"Thomas M. Disch - The Businessman" - читать интересную книгу автора (Disch Thomas M)

Goodwill Industries as he'd said he meant to. She called Bob at work and his secretary said he
was at a meeting, which naturally she didn't believe. Bob was a good enough son-inlaw,
especially considering what had happened, but his weekly visits sprang from a sense of duty,
not because they enjoyed each other's company. Giselle was all they had in common, and the
less said about that the better.

Dutifully he returned her call that evening, and she only had to hint at what she
wanted before he volunteered to bring over Giselle's whole wardrobe tomorrow on his way to
the office. There were eight cardboard boxes, which seemed a lot at first, but considering
how many boxes would be needed to pack up all her clothes when she passed on, it wasn't an
especially large wardrobe. She wondered whether he'd brought back Giselle's clothes from Las
Vegas. At the time, with the tragedy still uppermost in everyone's mind, she'd known better
than to ask, but now, unpacking the eight boxes, she couldn't help but be curious.

There were several casual outfits she couldn't remember Giselle ever wearing, jeans
and cotton shirts and such, but only one that provably, by its label, originated in Las Vegas:
an orange pants suit made out of a slinky polyester. It fit to perfection and looked, to Mrs.
Anker's orthodox eye, just a little obscene. It might be possible to have the pants suit dyed,
but she doubted it. What sort of life had Giselle been leading out there? She would never
understand what had possessed her daughter to run off like that. It couldn't have been
gambling. Giselle was the only one of them immune to that. It must have been madness, pure
and simple.

In the end the only items she kept, besides the pants suit, were the things she'd
outgrown and given Giselle: the belted suit from Dayton's, the black dress she'd worn to her
own mother's funeral and scarcely ever again, and several flowery prints too lightweight for
winter. She put them on and took them off in front of the big bedroom mirror, weeping
sometimes at the thought that she might never live to wear any of them out on the street,
but sometimes smiling too, because she had undeniably never looked sexier in her life.

CHAPTER

4

There was another world off at an angle from the world she'd known till now, that
world six feet above her full of its cars and its houses. Sometimes this other world seemed to
be inside her, but when she would reverse her attention inward and try to approach the
threshold to that dimly sensed world within, it would go out of focus or fade, though never did
it disappear entirely. It was always there, as real as the furniture one stumbles over in a dark
room.

Her first clear view of it came in a flash. She saw, across the threshold, a field of pure
geometry and color, like a painting that was simultaneously flat on the ground and covering
every wall. It bore a general resemblance to a red gingham tablecloth, except that it wavered
and the bands of red were just as bright, in their way, as the patches of white, which in fact
weren't really white but some other, indefinable color. It seemed incredibly beautiful and
important, but before she could grasp why, it was gone.

Afterward she speculated a great deal as to what it was that she had seen, but
always, though she could recall quite clearly the look of it, its _sense_ eluded her. Patience: