"Tepper,.Sheri.S.-.Marianne,.The.Magus,.And.The.Manticore" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tepper Sherri)

seductive glow. She had spent all Cloud-haired mama's jewelry

on the house. The lower floor, more recently occupied and in

a better state of repair, was rented out to Mrs. Winesap and

Mr. Larken-whose relationship Marianne often speculated

upon, varyingly, as open windows admitted sounds of argument

or expostulation or as the walls transmitted the unmistakable

rhythm of bedsprings-and the shimmy part was occupied by

Marianne herself. "Not so slummy anymore," she hummed to

herself in the darkness. "Not so damn slummy."

If she had been asked, she could not have said why it had

been so important to have rooms of her own, rooms with softly

glowing floorboards, rooms with carefully stripped woodwork

painted a little darker than the walls, all in a mauvey, sunset

glow, cool and spacious as a view of distant mountains, where

there had been only cracked, stained plaster with bits of horse-

hair protruding from it to make her think for weary months

that she was trying to make a home in the corpse of some great,

defunct animal. At the time she had not known about old

plaster, old stairs, old walls, nothing about splintered wood-

work and senile plumbing-either balky or incontinent. Some-

thing in the old house had nagged at her. "Buy me, lady. You're

poor. I'm poor. Buy me, and let us live together."

Perhaps it had been the grace of the curved, beveled glass

lights above the front door and the upstairs windows. Perhaps

it had been the high ceilings, cracked though they were, and