"Esther M. Friesner - Birthday" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friesner Esther M)

do or say. Oralee lives with her lover Corinne, so I don't feel right about
hugging her back, no matter how much I like her or how grateful I am for all
she's done for me over the years. I would be easier if she hadn't told me the
truth about herself. A lesbian is a lesbian, I have no trouble hugging
Corinne,
but what Oralee is scares me. She clings to Corinne not because she loves her,
but because it's safe, because she'll never have to risk anything that way,
because her body craves touching. Oralee is always telling us we have to be
brave, but she is a coward, pretending she's something she's not, out of fear.
I
can understand, but I can't like her for it.

Oralee leads me back to her desk and motions for me to sit down. She leans
forward, her elbows on the blotter, a pen twiddling through her fingers. "So,
to
what do we owe the honor?" she asks, a grin cutting through the scars that
make
her face look like a topographical map with mountains pinched up and valleys
gouged in. Today she wears the blue glass eye that doesn't match working brown
one and that startles people who don't know her.

"My boss gave me the day off," I tell her. "With pay."

"Well, of course he did. Soul-salving bastard."

"I have to be somewhere at three-thirty, but I though that until then you
might
have something for me to do here."

Oralee pushes her chair a little away from her desk. The casters squeak and
the
linoleum floor complains. She runs her fingers over her shaven skull in
though.
"Well, Joan and Cruz are already handling all the paperwork. . . . Our big
fund-raising drive's not on until next week, no need for follow-up phone
calls,
the envelopes are all stuffed and in the mail . . ."

My heart sinks as she runs down a list of things that don't want doing. I try
not to think about the empty hours I'll have to face if Oralee can't use me.
To
distract myself while I await her verdict, I look at all the things cluttering
up her desktop. There is an old soup can covered with yellow-flowered shelving
paper, full of paper clips, and another one full of pens and pencils. Three
clay
figurines of the Goddess lie like sunbathers with pendulous breasts and
swollen
bellies offered up to the shameless sky. Oralee made the biggest one herself,
in
a ceramics class. She uses Her for a paperweight. Oralee says she is a firm