"Bradley Denton - We Love Lydia Love" - читать интересную книгу автора (Denton Bradley)

her eyes, and what’s left is a puzzled fear.

“Christopher?” she says. Her voice quavers. Her ribs strain against her skin as
she breathes.

She is looking at my crotch.

What did I tell you?

This was the one area I hoped the surgeons wouldn’t touch, and to my relief
they decided that it was close enough as it was. Christopher had an average body
with average parts, and so do I. So they didn’t change much besides my face and
voice.

But the surgeons couldn’t see me with Lydia’s eyes. And now she’s looking
close for the first time. She’s realizing that I’m someone else.

No. She’s only confused because we’re not excited.

Lydia stops at the foot of the bed and shifts her weight from one hip to the
other. Her tangled hair is draped over her left shoulder. Her lips are even more
swollen than usual.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

Oh. Well.
 Maybe I’m more like Christopher than I thought.

You are Christopher.

Shut up. I can do this myself now. Whoever I am.


LATER I take Christopher’s beat-up white Chevy pickup truck and head for the
H.E.B. in Kerrville. Lydia worries over me as I leave the house, but she doesn’t pitch
another fit. She gives me a cash card with ten thousand bucks on it, kisses me, and
tells me to come home safe, goddamn it. As I let the truck coast down the
switchbacked driveway, I glance into the rearview mirror and see that both Lydia and
the stained-glass eye are watching me. Then the trees obscure them, but I know
they’re still there.

As I reach Texas 27, a guy in a lawn chair under the trees on the far side of
the highway points a camcorder at me. He’s probably only a tabloid ‘razzi, but I
wait until the driveway’s automatic gate closes behind me before I turn toward
Kerrville. After all, Lydia Love has more than her share of obsessive fans. That
hasn’t changed even though she hasn’t recorded and has hardly performed in the
three years since Christopher Jennings came into her life. But I guess her fans know
as well as I do that the phoenix will rise again.

And it will rise thanks to me. To Willie.