"L. Timmel Duchamp - De Secretis Mulierum" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duchamp L Timmel)

I put down my fork. My appetite tended to be low-to-nonexistent when I ate
with
him under circumstances that passed for ordinary with us. But this
announcement
floored me. Teddy Warner passing up the chance to appear on CNN? I stared at
him
as he ate, at his luxuriant auburn hair, eyebrows and neatly trimmed beard, at
his bright green, thickly-lashed eyes, at his heavy white coarse-skinned hands
and grubby nails. I'd been assuming he'd been avoiding his colleagues in a
sulk.
But Teddy Warner give up the best chance he'd ever get for publicly asserting
the PSD's legitimacy as a tool for historical research?

He caught me watching him. "What is it? Did those bloody old rags wreck your
appetite?"

I shook my head and took a big gulp of wine. "I don't understand. Doing an
interview would have given you a chance to plug the PSD. So why aren't you
doing
it?"

He smiled at me as though I were a silly child too clever for her own good.
"It's simple, Jane. A: I'd have no control over the interview or what they'd
do
with it. And B: The sooner I can dissociate myself from the damned thing the
better chance I have of escaping being labeled a crackpot." His smile grew
bitter. "Which is to say, I'm hoping that though I'll be taken for a dupe,
I'll
be excused as one who eventually saw the light." He dug with his fork and
spoon
into the pasta bowl to get another serving, but of course the strands of
linguine all glopped together into a clinging mass he found impossible to
manage. For almost a minute he fought vigorously (dare I say manfully) to
control the mess. I had to lower my eyes to my plate as his struggle grew
comical. The last thing I wanted was to get him pissed off at me for laughing
inappropriately. "You've got too damned much cheese in it," he fumed.
(Actually,
the only thing wrong with the pasta was that I'd forgotten to grate nutmeg
into
the egg and cheese mixture.) Settling for a much larger second serving than he
wanted, he glared at me, "Anyway, the sooner you drop that Leonardo project,
the
better. At this point it's just a waste you'll have to write off to
experience.
A pity. I imagine it's added a good six months to the time you'll be taking
for
the dissertation."

I felt the blow viscerally, in my solar plexus. If before I'd been too excited
to eat, now I was too nauseated. "You're serious?" I said. "You actually