"Blatty, William - The Exorcist (b)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Blatty William P)

The doorbell chimed. Burke Dennings. A lonely man, he dropped by often. Chris smiled ruefully, shaking her head, as she heard him rasp an obscenity at Karl, whom he seemed to detest and continually baited.

"Yes, hullo, where's a drink!" he demanded crossly, entering the room and moving to the bar with eyes averted, hands in the pockets of his wrinkled raincoat.

He sat on a barstool. Irritable. Shifty-eyed. Vaguely disappointed.

"On the prowl again?" Chris asked.

"What the hell do you mean?" he sniffed.

"You've got that funny look." She had seen it before when they'd worked on a picture together in Lausanne. On their first night there, at a staid hotel overlooking Lake Geneva, Chris had difficulty sleeping. At 5 A.M., she flounced out of bed and decided to dress and go down to the lobby in search of either coffee or some company. Waiting far an elevator out in the hall, she glanced through a window and saw the director walking stiffly along the lakeside, hands deep in the pockets of his coat against the glacial winter cold. By the time she reached the lobby, he was entering the hotel. "Not a hooker in sight!" he snapped bitterly, passing her with eyes cast down; and then entered the elevator and went up to bed. When she'd laughingly mentioned the incident later, the director had, grown furious and accused her of promulgating "gross hallucinations" that people were "likely to believe just because you're a star!" He had also referred to her as "simply canting mad," but then pointed out soothingly, in an effort to assuage her feelings, that "perhaps" she had seen someone after all, and had simply mistaken him for Dennings. "After all," he'd pointed out at the time, "my great-great-grandmother happens to have been Swiss."

Chris moved behind the bar now and reminded him of the incident.

"Oh, now, don't be so silly!" snapped Dennings. "It so happens that I've spent the entire evening at a bloody tea, a faculty tea!"

Chris leaned on the bar. "You were just at a tea?"

"Oh, yes, go ahead; smirk!"

"You got smashed at a tea," she said dryly, "with some Jesuits."

"No, the Jesuits were sober."

"They don't drink?"

"Are you out of your cunting mind?'" he shouted. "They swilled! Never seen such capacities in all my life!"

"Hey, come on, hold it down, Burke! Regan!"

"Yes, Regan," Dennings whispered "Where the hell is my drink?"

"Will you tell me what you were doing at a faculty tea?"

"Bloody public relations; something you should be doing."

Chris handed him a gin on the rocks.

"God, the way we've been mucking their grounds," the director muttered; pious; the glass to his lips. "Oh, yes, go ahead, laugh! That's all that you're good for, laughing and showing a bit of bum."

"I'm just smiling."

"Well, someone had to make a good show."

"And how many times did you say 'fuck,' Burke?"

"Darling, that's crude," he rebuked her gently. "Now tell me, how are you?"

She answered with a despondent shrug.