"Kathe Koja - Pas de Deux" - читать интересную книгу автора (Koja Kathe)

own and in one motion she brought their linked hands, his own hand topmost to rise,
fast and sharp to smash under his chin, hit so hard his hand jerked open, her hand
free, the bills falling to the floor and gone then, shoving out the door with her fingers
stinging and burning, burning in the cold outside.
Adele was silent.


"Do y o u " One of the young ones, crouched between her legs, her canted knees
on the futon with its one wrinkled sheet, its coverlet faded to the color of sand. "Do
you have condoms? Because I don't."
"No," she said. "I don't either."
His lower lip thrust out like a child defrauded, a pouting child. "Well than, what're
we going to do?"
"Dance," she said. "We can dance."


She got a job at a used bookstore, erratic schedule, the hours nobody wanted and
every hour, every minute a chafe, an itch unbearable to stand so still this way,
medical textbooks and romance novels, celebrity bios and how-to books once
even Balanchine & Me, which she instantly stuffed into her backpack without
thinking twice; why not? it was hers already and this a better copy, the photograph
sharper, the pages not bent and soft and torn taking money across the counter and
she knew it was wrong, she knew it was not the right thing to do but sometimes she
overcharged for the books, not much, a dollar here or there and pocketed the
money, kept the change, what else could she do? The job paid nothing and took so
much, stole time which she needed, had to have: no studio would hire her, no
company until she was good enough, professional enough to teach and she had
missed so much, lost so much time: she had to make up, catch up, keep working
and there were only so many hours in the day, already she woke at six to dance
before work, work all day and then out to the clubs at night for that other dancing
that while exhausting somehow refreshed her, made her new again, ready to dance
again so what else was there to do?
And sometimes she did not like this either, but her world was full, now, of things
she could not like she let the young men buy things for her, breakfast, a bag of
doughnuts, carry-out coffee which she drank later, cold coffee in the cold, walking
to work at the bookstore and then somehow they found out about the stealing, she
never knew how but they did and they fired her, kept her last week's wages to pay
for what she had taken, and that night she danced as if she were dying, flailing arms
and her head swinging in circles, she felt as if her neck would snap, wanted it to
snap, break and let her head go flying to smash red and gray to silence against the
wall: no prince for you, nothing, nothing from Adele even though she asked: what
would you do? tell me, I need to know, I have to know what to do and afterward,
alone and panting by the bar from which she could not afford to buy a drink,
approached not by one of the young men, no prince but someone else, an older man
in black jeans and a jacket who told her she was one terrific dancer, really sexy, and
if she was interested he had a proposition to make.
 "Naked?"
"Private parties," he said. The smell of menthol cigarettes, a red leather couch
above which hung a series of Nagle nudes and "They never touch you, never. That's
not in the contract, I'm not paying you for that. They're not paying me for that."