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

less sharp than shattered glass.

They go back to her apartment in a cab that reeks of raspberry air freshener. The driver's walled away
from his passengers by a panel of grimy plastic and he's talking on his cell phone in a tongue whose
ancestor is kin to the language Helen used when she scolded the slaves back at Troy. She doesn't really
notice: She's elsewhere. The band leader at the Stork Club's just struck up тАЬEmbraceable YouтАЭ and she's
given herself up into the arms of a man she thinks she likes enough to marry, so she will. He doesn't know
it yet, poor lamb, and he'll probably go to his grave believing their life together was all his idea. In her
memories, Helen closes her eyes and fills her nostrils with the raspberry-free scent of bay rum and
Wildroot Cream Oil, lets her face recall the feel of dancing cheek-to-cheek with a man who's had his
beard cleanly scraped away by the hot-towel-bearing attentions of a professional barber. She's caught up
in a dream of cufflinks and collar stays, dancing into the wee small hours with a stop at the Automat
afterward for pie, or sunrise breakfast at Child's.

Back in her apartment, Helen loses her bet: Her escort makes no mention of candles, no move to turn off
the lights. He pours her a drink and offers it with such gallant style that for an instant she believes he's
actually been paying attention.

So he has, but not to her words at all.

He's a competent lover, efficient where it counts, leisurely where it's an unavoidable necessity.
Somewhere between their first kiss and her orgasm, Helen starts to see him through a flurry of masks like
falling apple blossoms, his face wearing one by one the faces of every man who's ever shared her body.
It's rather dizzying, so she slips into sleep on the crest of her climax as though it were the most natural
thing in the world.

She wakes to find that he's gone. By an amazing coincidence, so is most of her jewelry. Helen's head
reels as she sits up in bed, though it's less from the shock of discovering she's been robbed than from the
after-effects of the drug he put in her drink, the lousy rent-a-romp bastard. She notes that her apartment
has been rifled with thoroughness and care. This is no vulgar burglary, with the contents of her closets
and drawers tossed everywhere, but an almost considerate invasion of her possessions: He's taken
everything in her jewelry box and the pieces she wore tonight, but beyond that he's only rummaged
through the top drawers of both nightstands and her bureau.

Well, that's a relief, in a way: It means she needn't get angry enough to kill him.

She could do it. She's a demi-goddess from a family that always did have anger-management issues. Her
half-siblings, Artemis and Apollo, slaughtered Niobe's fourteen children merely because that foolish
woman bragged about having whelped so many while their mother Leto only had two. Sensible divinities
would have chalked up such braggadocio to the squirrely hormones of all those pregnancies. Kindly
gods would have shot Niobe's husband. But that wasn't the Olympian way.

No wonder the Galilean took over so easily: He might have had a temper, but he was much better at
keeping it in check. His only hands-on victim was a fig tree. His far more effective method of punishing
offenders was to give them visions of hell.

Now there's a thought. Helen is old, but not too old to be past learning useful lessons, even when they
come from her hereditary Foe.

She pads into her walk-in closet and reaches up into the shadows to pull a flimsy chain. Wavery light