"Bruce Holland Rogers - Wind Over Heaven" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rogers Bruce Holland)

You love this friend like your brother. Like twin. You are balancing to each other. Understand? Then he
gets sick. He changes. He is not so interesting, always sick. So, Eric, you leave him? When he needs
you?"
 The saucier looked at his arrays of jars, then shook his head. "If you are thinking like this, the problem
is your heart. Bad faith. There is no medicine I can give you for it." He turned off the burner and poured
the steaming water down the sink.
"Well what would you suggest, exactly?" Eric said. "I don't have a lot of options."
"Patience. Let me think. It's a matter of balance. Suppose you are right, and he is a bad parasite. A
bladder worm. You know bladder worm?"
Eric shook his head.
"Tapeworm babies," Gero said. "Larva. They hatch from eggs inside your stomach, dig into intestine
walls, then into blood, yes? All through your body, even your brain. In a few years, they start to die.
Dead ones swell up in your brain like little balloons."
Eric rubbed at his temples. Dead worms in the brain. He thought of Swiss cheese. He felt a headache
coming on. "And then what?"
Gero made a gesture of expansion with his hands. "Pressure in brain. Epilepsy, shaking, fits. Maybe,
you die. But you don't know about these worms until too late. That is what kind of parasite you selected
to be your partner. Now we know what he is, but Tarragon Leaf already swallowed him."
Eric had a fleeting vision of Sutherland as an enormous worm. He felt sick. "If this is supposed to
make me more hopeful," Eric said, "it isn't working."
"You are not going to sell the restaurant. We do not abandon sick friend."
"I don't know," Eric said. "If Sutherland is a bladder worm, I think our sick friend may be terminal."
***


Although Eric was filled with thoughts of doom, the restaurant was hardly showing symptoms. Eric
knew that would change. He concentrated on running the dining room and avoiding Spencer Sutherland
when Sutherland tried to see him.
Finally, after a week of this, Eric took one of Sutherland's calls. "A house divided against itself cannot
stand," Sutherland said. "Let's have a meeting over dinner. Get your boys to broil us some steaks. I like
mine well done."
"Every time we talk," Eric said, "it's bad news. I don't want to hear any more."
"I'm going to make it worth your while," Sutherland said. "And if you ignore me, I can make it hurt.
Read your contracts. I can just about close you down."
***


In the kitchen before the meeting, Gero said, "Drink this."
For once it was a cold concoction, not a steaming one.
"What do I have?" Eric said. "High kidneys? Rising yin?"
"Heart problem still," said Gero. "Bad faith. You are thinking of selling." While they talked, he was
making two sauces. Two brown sauces. Around them was the usual kitchen racket, but it wasn't up to its
frantic pace. The evening was early, and the restaurant wasn't yet half full. "You will not sell, all right?"
"Depends on what he offers."
"Drink."
Eric took a sip, then made a face. Of all the brews Gero had ever made for him, this was the worst.
"Are you poisoning me?"
Gero looked up, his gray eyes thoughtful. "That would keep you from selling?"
"Sutherland would still get the restaurant."
"Then what is the advantage to poisoning you? Drink. You are having serious bad faith. It's getting