"Elizabeth Hand - Last Summer on Mars Hill" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hand Elizabeth)

stupid old picture that Diana took. Can you believe it's still here?"

Moony lifted her head and rubbed her eyes, red and swollen. "Oh, I can believe
anything," she said bitterly, and filled her mug with more coffee.

In Martin Dionysos's kitchen, Ariel drank a cup of nettle tea and watched
avidly
as her friend ate a bowl of mung bean sprouts and nutritional yeast. lust like
in Annie Hall, she thought. Amazing.

"So now she knows and you're surprised she's pissed at you." Martin raised
another forkful of sprouts to his mouth, angling delicately to keep any from
failing to the floor. He raised one blond eyebrow as he chewed, looking like
some hardscrabble New Englander's idea of Satan, California surfer boy gone to
seed. Long gray-blond hair that was thinner than it had been a year ago, skin
that wasn't so much tanned as an even pale bronze, with that little goatee and
those piercing blue eyes, the same color as the Bay stretching outside the
window behind him. Oh yes: and a gold hoop earring and a heart tattoo that
enclosed the name JOHN and a T-shirt with the pink triangle and SILENCE-DEATH
printed in stem block letters. Satan on vacation.

"I'm not surprised," Ariel said, a little crossly. "I'm just, mmm,
disappointed.
That she got so upset."

Martin's other eyebrow arched. "Disappointed? As in, 'Moony, darling I have
breast cancer (which I have kept a secret from you for seven months) and I am
very disappointed that you are not self-actualized enough to deal with this
without falling to pieces'?"

"She didn't fall to pieces." Ariel's crossness went over the line into
fullblown
annoyance. She frowned and jabbed a spoon into her tea. "I wish she'd fall to
pieces, she's always so --" She waved the hand holding the spoon, sending
green
droplets raining onto Martin's knee. "-- so something."

"Self-assured?"

"I guess. Self-assured and smug, you know? Why is it teenagers are always so
fucking smug?"

"Because they share a great secret," Martin said mildly, and took another bite
of sprouts.
"Oh yeah? What's that?"

"Their parents are all assholes."

Ariel snorted with laughter, leaned forward to get her teacup out of the
danger