"Esther M. Friesner - Helen Rembembers the Stork Club" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friesner Esther M)

to include a moisturizer, but I've only got the line-preventer left; the line-repair samples are all gone."

Helen signs the receipt and smiles.

"I don't like bullies,тАЭ she tells her. тАЬEspecially not clumsy ones like you. You're old, and you never were
beautiful; I can tell. I've got an eye for these things, if nothing else. Don't worry, it could have been worse.
You might have been beautiful once, and now all you'd have left would be flimsy memories of how you
used toтАФOh, for the love of liposuction, are you never going to give me back my AmEx card, you
troll?тАЭ She snatches the snip of plastic from the goggle-eyed harpy's claws and strides out of Saks,
swinging her hips in a manner sure to make aspiring pop music hos blush, lust, and/or take notes. She
takes a small, blithe satisfaction in knowing that the baby vixens of a thousand videos can gyrate the
goods till they start to sag from the sheer stress of all that centrifugal force, but they'll never have what
Helen's got.

Just youth, the Furies whisper in her ear. She smells the breath of stale blood on their lips and knows
that they're grinning. Just youth. Helen goes home weeping.

She deals with the tears before turning her attentions to the long, leisurely, scented bath, the freshly
changed Porthault sheets, the bed itself sprinkled with rose petals. She lavishes herself with all the layers
of fragrance that the fashion magazines recommend: Bath oil to body lotion, dusting powder to cologne to
pulse-point perfume, Tinker to Evers to Chance for the grand slam-bam-thank-you-ma'am of love. It's
astonishing that there's a man left unmarried out there, given all the play-by-play advice available in the
glossies for landing the poor dumb brutes.

Her escort comes to pick her up at seven, as promised. He's in his late twenties and has the sort of pouty
Bad Boy looks that Achilles would have been all over in a Myrmidon minute. She knows that when he
smiles at her, compliments her looks, offers her his arm, he's only doing it because he's been bought and
paid for. She smiles back, and tells herself she doesn't matter, it doesn't care.

Oh. Oopsie. Silly Helen. Stupid Freud.

Their evening is the same as many she's hired in the past: Drinking and dining and drinking and dancing
and drinking and drinking and sex. You can't beat the classics. She has him take her to the Rainbow
Room where there's still some hope of hearing dance music that doesn't make her guts tighten up into
granny knots. This is followed by a session at the Algonquin where a smoky-voiced chanteuse croons
jazzy torch songs that gently call up the dead. Helen sits cozied next to her boytoy not because she
craves the nearness of him, but because the summoned spectres are hogging all the room.

"This is nice,тАЭ she says, breathing in the fumes from her VSOP cognac, breathing in the music, breathing
in the ghosts. тАЬThis is nice, but it's not the Stork Club."

"Huh?тАЭ says her date. And even in that automatic grunt, he manages to let her know that he really doesn't
give a damn.

Helen is unfazed by this. тАЬThe Stork Club,тАЭ she says again. тАЬIt was a wonderful place, a nightclub,
special, beautiful, glamorous. Everyone who was anyone went there, and if you were really somebody,
they'd let you into the Cub Room.тАЭ She smiles, remembering being there, being that.

"Oh,тАЭ her escort says, nodding, pressing together plump, ripe lips that are sometimes his meal ticket.
тАЬSure, I understand: Like Studio 54. My mom always talks about Studio 54."