"Smeds-MarathonRunner" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smeds Dave)

Neil resisted the tug on his sleeve. "No. I'd like to look around a bit more."

Matthew raised an eyebrow and tilted his head toward the buxom artist. "You sure
about that, Gramps?"

"Yes. Maybe I'll drop in later. If not, meet you at seven by the fountain."
Matthew shrugged. "Okay. See you then."

Neil wandered. In its new incarnation, the redlight district stretched far past
its old confines. One place of business after another washed past him. None held
his interest more than a few seconds. He thought he understood why Matthew had
chosen to bring him here. Sex certainly was the epitome of "engaging in life."
And he could well believe all the therapeutic effect Matthew had personally
derived from visits here. Matthew was seventy-two, and thanks to the vaccine had
stopped aging at fifty-four. He'd never been old enough for sex to lose its
allure.

Neil drifted by a palatial bordello with a statue of Lily St. Cyr out front,
continuing on even though the receptionist, in her elegant woman's tuxedo,
flashed him a wonderful smile. He ignored a tidy hotel with its rooms where, so
the marquee claimed, the virtual whores were Custom Programmed by Maestro
Roberto Niezca Himself. He even skipped the old-fashioned video arcades,
something familiar from episodes of youthful curiosity or loneliness.

Finally he came to a three-story Victorian. "Gallery of Erotica" it read in
Romanesque letters above the door. Few people seemed to be entering, and in
their expressions passion rode serenely, absent the frantic urgency of most
passersby.

Neil pressed the handpad, letting the gallery debit his account. The sibilant
noises of the street vanished as the door swung shut behind him.

He meandered down an aisle filled with sculptures of bacchanalian orgies. In an
alcove, a female mannequin wore lingerie that mutated at nano- levels through
the fashions of many eras, from Colonial-era teddies to the brass inauguration
bra made famous by Erotic Artists Guild president Elaine Agoura. Finally he came
to a small section devoted to framed centerfolds from mid-20th century
cheesecake magazines.

His glance lit on one he thought he recognized. He and Toby Wyckoff had found a
cast-off Playboy once in a dumpster. The model had the same intensely black hair
as that issue's Playmate. Her breasts, naturally shapely -- as opposed to the
silicone balloons featured in later decades -- pointed outward at an angle
designed to knock teenage boys' eyeballs out of their sockets. A bedsheet denied
the viewer a glimpse of her pubic hair -- a forbidden zone for the camera in
that day and age.

Neil wiped his palms on his shirt. How easily the memory bubbled up. Had he
truly been that adolescent, crouched breathless in an alley behind a dumpster,
acknowledging for the first time the undeniable tropism of sexuality?