thisЧonly usually, of course, I get paid for it. And usually the level of chaos isn't quite this bad. It's a nuisance, though, having to straighten out all the records and business details before I can get down to playing with the computer." She eyed Lisa's immaculate desk. "I could do twice as many jobs if I had a good secretary. I don't suppose youЧ?"
"The family," Lisa pointed out, "would never forgive you if you stole Miss Penny's secretary-receptionist."
"No, I suppose not. But frankly, Lisa, after looking at the records you've brought me, I really don't think any amount of computer wizardry will shore up this business for long. You may be looking for a job sooner than you realize. Half her tenants are months behind on the rentЧor I think they are; she doesn't give receipts most of the time, and she throws away cancelled checks because things that have passed
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Margaret BaU