"Simon Hawke - Sorcerer 1 - The Reluctant Sorcerer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawke Simon)

The Reluctant Sorcerer тАв 5

It was the same with groceries. There was a young
woman who managed the local market who would call from
time to time and say, "Dr. Brewster? This is Sheila. You
haven't been in for a while and I thought you might be
running out." And he would walk over to the refrigerator or
the cupboard, stare into it absently for a moment or two,
then say distractedly, "Yes, I suppose I must be." Sheila
would then take the shopping cart around during her lunch
break, pick out his groceries for him, and have them
delivered. He never had to pay for them, either. The branch
manager at the local bank, also an attractive young woman,
had seen to it that he had accounts everywhere and that the
bills were sent directly to the bank.

The multinational conglomerate that employed Brewster
for an astronomical salary (that was still a pittance com-
pared to the profits they took in from the dozen or so patents
he'd turned over to them) always deposited his checks
directly into his accounts, so that Brewster never had to deal
with the various mundane tasks of shopping and record
keeping and checkbook balancing that plague most lesser
mortals.

How does one get a deal like this? The answer is, one
doesn't. It's not the sort of thing you can manage to
arrange, unless you happen to be born with a certain
indefinable and helpless charm that women find simply
irresistible. Ask any woman in London who knows him how
she feels about Dr. Marvin Brewster, and whether she's
sixteen or sixty, she'll sigh and her eyes will get all soft and
misty and she'll say, "He's such a dear man...."

When Pamela discovered just how many women felt this
way about her intended, she became a bit alarmed. She
seized the reins and took firm control of Marvin Brewster's
life. If there was any mothering to be done here, by God,
she was going to be the one to do it! She moved in on

6 тАв Simon Hawke

Marvin Brewster like Grant moved in on Richmond. Now
all she had to do was figure out how to get him to the altar.
He had already missed three scheduled weddings.

The first time she'd been left waiting at the altar, the
wedding had completely slipped his mind and a frantic
search that included a check of half the pubs and all the
hospitals in London eventually found him deep in the stacks