"Mercedes Lackey & Rosemary Edghill - Beyond World' s End" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

wave back. He kept waving as they roared out of sight.
That didn't take long in the city; they were out of sight as soon as they turned the corner. He
evened his load again, and walked soberly up to the door of the building.
Home. Sweet home? Well, home is what you make it, I guess. This is as good as any. And a lot
better than some. Good thing I'm not on a starving student's budget.
He could have had any apartment in any building in the city, of course: as an adult student, Eric
didn't have the same residence restrictions that the minors and first-year students did at
Juilliard, and a fellow with a safety-deposit box full of gold Krugerrands could pretty much
afford whatever he wanted. But he'd gone out walking one day when he and Beth and Kory first
arrived here, and found the old building as if he'd been drawn to it. It'd had a name once--;most
old New York apartment buildings were named--;but time had eroded the carving above the door,
until all that remained was a florid "G" and a barely legible "ouse."
Something-house. Maybe Gargoyle House, for when Eric had looked up--;he was
enough of an out-of-towner to do that frequently--;he had been surprised to see the hunched winged
forms of classic medieval gargoyles perched on the building's four corners. New York was rich in
such hidden sculpture, he knew. Art for birds, someone had once called it.
There'd been a discreet sign in the building manager's window--;the only "For Rent" sign he could
remember seeing anywhere, actually--;and the building itself had attracted him. There were three
apartments available. One was a corner apartment on the top floor, and when he saw that there was
a gargoyle perched right outside the living-room window, he'd been sold.
That had been the good part. The bad part was the age of the building. Old
buildings had old building problems. Still, it had a lot more heart to it than some of those high-
rise condos that were going up everywhere. And a place like this would be a lot easier to explain
if anyone ever asked.
For a wonder, the building manager--;her name was Toni Hernandez, a middle-aged Latina woman--;had
been ready to show him around right then. The building was of about the same vintage as the
Gunfight at the OK Corral, which meant that the ceilings were high and the bathrooms were ancient--
;which meant very cool lion-footed bathtubs, but teeny sinks and plumbing he wasn't altogether
sure
about. The kitchen cabinets and counters looked like originals from when the building was new, and
forget central air--;if he wanted to be cool during the summer and early fall, he'd have to buy a
window AC, and hope the wiring could stand it. He was going to have to swelter for the rest of
this year, though--;by the time he could get a window unit delivered and installed at this time of
year, snow would already be falling.
As for the heating, it was all by ancient steam pipes, and those didn't function until the super
decided it was cold enough--;and Eric knew all about the way steam pipes sang and banged at night.
He'd probably need to supplement the radiators with space heaters, given how far away his
apartment was from the basement boilers, anyway.
He'd been assured that the wiring was modern, though--;and looking the apartment over, seeing all
new cover plates and plenty of grounded outlets, Eric had felt fairly sure he wasn't being lied
to. If the wiring was modern enough to accept the load of a computer, a microwave, and an air
conditioner, he felt he could put up with steam heat and ancient plumbing. He'd accepted the top-
floor apartment on the spot, and the rest had been mere formality.
The building might be old, but it had some nifty modern amenities where it really counted, and
considering its West Side location, Eric was surprised that the building hadn't gone condo a long
time ago. A security system mounted discreetly in an etched brass plate beside the door had a code
for every tenant--;and with ten digits, it would take a long time for someone to hit a correct one


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