"Noel K Hannan - A Night On The Town" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hannan Noel K)

A Night on the Town
a short story by Noel K Hannan
illustrated by Rik Rawling

"El capitalismo convirta a Caracas en un inferno"
- graffiti on Caracas bus station
Miguel is trying so hard to impress her, he really is. He has greased his
hair and brushed his teeth - twice, with the new American toothpaste that
nanotechnically scours your mouth - and lightly rouged his cheeks. He is
wearing his older brother's favourite outfit (Carlos would kill him if he
came back from his school outward bound holiday on Margarita Island and
found him wearing it) - nylon and leather parachutist's boots, baggy
cotton pants and skinny-rib black T-shirt showing off his concave stomach
and multicoloured Inca sunburst tattoo encircling his navel. He looks
gorgeous, like a rich seventeen year old alone with a beautiful young
woman in his family apartment in Nuevo Caracas should look. And still she
is not impressed.
She sits in the moisture-slicked bay window, looking out over the firefly
city as the sun is eaten by a storm sky, toying with a narcotic All-Day
Sucker, her long brown legs dangling naked from the dramatic split in her
halter-necked blood red ball gown. She does not even flinch as the slam
thunder rocks the city. Maria is eighteen years old and a raven-haired
Latin beauty. A year older than Miguel - it may as well be a hundred. She
has made an art form of cynicism and world-weariness. The narcotic
lollipop that Miguel bought her from a street vendor on their way here
should be making her buzz. Instead, it appears to intensify her boredom.
Miguel is desperate. Maria is a goddess, her body curved and voluptuous.
He very much wants to return to school on Monday and boast of his sexual
adventures - which he will of course, even if he does not bed this
impressively unimpressible siren. But the conditions are so right! His
botanist parents away on a field trip in the rainforest - no school until
Monday morning - a Saturday night city stretching and limbering thirty
stories beneath them - his creditocard full and active (Praise Jesus!) and
his father's brand-new red Ford Machos "Matador" Special Edition waiting
in the basement garage. They can go anywhere and do anything. God, what
will it take to make this woman horny?
He slumps in the formocouch and watches her. She slips from the window
sill with a bored sigh and is momentarily highlighted by sheet lightning
as the storm breaks over Nuevo Caracas, wild photons dopplering her bare
shoulders with jungle tiger patterns. She moves toward him with liquid
grace, bare feet padding on thick carpet. She kneels at his feet and
places her hands firmly on his splayed thighs. He stiffens.
"I need to eat," she breathes, running her tongue across her glossy lips.
A faint whiff of lemon drifts from her breath, the scent of the narcotic.
"Take me to dinner," she insists, settling back on her haunches like a
karate fighter awaiting a bout.
He swallows hard before answering her.
"What would you like to eat, Maria?"
Her dark eyes flare. The first sign of passion he has seen since he
brought her here.