"Van Lustbader, Eric - Linnear 04 - Kaisho" - читать интересную книгу автора (Van Lustbader Eric)

Eric Van Lustbader - Nl4 Kaisho

A false enchantment can all too easily last a lifetime. -- W. H. Auden

I don't mind living in a man's world as long as I can be a woman in it. -- Marilyn Monroe

You can't say that civilization don't advance, for in every war they kill you a new way. -- Will Rogers

Hollywood/New York

AUTUMN

His name was Do Duc Fujiru, but everyone who knew him in Hollywood, Florida called him Donald True because all the forged papers he was using identified him by this name. Do Duc, a physically intimidating man, claimed that while his muscles came from his father, a Vietnamese martial arts expert, his inner spirit came from his mother. Not that anyone in Hollywood was that interested in his inner spirit or anyone else's for that matter. At least, no one at the auto mechanic shop where he worked. In fact, Do Duc's father was not Vietnamese at all.

At thirty-eight, he was the oldest mechanic there. While the younger mechanics all surfed in their spare time. Do Duc worked out at a gym and a martial arts dojo that, by his standards, was woefully inadequate, but better than nothing at all.

He was an exceedingly handsome man in a dark, exotic manner, charismatic to women, frightening to other men. He had thick blue-black hair and bold, explorer's eyes. The sharp planes of his face gave him an aura he could intensify from deep inside himself when he deemed it necessary. What he was doing wasting his time in an auto shop was anyone's guess, save for the fact that he quite obviously had an extraordinary affinity for vehicular devices. He could remake engines of any kind so that they far outperformed their factory specs.

In fact. Do Duc had chosen Hollywood because he could blend into the ethnic stew, could most easily remain anonymous within the grid of the bleak post-modern

metroscape of endless strip malls, nearly identical housing developments and shoreline freeways.

He had been married for the past two years to a beautiful all-American woman named Hope. She was a tall, lithe, blue-eyed blonde, who had been born and raised in Fort Lauderdale. Besides adoring Do Duc, she was deeply in love with fast cars, fast food, and a life without responsibilities.

To Do Duc, who had been raised to treat the myriad responsibilities of adulthood with care and respect, she was like some gorgeous alien creature, unfathomable, a curiosity from a zoo whom he took to bed as often as he liked. In those moments, when her screams of ecstasy echoed in his ears, when her strong, firm body arched up uncontrollably beneath him, Do Duc came closest to finding life in America bearable.

But, in truth, those moments were fleeting.

He was in the bedroom of his ranch house, pulling on his oil- and grease-smeared overalls, when the front doorbell rang. It was a clear, hot late October morning, the sunlight already so strong it would have made a northerner's eye sockets ache with the glare. He looked first at his wife, lying asleep on her stomach amid the rumpled bedclothes. He was abruptly overcome by a sense of distaste, all eroticism drained from the sight of her naked buttocks.

This feeling was not new to him. It was more like a toothache - if not constant, then recurring when one bit down on a roll. The sound of the doorbell came again, more insistent this time, but the woman did not stir.

Making a hissing sound in the back of his throat. Do Puc padded in his bare feet down the hall, through the kitchen and the living-room to open the front door.

There, a young Federal Express agent bade him sign his name on a clipboard, then handed him a small package. As the agent did so, he caught a glimpse of the image tattooed on the inside of Do Duc's left wrist. It was a

human face. The left side was skin-colored, its eye open; the right side was blue with dye, and where the eye should have been was a vertical crescent.

The agent gave an involuntary start, then recovered himself, and hurried off. Do Duc turned the package over. He saw that it had come from a store in London called Avalon Ltd. He offered a strange smile to the already insubstantial house around him.

With the door closed behind him, he unwrapped the package. Inside was a dark-bfue matt box within which he found a pair of socks swaddled in hunter-green tissue paper. The socks, green and white striped, had what seemed to be a pattern running down their outsides. Do Duc stepped into the kitchen where the sunlight slanted in through the large eastern-facing window.

It was then that he saw the words emerging from the pattern. They were in a vertical strip down the outside of each sock. PRIMO ZANNI, they said.

The packaging dropped from Do Duc's hand, and he felt the slow thud of his heartbeat. He sat on an aluminum and plastic chair while he donned the green and white socks. Then he walked through the house, looking around each room as he passed through it, fixing them all in his mind.

At length, he returned to the bedroom. He went to his closet, pulled down his dusty overnight bag, thrust into it what he needed from the closet and his dresser drawers. He found it wasn't much. In the bathroom, he did the same.

Back in the bedroom, he gave one swift glance toward his still sleeping wife before moving his dresser to one side. He took out a folding pocket knife, inserted the blade beneath the exposed edge of the carpet, pried it up.