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

zone and onto the table. "Oh, Martin," she said. Suddenly her eyes were filled
with tears. "Damn it all to hell. . ."

Martin put his bowl on the table and stepped over to take her in his arms. He
didn't say anything, and for a moment Ariel flashed back to the previous
spring,
the same tableau only in reverse, with her holding Martin while he sobbed
uncontrollably in the kitchen of his San Francisco townhouse. It was two days
after John's funeral, and she was on her way to the airport. She knew then
about
the breast cancer but she hadn't told Martin yet; didn't want to dim any of
the
dark luster of his grief.

Now it was her grief, but in a strange way she knew it was his, too. There was
this awful thing that they held in common, a great unbroken chain of grief
that
wound from one coast to the other. She hadn't wanted to share it with Moony,
hadn't wanted her to feel its weight and breadth. But it was too late, now.
Moony knew and besides, what did it matter? She was dying, Martin was dying
and
there wasn't a fucking thing anyone could do about it.

"Hey," he said at last. His hand stroked her mass of dark hair, got itself
tangled near her shoulder, snagging one of the long silver-and-quartz-crystal
earrings she had put on that morning, for luck. "Ouch."

Ariel snorted again, laughing in spite of, or maybe because of, it all. Martin
extricated his hand, held up two fingers with a long curling strand of hair
caught between them: a question mark, a wise serpent waiting to strike. She
had
seen him after the cremation take the lock of John's hair that he had saved
and
hold it so, until suddenly it burst into flames, and then watched as the fizz
of
ash flared out in a dark penumbra around Martin's fingers. No such thing
happened now, no Faery Pagan pyrotechnics. She wasn't dead yet, there was no
sharp cold wind of grief to fan Martin's peculiar gift. He let the twirl of
hair
fall away and looked at her and said, "You know, I talked to Adele."

Adele was Mrs. Grose, she of the pug dog and suspiciously advanced years.
Ariel
retrieved her cup and her equanimity, sipping at the nettle tea as Martin went
on, "She said she thought we had a good chance. You especially. She said for
you
it might happen. They might come." He finished and leaned back in his chair,
spearing the last forkful of sprouts.

Ariel said, "Oh yes?" Hardly daring to think of it; no don't think of it at