"A Taint in the Blood" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stirling S M)

“See my eyes so gold

She opened it and said: “Yes? Oh, Do?a Adrienne! Yes, of course.”

For a moment she closed her eyes and whispered: “Thank God!”

Then: “Shall I make dinner?” A giggle. “Just me? At seven? I’ll see you then!”

A brilliant smile at all of them. “Speak of the devil!”

She keyed another number. “Mom? Oh, hi, Mom, I need you to pick up Josh and Sophie from the Judo and dance classes and take them overnight. Yes, I’ve got company coming. I don’t know if I’ll be up to bringing them home tomorrow, no. It depends on, you know, how wild things get. Call me in the afternoon. OK? Love you too, Mom! Bye!”

She left with a smile and a wave. Jose washed out his beer bottle and left it upside down in the drainer.

“Well, I’m going to go visit my folks,” he said. “It was really nice meeting you, Ellen. You have any trouble with the car, the plumbing, just let me know. The guys from up the hill are on call, but I’m on hand! We usually have a potluck BBQ on Sunday. It’s my turn next.”

He left; Peter sat in companionable silence for a moment. Ellen drank the last of the coffee, looked down and realized she’d also eaten the last of the brownies without even noticing, which wasn’t like her.

“That was David Bowie,” she said eventually. “On the ringtone. But aren’t the words to that song See my eyes so green? I’ve heard it a couple of times. Giselle… my boss at the gallery… likes him.”

“The Do?a had him cut a special version for her,” Peter said.

Silence fell for another few moments. At last: “Monica…” she said. “Monica’s completely insane, isn’t she?”

Peter shrugged. “I prefer to think of it as excessively well adjusted. She really is as nice as she seems; the Susie Homemaker thing isn’t put on, either. And her four-cheese lasagna is to die for.”

He grinned. “Though sometimes I feel I should become a vegetarian. It would be appropriate, somehow…”

Then he did an alarmingly realistic “moooooooo!”

Ellen laughed, despite the crawling sensation between her shoulder blades.

“It does give you more sympathy for their position, doesn’t it? God, I feel bloated. I don’t generally eat as a displacement activity, but this has been a rough couple of days. Forty-eight hours ago, my only problem was figuring out how to tell my boyfriend it was over with us and worrying about how he’d react. Is there any place you can run, around here? I usually do three miles a day minimum.”

“There are some great trails in the hills, if you don’t mind steep.”

“Hey, I’m from New Mexico too!”

“Meet you in half an hour, then?”