"Norman Spinrad - tHE FAT VAMPIRE" - читать интересную книгу автора (Spinrad Norman)

Christine had lost touch with Allie after she married The Plastic Surgeon and moved into the mansion in Bel-Air, hadn't seen her for months when Allie called up to invite her to a garden lunch, and she was amazed and appalled to see what Allie had become.

Allie had turned into a blimp, a veritable globuloid! She presided over the garden party in a white silk muumuu that could have covered a hippo and apparently did. Her arms were hung with wads of blubber. Her face had puffed out into a fleshy balloon.

Gross!

Stranger still, Allie spent the whole afternoon picking listlessly at the bountiful buffet, a radish, a carrot stick, a bit of caviar on toast, a sprig of cress, a stalk of celery.

Was this what a successful marriage did to a girl?

Maybe not. For hovering around Allie, or perhaps more accurately somehow causing Allie to hover around him in a manner clearly indicative of hanky-panky to everyone but her dorky husband, was this obvious gigolo-type in a costume-party ice-cream suit who Allie eventually simperingly introduced as Count Armand Kubescu.

One sideways glance from Allie towards the Count told the whole usual tacky story. The former hot number about town transformed into a rich bored hausfrau. The oily Hollywood nobleman charming her with his phony European accent and elegant sleaze.

It was, except for Allie's inexplicable state of bloato, cliche city. And yet there was something not at all standard about this phony Count.

Oh yeah, he looked the part, and dressed the part, and spoke the usual lines in the usual accent.

But lord could the man eat!

He didn't slobber, he didn't dribble crumbs, he used all the right silverware, his manners were perfectly elegant, there was nothing gross about his performance at all, but while Allie picked at tiny bits of this and that, Count Armand Kubescu managed in unobtrusive and cultivated style to devour truly enormous quantities of food.

He didn't gulp, he didn't grab, he didn't talk around unseemly mouthfuls, he just ate steadily without pause for at least three solid hours.

Allie found herself fascinated with his performance. She carefully avoided obvious staring, but every time she stole a glance in his direction, Armand Kubescu was eating. Eggs Benedict. Apple strudel. Cheese and fruit. Chocolate mousse. Rumaki. Smoked duck. Italian sausage. French charcuterie. Buffalo chicken wings. He ate and ate and ate.

Christine kept waiting for him to slink off to the bathroom to disgorge this enormous load--with a build like his and an appetite like that, he had to be in on the Hollywood Diet Secret--but he never did.

Finally, Christine just couldn't keep her eyes off of him. Finally, it became all too obvious. Finally, he noticed her, or perhaps finally deigned to notice that she had long been eyeing him.

She was sitting by herself under the shade of one of the umbrella tables when it happened, peering at him over the lip of a champagne glass. Their eyes locked for a moment, and when she didn't look away, neither did he. Instead, he ambled lithely over to her table along their mutual line of sight, balancing a platter of assorted petit fours on one hand like a waiter. He paused beside the table, smiled silkily, picked up a mini-eclair daintily with curved thumb and forefinger, popped it into his mouth, and proffered the pastry-plate to Christine.

Christine, having already consumed enough of this and that to be considering a quick trip to the loo, hesitated for a beat, then selected a tiny pecan pie, and nibbled tentatively at the edge. What the hell, she was going to barf it all up sooner or later anyway, and under the circumstances....

Armand Kubescu smile again, slid smoothly into the chair opposite her, picked out a chocolate gnoli, and devoured it in two bites, never averting his gaze.

"You eat like a bird," he said.

"So do you. Like a vulture."

Count Kubescu laughed. "So I have been told," he said.

"How do you do it?"

Armand Kubescu leered at her like some kind of B-movie vampire. "Comment sa," he said, lifting a cream-puff and sucking it down like a lizard. "One bite after another."

"I mean, seriously...." What did she mean? What Christine was dying to ask him, of course, was whether he was going to puke it all up later. He hadn't disappeared into the john yet, but maybe he just had a big stomach. But how could she...?

"Seriously, I do only what is natural to me, what else?" the Count said. "The lion has evolved on the veldt, where days may elapse between kills, so he can put away twenty kilos of meat at a sitting. The bear may not eat for months while in hibernation, so he dines while he can. The python has evolved the ability to swallow a goat larger than himself. My kind..., well, where my ancestors come from, meals were long few and far between, so we evolved a permanent appetite...."