"Kelly,_James_Patrick_-_Ninety_Percent_of_Everything" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kelly James Patrick)

Me, strong? I had some trouble catching my breath. I thought I knew what was coming next, and I wasn't sure I wanted to hear it.
"What do you think of me, Liz?"
"I don't know," I lied. "I think you're rich."
"Is that good or bad?"
A part of me wanted him to like me. And I didn't want to hurt his feelings. Then I remembered the way he'd brushed me off for some bimbo in a motel room. Maybe it was the wine, the night, his self-absorption, but I couldn't take it any more. "I don't understand you, Wetherall. Good or bad? I suppose it wouldn't be so bad if you would grow up and do something with your money. But what do you do? You buy a company so you can eat ice cream all day long. You hide behind avatars. You wear disguises. You play with your lasso. You sleep with supermodels. You hire people so that you can deal with them only on your own terms. You build a huge toy house, float it someplace as far away from human contact as you can manage, take drugs to scramble your senses so you can ignore the stink of the pile of shit you're hovering above, and stare at the pretty jewels. Is that the best you can come up with?"
Wetherall didn't say anything. The silence stretched. Suddenly I wished he'd get mad, tear into me, tell me off for my perpetual smart mouth. He just stood there.
"Let's go back," he said. "I'm tired."
I felt as churned up as if _he'd_ assaulted _me_. "I'm sorry," I said. "I don't know what's gotten into me tonight."
"Too many nosegays."
"Maybe. I've said too much."
We walked in silence back to Laputa. Later, I lay awake trying to figure out why I had unloaded on him so mercilessly.
* * * *
The next morning Wetherall was gone. No farewells, no nothing. His avatars called several times in the days that followed, but none of them brought up our starlight stroll in the desert. I tried to justify what I had said -- he had asked me, hadn't he? -- and concentrated on my work.
The pattern of the three dark shitpiles on the white Eastline salt flats struck some obscure chord in my mind. I ran schematics of all five shitdog sites through my computer, trying to isolate some algorithm common to all of them. Surely all this was not without some meaning.
* * * *
Meantime, construction on Queen Jolly Freeze continued.
Three or four nights later, I was staring in a trance at recent pix of the Pile A jewel cluster when Nguyen stopped by my room. "Knock, knock," he said, standing in my doorway. He had a winebell of Pommery & Greno tucked under an arm, two glasses in hand.
"If this is a joke," I said, "go away. If not, come in and open that."
He set the glasses on my desk. Self conscious about my woolgathering, I touched a key and the image on the screen was replaced by a graph of pile growth rates at each of the five shitdog sites. Eastline had shot well into the lead. Nguyen raised an eyebrow -- he knew I still hadn't reported the change to Wetherall.
But he didn't speak of it. "Have you noticed what nosegays do to champagne?" He opened it and filled my glass halfway, finishing with an absurd flourish.
I took the glass from him.
"What does it smell like to you?" he said.
I sniffed. "Shoe polish?"
"Not unpleasant, but probably not worth sixty dollars a bell either." He shrugged. "Smell is not something many architects bother with, you know. It's hard to design for, though every building has its own peculiar odor. A castle smells different from a grass shack. Laputa smells nothing like Monticello. I have a colleague, Utrini, who installs olfactors in every room that he builds. He claims a scent palette in the thousands." Nguyen paused. "What do we smell like to them?" He gestured out the window. "The shitdogs?"
"I don't know that they have a sense of smell," I said. "But if they do, the fact that they've created such an intense odor source and stay so close to it is suggestive."
"Maybe they think we stink?"
I touched my glass to his. "One man's champagne is another man's cod liver oil."
His grin was fleeting. "We're uncomfortable with scent," he said, "because it reminds us that we're animals. That's why we tend to repress all but a few more or less pleasant aromas. We don't like to admit how powerful smell is in our lives." He fell silent for a moment, considering. I refilled his glass. "I've spent more time thinking about smell in past few days than I have my entire life."
I wondered if he were flirting with me. "What's this all about, Nguyen?"
He gave me an odd, detached smile. "Have you considered the potential of nosegays as an aphrodisiac?"
"Now you sound like Wetherall." I felt my cheeks flush. All those bubbles in the champagne.
"You shouldn't believe everything you see on _America, America_. You've met the man. Did he strike you as any kind of ladykiller?"
"No," I said, "but then, we have no interest in each other."
"Ah, but that's my point exactly. For instance, I have no romantic intentions toward you, Liz. Whatsoever."
"You say the sweetest things, Nguyen."
"I'm not trying to insult you," he said. "I think you're charming and intelligent. I hope that I've earned some small measure of your friendship. But without going into grisly details, let's just say that you're not my type."
"I see. And why is it important I know this all of a sudden?"
Nguyen tugged at the cuff of his shirt. "I'm finding that nosegays stimulate my libido in a very unwelcome way."
I just stared.
"It's nothing I can't control. But every so often when I catch your scent I feel ... eroticized. Very unprofessional, but there it is. I just wanted you to know why, the other night at dinner, I had to leave so abruptly, for example. I wouldn't want you to think I was being rude."
I knew now my cheeks were burning. "And you think this has something to do with nosegays?"
He nodded. "I'm quite sure. I take it you haven't noticed any similar reactions?"
I shook my head.
"Then you are lucky." Again he raised his eyebrow, as if I wasn't quite getting the message. "Or perhaps it is only the male of the species."
"What if I switched soaps?" I said. "Or tried some kind of perfume? Would that help?"
"No," he said wistfully. "I believe that would make it worse."
* * * *
Nguyen left half a bell of champagne behind. I finished it for him without really intending to. I was dumbfounded by his confession. I turned it over and over, like a chipmunk with a long, lost acorn. Was it a come-on?
Finally I reached for the phone and punched in a call to Wisconsin. Aunt Lindsay answered. Her hair was done up in orange cornrows -- a new style for her, but then she changed styles just about every other semester. "Liz!" she said. "I'm so glad you called! Send me some money."
"You may think that's a joke, Aunt Lindsay, but he's paying me enough that I could buy your house."