"Eliot Fintushel - Milo and Sylvie" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fintushel Eliot)

MILO AND SYLVIE
Eliot Fintushel

Eliot Fintushel made his first sale in 1993, to Tomorrow
magazine. Since then, he has become a regular in Asimov's
Science Fiction, with a large number of sales there, has
appeared in Amazing, Science Fiction Age, Crank!, Aboriginal
SF and other markets, and is beginning to attract attention from
cognoscenti as one of the most original and inventive writers to
enter the genre in many years, worthy to be ranked among other
practitioners of the fast-paced Wild And Crazy Gonzo modern
tall tale such as R.A. Lafferty, Howard Waldrop and Neal
Barrett, Jr. Fintushel, a baker's son from Rochester, New York,
is a performer and teacher of mask theatre and mime, has won
the National Endowment for the Arts' Solo Performer Award
twice, and now lives in Santa Rosa, California.

Here, in something of a change of pace for him (although still wry, funny and almost
extravagantly inventive), a story to me reminiscent of Theodore Sturgeon at his
poetic best, he takes a lyrical, tender and bittersweet look at an odd relationship
between two very peculiar people.

****

EVERYTHING HAS ITS PORTION of smell," Milo said. His skin and bones were
enthroned in a plush, gold club chair facing the doctor's more severe straight-back
with the cabriole legs. Milo strummed his fingers nervously against the insides of his
thighs as he looked around the room, richly dark, with scrolled woodwork, diplomas
in gilded frames hanging on the wall behind the doctor's mahogany rolltop next to
the heavily curtained window. He could smell the doctor's aftershave. He could smell
the last client too, a woman, a large woman, a sweating carnivore with drugstore
perfume.

"Smell?" Doctor Devore always looked worried. Inquisitive and worriedтАФthe look
was like a high trump, drawing out all your best cards before you had planned to
play them. He had white, curly hair. He wore sweaters and baggy pants that made
him look like a rag doll. He was old.

His cheeks and jowls sagged like the folds of drapery beside him. He wore thick,
wire-rimmed glasses that made his tired eyes look bigger and even more plaintive. He
was small, a midget, almost; one got over that quickly, though, because he never
acted short.
"It's something my sister used to say."

"Why?"

"I don't remember." Like so much else. Milo moved too quickly for memories to
adhere, or for sleep for that matter, except in evanescent snatches. Memories, sleep,
haunted him. They were never invited guests. His sister's name, for example, which
he did not remember, did not remember, did not remember, was death to pronounce