"Christopher Priest - The Discharge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Priest Christopher)

find a bed of some sort, but there was nothing remotely of the boudoir about the room. There was not
even a couch, or cushions on the floor. Three wooden chairs stood in a demure line against one wall, but
that was all.

She said, "You wait now."

"Wait? What for? And for how long?"

"How long you want for your dreams?"

"Nothing! No time."

"You are so impatient. One minute more, then follow me!"

She indicated yet another door which until that moment I had not noticed, because it had been painted in
the same dull-red color as the walls. The weak light from the room's only bulb had helped disguise it
further. She went across to it and walked through. As she did so I saw her reach backwards over her
head with both arms and remove the torn T-shirt.

I glimpsed her bare, curving back, the small knobs of her vertebrae, then she was gone.

Alone, I paced to and fro. By telling me to wait for one minute had she meant it literally? That I should
check my wristwatch or count to sixty? She had thrown me into a state of nervous tension. What more
had she to do in that further sanctum beyond, other than remove those shorts and prepare herself for
me?

I opened the door impatiently, pushing against the pressure of a spring. It was dark beyond. The dim
glow from the room behind me was not strong enough to help me see. I gained the impression of
something large in the room but I could not make out its shape. I felt around with my hands, nervous in
the darkness, trying to extend my senses against the cloying perfumes and the endlessly throbbing music,
muffled but loud. As far as I could tell I had come into a room, not another corridor.

I went further in, groping forward. Behind me, the door swung closed on its spring. Immediately, bright
spotlights came on from the corners of the ceiling.

I was in a boudoir. An ornate bedтАФwith a large, carved wooden headboard, immense bulging pillows
and a profusion of shining satin sheetsтАФfilled most of the room. A woman, not the young whore who had
led me here, but another, lay on the bed in a pose of sexual abandonment and availability.

She was naked, lying on her back with one arm raised to curl behind her head. Her face was turned to
the side and her mouth was open. Her eyes were closed, her lips were moist. Her large breasts bulged
across her chest, the nipples lying flatly and pointing outwards. She had raised one knee, holding it at a
slight angle, exposing herself. Her fingers rested on her sex, the tips curving down to bury themselves
shallowly in the cleft. The spotlights radiated her and the bed in a brilliant focus of glaring white light.

The sight of her froze me. What I was seeing was impossible. I stared at her in disbelief.

She had arranged herself in a tableau-vivant that was identical, not close but identical, to one I had seen
in my mind's eye before.