"Leslie What - The Cost Of Doing Business" - читать интересную книгу автора (What Leslie)

Tompkins on the second floor: hiring a young woman instead of a middle-aged man makes the deal a
little sweeter.
The transaction is completely legal, but the big man feels enough shame about his cowardice that he
works himself into a sweat; he pauses to dab his forehead with a handkerchief. When he brings it away,
his brow is still furrowed. The wrinkles on his face are set, like a shirt that has been abandoned, doomed,
doomed for the rag bin. He looks around the room, paying attention to his surroundings for the first time.
She's decorated well out front. Out here, where she shows her pub-lic face, it's perfect. The walls
are painted a fleshy tone called "Peach Fizz." Her costumes are one-of-a-kind and are displayed in a
glass case. The overstuffed chairs are from Ethan Allen, with top-of-the-line fabrics that the sales
associate promised could take a lot of abuse. Her desk is an Eighteenth-Century French copy, and there
are several abstract oils she bought at an uptown gallery, all by the same artist, someone kind of fa-mous
(though not so much as to be overpriced) whose name she can't ever remember. She doesn't understand
abstract painting; it's just that re-alism bothers her.
Her office is nothing like the backroom where she lives. There, the floors are scratched and bare,
save for the ripped mattress where she sleeps. Paint peels from the walls like skin from an old sunburn.
On the small table where she takes her meals sits a shrine dedicated to her daughter. There's a
gold-rimmed snapshot, surrounded by dried wreaths and flowers, plastic beads, a favorite book. A
shower takes up a quarter of the room; a small refrigerator covers what would otherwise be the counter
space and that's okay. She doesn't need much room and she doesn't want much counter space.
Anything that can't be eaten cold right out of the container isn't worth eating.
Just then the telephone rings, and the big man says, "Aren't you going to get that?"
It's probably some idiot calling to ask if she'll have her pants pulled down in front of a minister, or if
she'll let some guy's boss chew her out in front of all his coworkers. "Popcorn" is what surrogates call the
little jobs. Things that fill up space without having much substance. She takes on popcorn occasionally,
when she's in the right mood, but usually refers little jobs to a girl she met one time when she was in the
hospital. That girl is in a bad way and needs all the help she can get. Besides, Zita finds the big jobs
much more satisfying.
"Well," the big man prompts. The phone annoys him; he's the type who would be annoyed by
interruptions. Eventually, the machine picks up, just as she knew it would. "A true emergency would
walk right in without making an appointment. The way you did," she explains.
He nods and she can tell he likes being thought of as a true emergency.
"Anything else you want to tell me?" she says.
"Yeah. These guys are armed. One has a metal pipe and a gun, the other a long knife."
"Sounds doable."
"So, how much do you charge?" he asks, somewhat timidly.
She expects him to say, "I've never done this before." They often say that, even when she knows it
isn't true. The big man doesn't say it, but she knows that's what he's thinking.
She takes her time before quoting a price. The only reason to ask for more than she needs is to
impress upon customers the value of her service. She doesn't really care about the money; she's not in
business for that. There are a hundred Licensed Surrogates in her state. She doubts if one of them cares
about money. No amount could make up for what she goes through every day, what they all go through.
She states her fee. "My standard rate," she says. "Plus expenses."
"You'll take it all? Everything they dish out?" he asks.
She nods. That's what she does. She takes it all, every bit of it, so that important people like the big
man can avoid suffering.
He reaches into his coat pocket for his wallet and his credit card. "Those guys looked pretty mean.
There might be scarring."
"Those are the expenses."
 They both laugh, but his is more like a grunt. The whole experi-ence must be quite a strain on his
heart: his breathing quickens, his lips fade to a powdery blue. When the card changes hands, his fingers