"Davidson-Sacrifice" - читать интересную книгу автора (Davidson Avram)

AVRAM DAVIDSON

SACRIFICE

They started to gather at six o'clock. Sonya, who always got there first, at
once went into the kitchen and made coffee, so there was a hot cup ready for
Slauson's elderly cousin Willis when she arrived with the cakes and cookies. Ava
came by and by and of course told them that she wanted nothing to eat or drink,
but she was already contentedly eating and drinking when Arno drove up with, "my
dears, the most succulent roast turkey (already sliced) which I have ever made
and you. Have ever tasted! -- and where is our dear old Slauson, may I ask," he
demanded, setting down the vast plate.

"Where should he be?" asked Heimberger, striding in with wine and whiskey and
filling the place with his vast bulk. "Upstairs, inserting semicolons in this
year's epic opus: can a publisher sell semicolons. I have probably lost a
thousand dollars for his every semicolon over the past twenty years! But I still
have faith." His huge hairy fingers reached out and captured a glazed
turkey-wing.

So they were all there when Farmer came in, pretending to shield his eyes and
scout around. "And where is this year's or shall I say this month's Slauson's
new friend? Hello Heimberger, Sonya, Ava, Arno, Willis. . . . This time I drove
five hundred miles to the reading, so it better be good, although," he lowered
his voice, "I'm afraid it won't."

Willis, her voice by now almost quavering so old she was, "Oh shame on you,
Farmer. Shame on you."

"If he didn't waste his time and your money, Willie, on those so-called new
friends of his," Ava began.

Arno didn't wait for her to finish. "Well, Slauson will just want to live in a
house by the side of the road and be a friend to man and woman. They leech onto
him, they drain him, they are off, one never sees them again, and then poor
Slauson tries to write. And tries aannd tries. . . . "He sighed, said, "A teeny
taste of that cake, Willis. Oh. OH. It, is, so, goood! Willis, where do you
buy--"

Slauson came in just at that moment.

"Are you all right, dear?" asked Ada. "You seem a trifle --"

"It is nothing," said Slauson. "I was in the cellar burying a body."

"Of your dead past, no doubt?"

Everybody chuckled empathetically and when the chuckles had quite died away