"R. A. MacAvoy - Black Dragon 2 - Twisting the Rope" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacAvoy R A)

Twisting the Rope

R. A. MacAvoy

Off to California
The blow rang through the motel room, freezing six of the seven people within it in midmotion. Theodore
Poznan had a brush wet with nail polish in his left hand, while the index finger of his right was stiffly pointing
at the ceiling. His hair, bleached in layers from straw to medium brown, slid forward off his shoulder and hung
by his face. His beard jutted forward. His eyes were vaguely reproachful.
Elen Evans had a face of great delicacy and short hair cut with wisps around the ears and down the neck.
She lofted a two-foot-long iron piano-tuning wrench with a wooden handle, which she had been using on her
triple harp. Her expression was ironical.
Martha Macnamara, exactly thirty years older than Elen, was caught with a paper cup in her hand. She
looked flustered and slightly apelike, with her round eyes and open mouth. She thought the words "oh, dear"
and she wondered if there was going to be a brawl. She was also a bit glad (glad in spite of herself) that
P├бdraig had pounded the table in that way: hard, loud, and just at the moment he had wanted to.
Seated in the corner by the Formica table was a slight middle-aged man with black skin and Chinese eyes.
The light of the wicker-shaded lamp put a shine on his black hair. His name was Long, and he held a
three-year-old girl on his lap. This child's blue eyes were open very wide as she stared at P├бdraig ├У
S├║illeabh├бin.
P├бdraig himself was the sixth person frozen by the violence of his action. He was a young man who looked
still younger, and a shade of purple spread from his ears to his face and down both sides of his neck. His fist,
rough-chapped and very clean, slowly relaxed on the tabletop and then clenched again.
The little girl broke the silence. "Why did Poe-rik hit the table? Did he want to hitтАФ" The remarkably long
fingers of the dark man's hand curled over her mouth. Leaning down, he whispered something into her ear and
then bounced her twice, forcefully.
The seventh person in the roomтАФthe one who was not shocked by P├бdraig's outburstтАФwas holding him up,
with the neckband of the boy's sweater turned inside out, and was examining the tag with a show of interest.
He raised his eyes now as P├бdraig craned about and glared at him.
"No need to lose control, boy," said George St. Ives. "I was just curious why a traditional musician, or at
least what passes for traditional these days, and what passes for aтАж Well, anyway, haven't we got enough
plastic in the world around us already without wearing the stuff in front of people?"
P├бdraig opened his mouth, but there was a brief pause before he replied: a pause of uncertainty. "I thoughtтАж
I thought that I would do better to try to look nice in front of people. Instead of looking like I was after digging a
hole somewhere."
George St. Ives had gray eyes surrounded by wrinkles, and his forehead wrinkled as he held the
overstretched fabric up to his face. "'One hundred percent acrylic. Machine wash cold. Cool dryer. No bleach.'
Red plastic with five-pointed stars in some sort of metallic thread. Wouldn't be very suited for digging a hole,
would it? Nor for any other manly activity." His voice was gravelly but expressionless. His heavy face was a
bit yellow.
"I can wash it." P├бdraig wrested his sweater out of the older man's grip and started to stand up. "If it were
b├бin├нn, how could I, in all these hotels?" His chair fell over. The pulling had left a sag in the back of his
sweater. He looked foolish and knew it.
St. Ives watched P├бdraig's distraction dispassionately and he smiled. "Did some girl buy it for you, Sully?"
P├бdraig, who had retreated the length of the bed, turned back again. His sweater was now off center on his
shoulders and he shrugged into it, saying: "My mother bought it for me. She said it would go in the bag well,
without wrinkles." Then he rubbed his face with both hands. "Oh, this is stupid! Talking about my jumper! You
are only looking for another way to rag me. To hell with it."
"There's the ticket," said Ted Poznan, who was sitting on one of the beds. He shook the bottle of nail polish
and prepared to coat his second finger. All the fingernails of his right hand were long and thick with old,