"Christopher Rowe - Seared Scallops and Steamed Green Beans" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rowe Christopher)

тАФ and I slide forward, the quarter pound block of butter refusing to arrest my fall, so my other hand
scrambles, catching only a handful of тАФ

The beans are plentiful enough this time that we don't fear their hammers. We have two whole
sledges heavily laden enough that the llamas complaints are legitimate, for once. The soldiers
took my son for the priests last time, when even all we had wasn't enough. In a year better than
last, but not so good as this, they took one of my ears as warning. This time we dared to hold
some back, bounty enough for the soldiers and priests and even for us.

And I fell, twisting, scattering beans across the kitchen floor, rousing the dog, landing heavily on my back.
From down there, the top of the counter seemed so far away. I was looking up from the bottom of a
presswood canyon. Looking up to see a bowl teetering, dropping, spilling a rain of translucent fish meat
over me and тАФ

I will swim forever. I will turn on my side when I approach my prey and I will kill and eat in
motion and swim forever. I will swim forever...

And I was swimming like that and would have forever, but her hand touched mine and she said, "Are you
okay?"

The historian's fog was still floating around the room. Her hand... I was redefined by this new touch.

"Are you okay?" she said.

I leaned up. Green beans were everywhere. George was licking a stick of butter near the refrigerator.
My face and chest were covered with a sticky mass of square cut flesh.

I nodded. "I'm okay."

"Good," she said, "Because now I'm going to laugh at you for a while." So she did. So did I.

"No scallops for dinner, then," she said, after she'd caught her breath.

"I got scammed," I said. "It was shark."