"Nina Kiriki Hoffman - Savage Breasts" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hoffman Nina Kiriki)

For a while I was happy enough just to rest. After all that nocturnal
exertion, I was tired. My chair wasn't comfortable, but my body didn't
care. Then I started feeling rotten. I watched Gladys. She had scruffy hair
that kept falling out of its bobby pins and into her face. She kept her
fingernails short and unpolished and she didn't seem to care how
carelessly she chose her clothes. She reminded me of the way I had looked
two months earlier, before men started getting interested in me and
giving me advice on what to wear and what to do with my hair. Gladys
and I no longer went to lunch together. These days I usually took the boss's
clients to lunch.
"Why don't you tell the boss you have a sick headache too?" I asked.
"There's nothing here that can't wait until tomorrow."
 "He'd fire me, you fool. I can't waggle my femininity in his face like you
can. Mae June, you're a cheater."
"I didn't mean to cheat," I said. "I can't help it." I looked at her face to
see if she remembered how we used to talk at lunch. "Watch this, Gladys."
I turned back to my typewriter and pulled off the cover. The instant I
inserted paper, my breasts reached up and parked on the typewriter keys.
I leaned back, straightening up, then tried to type the date in the upper
right-hand corner of the page. Plomp plomp. No dice. I looked at Gladys.
She had that kind of look that says eyoo, ick, that's creepy, show it to me
again.
I opened my mouth to explain about Wilma's insult and Charlotte Atlas
when my breasts firmed up. I found myself leaning back to display me at
an advantage. One of the boss's clients had walked in.
"Mae June, my nymphlet," said this guy. Burl Weaver. I had been to
lunch with him before. I kind of liked him.
Gladys touched the intercom. "Sir, Mr. Weaver is here."
"Aw, Gladys," said Burl, one of the few men who had learned her name
as well as mine, "why'd you haveta spoil it? I didn't come here for
business."
"Burl?" the boss asked over the intercom. "What does he want?"
Burl strode over to my desk and pushed my transmit button. "I'd like to
borrow your secretary for the afternoon, Otis. Any objections?"
"Why no, Burl, none at all." Burl is one of our biggest accounts. We
produce the plastic for the records his company produces. "Mae June, you
be good to Burl now."
Burl pressed my transmit button for me. I leaned as near to my speaker
as I could get. "Yes, sir," I said. With tons of trepidation, I rose to my feet.
My previous acquaintance with Burl had gone further than my
acquaintance with Maxwell yesterday. Now that my breasts were seceding
from my body, how could I be sure I'd be nice to Burl? What if I lost the
company our biggest account?
With my breasts thrust out before me like dogs hot on a scent, I
followed Burl out of the office, giving Gladys a misery-laden glance as I
closed the door behind me. She gave me a suffering nod in return. At least
there was somebody on my side, I thought, as Burl and I got on the
elevator. I tried to cross my arms over my breasts, but they pushed my
arms away. A familiar feeling of helplessness, one I knew well from before I
sent away for that pamphlet, washed over me. Except this time I didn't