"The Sphinx" - читать интересную книгу автора (Masterton Graham)

"I'm sorry?"
'That's all right," she said, graciously. "All politicians do it. It must be an occupational disease."
He rubbed the back of his neck, which he always did when he was irritated. "Now, wait a minute," he said, in a half-jokey, half-steamed-up kind of voice. "It's all very well for people like you to say that politicians are riddled with cliches, but what you have to remember is that most political situations areЧЧ"
"There are none," she said, in that rich voice of hers.
He was about to carry on, but then he looked at her, puzzled. "What?"
"There are no people like me," she said simply.
He frowned, and examined his empty glass again.
ХWell," he said, "what kind of people are you?"
She stared at him as if she were trying to decide
Хwhether he was worthy of such a valuable piece of knowledge. Finally, she said, "I am half-Egyptian and half-French. I am one of those people that are known as Ubasti."
"And is it too much to tell me your name? Or is that a clich6 question too?"
She shook her head. "You mustn't let my shyness put you off," she said. "When I am shy, people always
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seem to think that T am frightening. I can see it in their eyes. Fear and aggressiveness are very similar emotions, don't you think?"
"You still haven't told me your name." She tilted her head to one side. "Why do you want to know? Do you want to seduce me?"
He looked at her, questioningly. "Do you want to be seduced?"
"I don't know. No, I don't think so." He said bluntly, "You're a very beautiful girl. You know that, don't you?"
She lowered her eyes for the first time since they had started talking. "Beauty is a matter of opinion. I think my breasts are too big."
"I don't think the consensus of American male opinion would agree with you. If you want to know, I think they're stunning."
A hint of color touched her dark-tanned cheeks. She said softly: "I think you are probably saying that to flatter me."
He snorted, "You don't need flattery. You're too good-looking for thai. And apart from that, you've got something that every other woman in this whole goddamn room would like to have but never will.. . not in a thousand years."
She looked up. Her green eyes were lambent and fascinating. One moment the pupils seemed to be tight shut, and the next moment they opened out wide like dark flowers.
"You've got mystique," Gene told her. "The moment I laid eyes on you I said to myself, Gene, that girl has mystique. Look at you nowЧwe've been talking all this time and I still don't know your name."
She laughed. The cocktail-party guests standing close by noticed her laughing and Senator Hasbaum
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whispered to one of his friends, "That Gene Keiller'g done it again! By God, I wish I was twenty years younger! I'd show that broad what a Tennessee boy can do!"
The girl said, "Why is my name so important to you?"
Gene shrugged. "What can I call you if I don't know what it is? Supposing I want to ask you to come to dinner with me after the party? How do I say it? 'Excuse me, Ms. X, or Ms. Y, or whatever you call yourself, will you come to dinner with me after the party?'"
She shook her head. "You don't have to say that."
"Then what do I say?"
"Don't say anything, because I can't come."
Gene took her hand, and held it in both his hands.
"Of course you can come. You're not married, are you?"
"No."
"I didn't think you were. You don't have that haunted look that all Washington wives get sooner or later."
"Haunted look?" asked the girl.
"Sure," said Gene. "They're always worrying about which girls their husbands are sleeping with, and whether it's any of the girls that the men they're sleeping with have slept with, in which case their husbands may find out they've been sleeping around."
"It sounds complicated."
"You get used to it. It's all part of running a great democracy."
The girl almost unconsciously touched her animal-tooth earring. She said, as if she was thinking of something else, "It doesn't sound... very moral."
Gene looked at her cautiously. "Moral" was a word lie hadn't heard in a long time, not since he'd made his
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reputation four years ago down south by exposing a swamp-draining scheme for the money-grubbing scan-, dal it was. On this girl's lips it sounded curious, out of place. Here she was, at a Washington cocktail party, dressed in skin-tight, flesh-colored silk, with the most eye-stopping figure since Dolly Parton, and she was talking about morality.
"Listen," he said gently. "This life is full of stresses and strains. For many people, many politicians, fooling around is the only recreation they get."
"I'm sorry," said the girl. "Fooling around is not my recreation."
Gene spread his hands wide in apology. "Okay. I didn't mean to suggest anything. I think you're a beautiful girl, and I'd be some kind of monk if I didn't find you sexy. Now, wouldn't I?"
She blinked at him in bewilderment "You . . . find ine... sexy?"
Gene almost laughed. "Well, of course I damn weH do! What the hell were you thinking about when you put that dress on this evening?"
She blushed. "I don't know. I didn't think..."
Gene took her hand again. "Honey," he said, "I think you'd better tell me your name. It's going to make life a lot easier."