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

and tofu, and whose clientele consisted primarily of elegant matrons on permanent starvation diets. The sort of place whose ladies' room was provided with chin-height miniature toilet bowls and water-piks for the convenience of the customers.

They met in the lobby and stared at each other in amazement.

"Good god, hon!" Allie exclaimed tactfully. "You look like the Goodyear Blimp!"

"How did you do it?" Christine moaned.

Allie's face was limp and wrinkly, like a balloon with the air let out of it. All the fat was gone; she looked positively gaunt. She wore a tight white pants suit that revealed a figure about a hundred pounds of blubber less than her previous incarnation.

"Alex did a lot of slicing and dicing," Allie told her. "Micro-liposuction on the face, it's the latest thing. Next week, he's going to finish it off with a polish to retighten the skin."

She frowned. "But how did you...?" She held up a hand, smiled. "No, let me guess."

Christine squirmed with embarrassment. "Look, Allie, I'm sorry, I know... I mean...."

Allie laughed. "Hey, hon, I should be thanking you, even Alex couldn't have done anything as long as I was sneaking snacks with Armand Kubescu. The Count's some kind of, I dunno, fat vampire, only in reverse, know what I mean?"

"Tell me about it!" Christine groaned.

Over steamed tofu and romaine salads with vinegar and safflower oil dressing and a bottle of low-cal white zinfandel, Allie did.

"I just couldn't help myself, hon, Alex isn't exactly Mr. Natural in bed, know what I mean, and Armand will do just about anything in the sack to get a girl into a restaurant...."

She shrugged. "Besides which, I dunno, when you're with the guy--"

"I know what you mean!"

"You ain't the only one, hon!" Allie said. "When he took up with you, it was like some kind of spell had lifted. I mean, yeah, I was pissed off for a few days when he dropped me, but after that, well, it was like I was myself again, stopped gaining weight, puked off about twelve pounds even before Alex got to work...."

She laughed. "You gotta give the Count one thing, hon, the guy's monogamous, serially, that is. I sniffed around a bit after it was over, found four other poor fatsoes, same damn thing, one after the other, good luck for Alex, though, least I could do...." "But what am I going to do, Allie?"

Allie shrugged again. "Pass him on, what else can you do?" she said. "Seems like he can only handle one at a time. After which, I can set you up with Alex. One third off, or no nookie for him, I mean, what are friends for, hon...."

Christine thought about it as they finished their salads and treated themselves to a desert of carrot-flavored toffuti ice-cream. It just didn't seem right. She could think of any number of ways to introduce Armand Kubescu to his next victim, but no one who really deserved such a fate, not even, when push came to shove, Patti Kelly, who, after all, had taken up with her Dodger second baseman on the rebound.

The Count was a menace to Lalaland womanhood. The Code of the West demanded that the buck stop here.

But how?

"What say we powder our noses into the toilet bowl for old times' sake?" Allie said after they had finished their decaffeinated
coffee. They ambled into the ladies, and popped their lo-cal cookies.

While they were sluicing the acidic residue into the porcelain with the complementary water-piks, Christine sensed the glimmerings of a vague idea.

"Were you doing this when you were with the Count, Allie?" she asked.

"Are you kidding, hon? A dozen times a day towards the end. Otherwise, I probably would have exploded!"

"Maybe not..." Christine mused. "Maybe he would've exploded...."