"Campbell, Ramsey - The Parasite 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Campbell Ramsey)

She tried to concentrate on Jack Adams, their American agent, who was lolling on the seat in front of her and Bill. Was he self-conscious about his swarthy pitted skin, his chin like a dimpled potato? Perhaps that was why his limbs moved restlessly, propping one another.

`I fixed things with David Tracy,' he was saying. `He's gone underground, that's why we had the trouble finding him. A seventy-eight-year-old underground film-maker, isn't that something? He's leaving for Mexico next week, so you'll need to meet with him before that.'

`I'm glad we're doing this book,' Rose said to wake herself up, `adding to the literature of cinema.'

`Well, sure. So long as it makes you good money as well.' He folded his arms, disentangled them. `Listen, when you do your interview in Munich, maybe you can introduce me to your German agent. I need to get together with someone over there.'

At Grand Central Station he snatched their luggage from the belly of the bus. `Listen, why don't -we take a cab from here. I invited some people over to welcome you to New York.'

Pavements breathed out steam. Knots of pastry fumed on a stand. A man and a poodle trotted by, both wearing crimson nail varnish. Sirens howled along the angular stone valleys, bicycles dodged across intersections against the lights.

Jack despaired of the taxis and hurried the Tierneys into the subway, where trains were tapestries of painstaking graffiti. During the ride he showed her a subway map which looked like a tangled skein of coloured wools, but her sense of direction was bad enough as it was. She was a burden her sleepwalking body was carrying.

Jack lived on West 89th Street, on the tenth floor. Though the main room was a maze of bookshelves, it was obsessively tidy. The books were interrupted by Mexican figurines, a tarantula beneath a glass dome, a clock whose hands and face changed colours incessantly. Brueghel prints humanized patches of whitewashed wall.

Rose hadn't much time to explore, for already guests were arriving: the editor of a science fiction magazine, lecturers on cinema, . a girl escorted by a publisher's editor who said to Jack, `This is Diana who you wanted to meet.'

`Oh, sure, okay.' Visibly embarrassed, Jack said `These are two of my authors,' as though the Tierneys were a pair of ornaments. `Just help yourselves to drinks,' he said to everyone.

Rose introduced herself to Jack Daniels, a bourbon. Soon she was happy to drift from group to group, sampling conversations, as the party grew. `. . . The last anyone heard of him was he got so stoned at Frankfurt he forgot what books he was selling . . .' `. . . and

Asimov says to her "Don't say that, that's what my wife keeps saying" . . .' Diana had found herself a corner table and was giving Tarot readings. Bill was in another corner, playing author. `There's no point in criticism that isn't honest,' he was saying, `no point in being too sensitive on behalf of other people.'

Having dealt with a frantic phone call from one of his clients, Jack made his way over to Rose. Alcohol had calmed his limbs. `It's really good to meet you,' he said. `I mean, I knew Bill through his letters, but you were kind of a mysterious figure. I want to tell you, you're no disappointment.'

`One night I brought her to fifteen orgasms on the studio floor.'

`Jesus, that guy.' Jack looked ready to blush. `His editor brought him.'

`Don't worry, Jack, I didn't think he was a friend of yours.'

`I just thought, well, you might be, uh, embarrassed. See, you kind of remind me of someone.'

`I hope I'd like her.'

`Sure, I think you would. Would have, I meant to say. I knew her back at home. I mean, New York girls are okay, they're lively, interesting, you know. But they come on too strong.'

Did he mean too brash, too competitive, too sexually willing? Perhaps all three. `She isn't - ?' she said, and trailed off, like a hundred moments in films.

`What? Oh, you mean you think she's dead? No, I guess she's still alive back there. We were going together for a while - matter of fact, we were, well, we were engaged. But her parents broke it up - you know, I had no prospects, that kind of bullshit. And - Jesus!' he said, struck by a memory. `Yeah, they said I talked too dirty for her. I'd forgotten that. They ought to hear the girls down here. I don't use those words, except when I have to do that or punch someone out. I mean, she didn't mind, it was her parents who minded. We understood each other, Cathy and L' A gulp of bourbon made him cough, but he seemed to welcome the harshness. `Still, I needed to get away from there. I had to do that before I could do what I really wanted. And that's what you see me doing here, right?'

She sensed that he wanted a woman as much as she herself had wanted a child until she'd grown used to her sterility. `Yes, yes, dear,' a sharp-voiced man was rebuking his girl friend as she tried to slip into his conversation, `but we're talking about me.'

Rose patted Jack's arm. `You'll find someone.'

`Yeah, maybe. That Diana seems kind of interesting. Say, look, she's cornered Bill.'

So she had. She was leading him to her cards. He looked bemused, too polite or too drunk to resist. Rose made her way toward them: this should be entertaining.