"Suzette Haden Elgin - Lest Levitation Come Upon Us" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elgin Suzette Haden)

peered at her, his eyebrows a little vee of intense interest, and remarked that however she achieved the
effect it was surely very becoming. And when she'd asked what effect, he had said that he was talking
about the way she glowed.
"Glow? Do I?" Valeria had turned to Julian and pointed out how nice it was of Mr. Tabbitt to pay
her the compliment, and found him staring at her too, and all the relaxation replaced by the kind of
tight-strung attention he paid to juries he wasn't sure of yet.
"It must be the light in here," he'd said slowly.
"Must be," agreed the Tabbitts, especially Mrs. Tabbitt, whose name Valeria could no longer
remember.
"It would have to be," Julian added. "I wonder how they do it? They should make a fortune at it."
Valeria sat there, fiddling with her glass, wondering; and the murmurs from behind their table began
to work their way through to her conscious attention. And about that time the rose petals started falling,
and that was really the last straw. Julian was a patient man ordinarily, for the stress that he was under, but
he took her out of there as fast as if she'd thrown up on the table, and the Tabbitts not only didn't give
him their malpractice suit to handle, they were practically at a full run by the time they reached the parking
lot.
Julian's main concern, after the loss of the Tabbitts, had been for the publicity.
"How the hell are we going to keep it out of the papers?" he had demanded, handing her brusquely
into their Mercedes in a way that made her elbow ache and coming very close to slamming the door on
her white silk skirt. She only just managed to snatch it free in the nick of time.
"Keep what out of the papers, Julian?"
"Oh, come on, Valeria!"
"Sweetheart, if you don't look at the road once in a while I don't see how you can driveтАФit can't be
a good idea."
"Well, damn it, Valeria, just look at yourself! Go onтАФlook at you!"
She had held her arms out in front of her, obediently, and sure enough, she did glow. Not just the
rosy glow of health, or the metaphorical glow that came from the right sort of cosmetics and a good
hairdresser. You could have read a newspaper by her.
"My goodness," she said. "How embarrassing for you ... I'm sorry, Julian."
"Yeah." Julian swerved viciously around a dog that wasn't bothering anybody. "Your goodness.
What the bloody hell is going on with you, anyway?"
Well, she didn't know, so far as that went. What it reminded her of more than anything else was one
of those white plastic statues of Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild, that came for $6.98 from a radio station
that broadcasts all night long from the very depths of Texas. The statue, according to the preacher
hawking it, not only glowed in the dark with the light of Truth and the light of Salvation and the
everlasting lightтАФprovided you put the batteries in, presumablyтАФit also could be made to revolve
slowly on its stand. Valeria was grateful that she was not revolving, either slowly or in any other manner.
But the glow was really in very bad taste. It was not soft, it was bright, and it was the same shade of
gold as the stuff glued to the top of her daughter's carnival baton. And it spread out from her skin to a
distance of a good two inches or so.
Tacky, thought Valeria, and brushed off a rose petal that Julian had missed while he was hustling her
out of the restaurant.
"My dear," she said, genuinely concerned because she could see that he was, "you don't need to
worry about the papers. Really."
"I don't, eh? I suppose you think people are used to going out for a quiet dinner in an expensive
restaurant and seeing the woman at the next table light up like a damned Christmas tree, not to mention
having rose petals rain down on her from the ceiling. For God's sake, Valeria ... I mean, the people who
go to the Far Corner are reasonably sophisticated, but they won't have seen that number before."
"Julian."
"What, Valeria? What?"