"Madeleine E Robins - Abelard's Kiss" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robins Madeleine E)

occasional work-related social duties, Susannah didn't seek out contacts,
friends, lovers. Her last man had decamped more than a year before, in a shower
of mutual accusation and disappointment, and Susannah couldn't nerve herself to
try again, even approach trying again. Too messy, certain to fail, just not
worth it, she said to Renata when she asked about Susannah's love life. To
Beatrice she said she was too busy to think about sex, let alone love. She was
not quite busy enough to forget the unsettling image of Beatrice's lover, nor
the ghost sensation of the thing sucking on her own finger, even after months
had gone by.

One day, several months after the visit to Tamerlane, Beatrice called her at
work, arranged to meet for lunch. She bubbled and enthused, every word was an
event, and by the time she put the phone down Susannah knew that Beatrice had
some new extravagance and needed an audience. Needed her. She made arrangements
to take an extra hour for lunch; her superiors looked kindly on her lunches with
Beatrice Ferrar-Giroux.

They met at a small restaurant in the rehabilitated section of the east Fifties.
The place had not yet been discovered by anyone but Beatrice, who would
relentlessly drag it into fashion and then tire of it. Today she was dressed
like a wealthy gypsy, scarves and beads and skirts layered around her so that
she looked half-buried in bright fabric. Her hair was in dark ringlets this
time. She looked beautiful, elegant, radiantly pleased with herself and the
world, and Susannah immediately loathed her own blue suit, which that morning
had seemed fashionable and attractive, and her simply dressed dark hair.

"Susannah!" Beatrice rose and enveloped Susannah in a spicy, overwhelming
embrace full of foreign enthusiasms and endearments. Susannah returned it
carefully, fearful of disturbing Beatrice's artful disarray.

Before the first drink had arrived Beatrice was launched on an epic, a saga of
her life since they had last met. By the time the second drink and the faux
salmon appeared Beatrice had arrived at the crux of her story. A new lover, a
man. He was beautiful, he was bright and shining, incredibly sensual, a gypsy, a
madman. He had been, until Beatrice discovered him, a gardener at Tamerlane.

"Who's doing the garden now?" Sue asked dryly. Beatrice blinked, laughed, and
went on. By the time the consomme arrived Beatrice had descended from flowery
abstracts to coarse particulars. Susannah listened in silence.

It was not until the waiter served the veal and poured more wine that Susannah
could get a word in edgewise. "What's going to happen to Abelard?"

Beatrice looked at her blankly for a moment. Then, "Oh God, that's right. I
hadn't even thought. Well, after all, Susah, it's only a blob, isn't it? I'll
have to tell Potter to take it back to Bioform."

Beatrice was paying for the meal; it was not often that Susannah could afford
real meat, let alone cheese and fruit and wine this good. She ate every bite. It
tasted like dust. Over coffee she asked, "What will Bioform do with him?"