"George Alec Effinger - City On Sand" - читать интересную книгу автора (Effinger George Alec)

motion exposed her wonderful breasts completely.
Ernst took a deep breath, forcing himself to look into her
eyes. “Do you know what I mean then?”
“Certainly,” she said, with an amused smile. She indicated
her little wagon. “I know that sometimes men want their
scissors sharpened, and sometimes their appetites. And
anyone may have a lucrative avocation, no?”
“When I was young, there was an old man who ground
scissors and sharpened knives. He had a cart very much like
your own.”


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 The City on the Sand
by George Alec Effinger


“There, you see? I am of the acquaintance of a—what shall
I say?—an organ grinder.”
“I don't understand.”
Ieneth shook her head, laughing at his obtuseness. She
motioned for him to come closer. He slid his chair nearer to
the railing. She touched his arm at the elbow, trailing her
fingers down his sleeve, across his hip, and, most lightly of
all, over the bunched material at his crotch. “I will meet you
here in an hour?” she asked softly.
Ernst's throat was suddenly dry. “I will be here,” he said.
****
“A poem,” thought Ernst. “I need a poem. Nothing
impresses the uneducated mind quite like rhymes. But it must
be the right sort, or it will bring nothing but ruin and
humiliation. How the women used to laugh at my romantic
verses! How dismayed I was, left alone on the darkened
balcony, holding the flimsy product of my innocent wit. The
sonnet on the arch of her brow. Good God, how could I have
done it? I wish I could return, go back to those iron moments,
stand behind a curtain and listen to myself. I wonder if I
would be amused. I cannot understand why those brainless
princesses so easily dismissed me; they couldn't have been so
plagued with clowns. I ought to have been kept as a
refreshing antidote to dawning maturity.”
He took out a pen and began to compose on the back of a
soiled napkin. The atmosphere of the Fée Blanche was not the
best for the generation of poetry, he realized. But he also
understood that the unknown recipient of his craft would be
more awed by the simple fact of the poem than by any
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 The City on the Sand
by George Alec Effinger