"Molly Brown - Women On The Brink Of A Cataclysm" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Molly)

level of intelligence. I'm drunk by the way."
"I'm Joanna Krenski."
"I know who you are. I've still got the charcoal portrait you did of me
for your senior year art project. The damn thing must be worth a fortune
now; I keep meaning to get it valued."
That was the start of our friendship, the second time around.

Eight years later, I was sitting inside this metal egg, surrounded by my
work and my tools and the huge amount of dust they always seem to
generate, and Toni was shouting okay, push the button. Then I opened the
capsule door and Toni was gone and all my work was gone and even the dust
was gone.
I was in a huge, open-plan loft with floor to ceiling windows - that much
was like my studio - but everything had been polished and swept and there
were flowers everywhere. Flowers in vases, flowers in pots, flowers in a
window-box. And then there were paintings of flowers. Dozens of delicate
little watercolours depicting roses and lilies and lilacs completely
covered one wall, each framed behind a pane of sparkling glass. Unframed
oils on canvas stood leaning against every wall, apparently divided into
categories: fluffy kittens, cute children, puppies with big sad eyes. I
could have puked.
A woman was standing with her back to me, painting something on a
medium-sized canvas mounted on a wooden easel. It looked like it was going
to be another puppy. The woman had tightly-permed hair cut just above the
collar - mouse brown gone mostly grey - and she was wearing a white smock
over a knee-length dress. I also noticed she was wearing high heels. To
paint.
Oh God, I thought, just like my mother. I remembered her putting on a hat
and a little string of pearls to attend her first evening art class; she
was like something out of a '50s TV sitcom. And how proud she was of her
little pictures of birds. My mother used to paint birds: little red robins
and yellow canaries, with musical notes coming out of their beaks. She
hung them all over the living room walls. It was embarrassing.
I was going to have to handle this very carefully. The woman was obviously
some old dear of my mother's generation and I was a disembodied head
sticking out of a metallic egg. I didn't want to give the poor woman a
heart attack. I cleared my throat. "Excuse me," I said, "Please don't be
frightened, I'm not a burglar or anything." Even as I said it, I realised
how stupid it must have sounded: a burglar in a metal egg.
The woman swung around, and I gasped.
"You again," she said, quite calmly. "I never expected you to turn up
here."
I felt my mouth open and close half a dozen times, but no words came out.
I just sat there, inside the capsule, gaping like a mackerel. The woman
had my face. She'd let her hair go grey - something I've refused to do -
and she was wearing a string of pearls just like my mother's and a dress I
wouldn't be caught dead in, but based on her face - and even her voice -
she could have been my sister. My twin.
There was an odd smell in the air; I'd noticed it the moment I opened the
capsule door and now I realised what it was. It was bread, baking.