"Nancy Kress - Oaths and Miracles" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

The girl didn't seem to hear. Her eyes, huge and fixed, stared at
something straight ahead and invisible.

"Susie, it's Jeanne. I'm here. What is it? Is it Carlo? Did you have a
fight?"

"Carlo's dead."

Jeanne put out a hand, steadied herself on the side of the stall. Sue
Ann's tone scared her more than the words. "Dead? How do you
know, Sue Ann?"

"I know."

"Did you see it? What happened?"

"What do you think happened? You know what he is. Was." This was
said in the same voice: calm, empty, completely without inflection.
Jeanne's spine turned cold.

"Susie-"

"And now I'm dead, too."

The ladies' room door opened. Jeanne felt her heart skip. A sudden
vertigo took her, like the swoop of a great dark bird, blinding. A
showgirl dashed into the stall next to theirs and muttered, "Damn!" In a
moment urine tinkled into the bowl. Jeanne's vertigo passed and she
could see again: Sue Ann, motionless on the toilet, white to the lips.

"Sue Ann, you've got to get out of here. Now. Kemper says you're
fired anyway."

Sue Ann appeared not to have heard her. "He loved me," she said
tonelessly. "Carlo loved me."

"Now, Sue Ann."

"He did love me. He would have left his wife. Soon."

"Right. Get up. Stand up now."

"I was the first woman he really ever loved. I mean really." Her eyes
stared expressionlessly at the stall door.

Jeanne got to her feet. The weird toneless monologue made her
stomach lift and shiver. She heard the music start onstage for the next
number. She was supposed to be in it; so was Sue Ann. Without them
both the line would look skimpy. Carlo was dead. Panic turned her
angry.