"Edghill,.Rosemary.-.Empty.Crown.Trilogy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Edghill Rosemary)

she put up with from Jane.

"Somebody want to set the table?" Naomi called from the kitchen.

"don't suppose you want to help?" Ruth said punctiliously to Philip.

"No," said Philip, smiling his most irritating smile.

Naomi, on the whole, handled Philip better. She was perfectly willing
and able to make him look ridiculous-a talent Ruth lacked, and the only
thing Philip hated enough to mind. When Ruth went into the kitchen to
collect five plates, Naomi sailed out the other way, and when Ruth came
back into the living room, Philip had just finished dragging the table
into the middle of the room and was flipping the tablecloth over it.

"Hi, Ruth," he said, as if he'd just now seen her for the first time.

Ruth set the plates on the table and dealt them like a poker hand.

"Hello, Philip; suborned any good governments lately?" The trouble
was, she ought to like Philip; she never had to define the words she
used for him.

61 Nope. Been down at the dump, shooting rats." Philip smiled,
nastysweet.

"That's not original," Ruth said. The trouble was, she didn't like
Philip. Plain and simple, and somewhere underneath it all she felt it
was her social duty to try, as if anything she did or didn't do could
change the future course of Philip LeStrange's theatric
self-referential life.

"But it's good."

"The trouble is," Ruth observed to the ceiling, "that the good parts
aren't original and the original parts aren't good."

Philip walked off into the kitchen. He came out again with a large
bowl of rice, following Naomi who bore a large bowl of ginger stir-fry
chicken that smelled wonderful at eleven o'clock at night and far too
many hours after a supper Ruth hadn't eaten anyway. The table service
was assembled with the ease of long practice; Naomi liked to cook and
the rest of them liked to eat, and that-as much as any mysterious
agenda-was what held the five of them together.

That, and, perhaps, the fact that all of them were equally unsuited,
somehow, for the space and time they were in now. Even Jane. Or maybe
especially Jane.

"Michael!" Naomi called. "Food!" ("Slop the hogs," Philip