"Alex Irvine - Intimations of Immortality" - читать интересную книгу автора (Irvine Alexander C)

"Hey, Crash," Terence called from the table. "You got this one.?"

"I got'em all," Norm said, and rolled the eight down the rail, slow and easy as a Cadillac in the mag-lane
of the Valley Highway. It dropped into the corner and Norm came back to the table to pay the waitress
for the fresh pitcher.

"Bet you wish you could drive like you shoot pool," Terence said. Beer foam clung to his bushy red
Santa Claus-style beard.

"Shit," Norm said. The accident had been three months before, and he'd long since paid it off. "Bet you
wish you could fuck like I shoot pool."

Matt and Bill Amidor, brothers who worked in the office-supply warehouse Norm and Terence drove
out of, roared. Terence wiped at his beard to hide the fact that he was grinning too, then he said, "Hey.
Look what just walked in the door."

They all looked. Bill whistled. Norm overfilled his mug and stepped back from the table to let the foam
run onto the floor. "Good impression you're making there, Crash," Terence said. "You clip rental trucks
in the yard, spill your drink whenever a pretty girl walks in . . . what's next, you gonna spit on the boss's
shoes? Quote Shakespeare at him while you do it?"

"Fucking boss needs his shoes spit on," Norm said, but his attention stuck to the woman who now stood
at the bar. Tall, long black hair, long black coat that cost more than Norm made in a month, face crying
out to have a poem written about it. "Bet she's on the T," Norm said.

"Mm," Bill said. "A little too perfect, isn't she?"

Matt lit a cigarette. "What's she doing here?" It was a good question. The Country Club wasn't exactly
dangerous, but even Norm -- since he'd never been in jail more than overnight and had a tendency to
read books once in a while -- was a bit out of place there. This woman was a walking pearl in a pigpen.
And, unless they'd all missed something, she was alone.

Oh, no she wasn't. Here came her friends: three equally perfect, perfectly beautiful, and beautifully
incongruous young women. Like vid models after a day shooting, Norm thought, but the only place
around here that used live vids was the porn shack around the corner, and no woman who looked like
these would come anywhere near that place.

"Slumming," Matt grumbled. He liked to go to upper-class bars and light cigarettes just to get kicked out,
but he hated it when his favorite dives were invaded by people who normally wouldn't look at him on the
street. "Go talk 'em up, Crash," he said. "Recite poems, take 'em home, and piss all over 'em."

"Bitter, bitter," Norm said, but Matt had gotten it two-thirds right. Recite poems, take 'em home. It
worked if you weren't too smarmy about the poems.

His next opponent called out from the pool table and he went back to win number fifteen. He won easily
enough, but he could tell that his invincibility was ebbing; too much time looking at that first woman out of
the corner of his eye. Norm decided that she was on the T for sure. She looked about twenty-five, but
she didn't carry herself like she was fresh out of college. There was an assurance, a . . . he didn't know
how to pin it down, but he would have bet his job that she was quite a bit older than she looked. Waiting
for the next game to start, he debated asking the guys what they thought, but Matt would just start in on