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

believer in making do with what you've got. Mr. Beeton would laugh out loud if
he could see the antiquated terminal she uses. All you need to access it is a
password that you type in on the keys so just anyone can get into your files
if
they discover what it is. At least this way the Woman's Center saves money on
sampler pads, even if that's not the real reason.

The photo on the desk is framed with silver, real silver. Oralee has to polish
it constantly to keep the tarnish at bay. The young black woman in the picture
is smiling, her eyes both her own, her face smooth and silky-looking as the
inner skin of a shell, her hair a soft, dark cloud that enhances her smile
more
beautifully than any silver frame.

At the bottom of the frame, under the glass with the photograph, there is a
newspaper clipping. It's just the headline and it's not very big. The event it
notes was nothing extraordinary enough to merit more prominent placement on
the
page: ABORTION CLINIC BOMBED. TWO DEAD, THREE INJURED. The clipping came from
a
special paper, more like a newsletter for the kind of people: who would read
TWO
DEAD, THREE INJURED and smile. Oralee tells us that most of the papers weren't
like that; they used to call them birth control clinics or family planning
clinics or even just women's clinics. As if we're none of us old enough to
remember when it changed! She talks about those days -- the times when the
bombings were stepped up and the assaults on women trying to reach the clinics
got ugly and the doctors and sometimes their families were being threatened,
being killed -- as if they'd lasted as long as the Dark Ages instead of just
four years. Thank goodness everything's settled down. We're civilized people,
after all. We can compromise.

"I know!" Oralee snaps her fingers, making me look up. "You can be a runner.
That is --" She hesitates.

"Yes, I can do that," I tell her.

"Are you sure?"

"Just give me what I need and tell me where I have to go. It's all right,
really. I need to go to the bank myself anyway."

"Are you sure?" she asks again. Why does she doubt me? Do I look so fragile?
No.
I take good care of my' body, wash my hair every day, even put on a little
lipstick sometimes. It's not like before, that hard time when I first came to
the city, when I was such a fool. I almost lost my job, then, because I was
letting myself go so badly. I know better, now. It's my duty to set a good
example. Children past a certain age start to notice things like how Mommy
looks