"Harlan Ellison - Troublemakers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

had spurned them, and about the trivia of her past existence. I continued to talk about my loves, about all
the women I had held dear in my heart for however long each had been linked with me. We talked
across each other, our conversation at right angles, only meeting in the intersections of silence at story’s
end.
She wanted a julep and I took her to the Royal Orleans Hotel and we sat in silence as she drank. I
watched her, studying that phantom face, seeking for even the smallest flicker of light off the ice in her
eyes, hoping for an indication that glacial melting could be forthcoming. But there was nothing, and I
burned to say correct words that might cause heat. She drank and reminisced about evenings with young
men in similar hotels, a hundred years before.

We went to a night club where a flamenco dancer and his two-woman troupe performed on a stage of
unpolished woods, their star-shining black shoes setting up resonances in me that I chose to ignore.

Then I realized there were only three couples in the club, and that the extremely pretty flamenco dancer
was playing to Lizette. He gripped the lapels of his bolero jacket and clattered his heels against the stage
like a man driving nails. She watched him, and her tongue made a wholly obvious flirtatious trip around
the rim of her liquor glass. There was a two-drink minimum, and as I have never liked the taste of
alcohol, she was more than willing to prevent waste by drinking mine as well as her own. Whether she
was getting drunk or simply indulging herself, I do not know. It didn’t matter. I became blind with
jealousy, and dragons took possession of my eyes.

When the dancer was finished, when his half hour show was concluded, he came to our table. His suit
was skintight and the color of Arctic lakes. His hair was curly and moist from his exertions, and his
prettiness infuriated me. There was a scene. He asked her name, I interposed a comment, he tried to be
polite, sensing my ugly mood, she overrode my comment, he tried again in Castilian,th -ing hisesses , she
answered, I rose and shoved him, there was a scuffle. We were asked to leave.

Once outside, she walked away from me.

My unicorn was at the curb, eating from a porcelainSèvres soup plate filled withflan . I watched her
walk unsteadily up the street toward Jackson Square. I scratched my unicorn’s neck and he stopped
eating the egg custard. He looked at me for a long moment. Ice crystals were sparkling in his mane.

We were on the downhill side.

“Soon, old friend,” I said.

He dipped his elegant head toward the plate. “I see you’ve been to the Las Americas. When you return
the plate, give my best toSeñor Pena.”

I followed her up the street. She was walking rapidly toward the Square. I called to her, but she wouldn’t
stop. She began dragging her left hand along the steel bars of the fence enclosing the Square. Her
fingertips thudded softly from bar to bar, and once I heard the chitinousclak of a manicured nail.

“Lizette!”

She walked faster, dragging her hand across the dark metal bars.

“Lizette! Damn it!”