"Madeline L' Engle - A Live Coal in the Sea" - читать интересную книгу автора (L'Engle Madeleine)

paint
chipped off, revealing layers of blue and green underneath. 'Listen, old pal,
I
care about you, that's all.'
'I know. Thanks, Lu.' She lay back in the tub and closed her eyes.
23
Luisa was not central to the story Raffi wanted Camilla to tell. Neither was
she
peripheral. Luisa had been part of Camilla's life it seemed forever, an
irritant, like that grain of sand in the oyster shell. Camilla pulled herself
back from the past of her own college days to the present, to her comfortable
house, to Raffi sitting opposite her at the marble-topped table, to Raffi's
unexpected and disturbing questions. "You know my friend Luisa Rowan?"
"Dr. Rowan, the shrink. Sure, I like her a lot. Does she have something to,
do
with all this?"
Camilla sighed, then stood up as the doorbell rang. "Here comes my gang."
"You can't stop now."
"I can't go on, with a room full of students." "When, then?"
Camilla sighed again. "Tomorrow. I don't have anything on tomorrow evening.
Come
and we'll eat together." Why did it seem that opening old wounds, old but
never
completely healed, would be easier over food?
"I'll go out the back door," Raffi said. "I still look like hell."
Raffi let herself out the kitchen door and went across the campus to her
dorm.
She was in one of the old Victorian brick buildings, six storeys high.
In the lobby she paused at the mailboxes, though she was not expecting any
messages. But there was something in her box. She pulled it out, a copy of
the
new TV Guide. On the cover was a picture of her father. Taxi. He did not use
his
last name, not too surprising with a name like Xanthakos. Her grandmother,
too,
used her maiden name, Dickinson, professionally. Someone had put a note in
the
magazine, with the scrawled message, 'Thought you might like to see this super
Madeleine L'Engle┬╗24
picture of your dad. Stick it in my box when you're through. Dorry.'
Raffi looked for Dorry's box and shoved the magazine in. Dorry meant well,
she
knew that. But Raffi did not like being known as a TV star's daughter, rather
than as Raffi Xantha kos, with her own personality, and her own gifts,
whatever
they were.
"Raffi! Taxi is your father!" "God, he's gorgeous!"
"What's it like having Taxi for your dad?" "I absolutely adore him!"
"Why doesn't he have a last name?"
To that, she would reply, "With a name like Xanthakos?" "I think it's chic,