"Ballard, J G - Cloud Scultors" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ballard J G)

Ed Keinholz and the cloud-sculptors of Coral D."
"Oh, my God. I think 'the chauffeur's the only one with
any money. Look, do you perform anywhere else?"
"Perform?" I glanced from this pretty and agreeable young
woman to the pale chimera with jewelled eyes in the dim
compartment of the Rolls. She was watching the headless
figure of the Mona Lisa as it moved across the desert floor
towards Vermilion Sands. "We're not a professional troupe,
as you've probably guessed. And obviously we'd need some
fair-weather cloud. Where, exactly?"
"At Lagoon West." She took a snake-skinned diary from
her handbag. "Miss Chanel is holding a aeries of garden
parties. She wondered if you'd care to perform. Of cgurse
there would be a large fee."
"Chanel . . . Leonora Chanel, the . . . 7"
The young woman's face again took on its defensive
posture, dissociating her from whatever might follow. "Miss
Chanel is at Lagoon West for the summer. By the way,
there's one condition I must point outMiss Chanel will
provide the sole subject matter. You do understand?"
Fifty yards away Van Eyck was dragging his damaged
glider towards my car. Nolan had landed, 'a caricature of
Cyrano abandoned in mid-air. Petit Manuel limped .to and
fro, gathering together the equipment. In the fading after-
noon light they resembled a threadbare circus troupe.
"All right," I agreed. "I take your point. But what about
the clouds, Miss?"
"Lafierty. Beatrice Lafferty. Miss Chanel will provide the
clouds."
I walked around the cars with the helmet, then divided
the money between Nolan, Van Eyck and Manuel. They
stood in the gathering dusk, the few bills in their hands,
watching the highway below.
Leonora Chanel stepped from the limousine and strolled
into the desert. Her white-haired figure in its cobra-skinned
coat wandered among the dunes. Sand-rays lifted around her,
disturbed by the random movements of this sauntering
phantasm of the burnt afternoon. Ignoring 'their open stings
around her legs, she was gazing up at the aerial bestiary dis-
solving in the sky, and at the white skull a mile away over
Lagoon West that had smeared itself across the sky.
At the time I first saw her, watching the cloud-sculptors of
Coral D, I had only a half-formed impression of Leonora
Chanel. The daughter of one of the world's leading financiers,
she was an heiress both in her own right and on the death
pf her husband, a shy Monacan aristocrat, Cornte Louis
Chanel. The mysterious circumstances of his death at Cap
Ferrat on the Riviera, officially described as suicide, had
placed Leonora in a spotlight of publicity and gossip. She
had escaped by wandering endlessly across the globe, from