"Kathleen Ann Goonan - Angels and You Dogs" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goose Mother)

Angels and You Dogs
by
Kathleen Ann Goonan
Lulu was the fifth person to answer the ad, and frankly, I was tired.
I saw her through the frosted glass bricks Charles and I had paid a good
sum to have installed, sure that it would make our retro-Florida dream
even more perfect. Come to think of it, I suppose it was just me who
believed that.
Because of the wavy glass, I was not sure what the brown thing she held
close to her ribcage might be. She rang the bell imperiously even though
she could have seen me, albeit with a rippled effect, coming to answer the
door.
"You're Evan?" Her eyes were black, as was her long hair, looped in
complicated ringlets held in place by all manner of clips and doodads
rendered in primary colors. A strong scent of musky perfume wafted
toward me on the breeze tickling the fronds of the rare, thickly spined
burglar palms Charles and I had found with much difficulty. She wore a
terrific outfit whose thrift-store origins I recognized. Vintage Ray-Bans
dangled from a bejeweled noodle, and she wore bright red, open-toed
shoes definitely born in the forties. Her black leather skirt was short. Her
tight white silk shirt had a high oxford collar and showed lots of cleavage.
She looked like trouble to me, but not for the usual reasons. I
appreciated her glorious seductiveness from an aesthetic distance, as a
kindred soul. From the time I was thirteen, when I realized I was gay, I
had often been told that I was quite attractive myself, although I certainly
didn't believe it at the moment. My partner, Charles, had left me two
months earlier, and during that time I had become deeply committed to
feeling sorry for myself. I saw myself as an inexplicably betrayed,
somewhat defeated accountant working out of and paying ridiculous
interest rates for a Fort Lauderdale Hall of Broken Dreams. Lulu, with
her self-assured brilliance, looked as if she might be impatient with the
gloom, to which I had become as closely attached as a toddler to his
blanket.
Without waiting for an answer, she deposited her squirming Chihuahua
on the polished terrazzo floor. It sprang into the house, toenails clicking as
it ran straight toward a rattan ottoman, and lifted its leg.
"No!" I said with the extreme sharpness one uses on dogs, children, and
presumably horses, if immediate compliance is required. He twisted his
tiny, Crazy-Ike head, looked at me with brief astonishment, abandoned his
plan, and skittered into the dining room, no doubt to find a place to
urinate which was free from the unexpected Voice of God.
"No pets," I said. "It's in the ad."
"Ambrose isn't a pet, honey. He's family." Her Southern accent, when I
expected sharp, Cuban-provenanced tones, was startling. I think it gave
her the advantage in any situations, and she did not hesitate to employ
this weapon whenever remotely necessary which, given her propensity
for living on some edge I have yet to glimpse in its entirety, was more or
less always.
She brushed past me, head high, taking in the Floridian ambiance we
had so carefully built up over four years. I was still in shock over the fact