"R. A. MacAvoy - Black Dragon 2 - Twisting the Rope" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacAvoy R A)

and shaking him in warm fraternal fashion. "But I really feel with you in your reaction. It's really a gut-wrencher
to keep your balance when someone around has lost his. What's important now, though, is to keep your
channels open with the guy."
Pádraig blinked. "To…?"
Martha, who had been combing her hair in the mirror, stopped long enough to laugh at his expression. "That's
Californian, Pádraig."
"Mellowtalk," added Long helpfully. "I believe he means you are to continue to encourage conversation with
St. Ives—or possibly to dredge the mouth of his harbor."
"Now there I'm willing to help," said Elen, with a wicked giggle.
Ted nodded left and right. "Okay, okay, you have my full permission to make fun of me. Any time. Otherwise
I'll start taking myself seriously."
He cracked his neck with the heel of his hand and gave a satisfied yawn. "It's all part of the cycle, friends and
neighbors. What goes around, comes around." He rose, examined his ugly, guitar player's fingernails,
stretched his lean body left and right, and left the room. "Oh, the wavelengths of rapture! Sweet-home
California !" he called back from the doorway and then he was gone.
"He does that on purpose," muttered Martha. "He can talk perfectly good English when he wants to. I think
it's important to him to have some strong ethnic identity."
Elen Evans giggled. "I asked him why the hell he wanted to play Celtoid traditional, when his heart is so
purely new age, and you know what he said? Jigs and hornpipes ground him. Me, they knock flat on my
keister!"
Martha sighed. "And yet Teddy plays his part very well. He has an ear for the traditional sound and he makes
no ruckus. Doesn't seem to go into turmoil like… some."
She grunted and drummed her fingers on her knee. "What grounds him is grinding me down, I think."
Long spoke with some asperity. "That is not the music, Martha, but the musicians. You should take some
privilege as well as responsibility from your position. Forbid George to bother you."
"Forbid…" Martha uttered a one-syllable laugh that was more than half a choke. "My dear, to stop George
from 'bothering' would be simply to stop him from existing!"
"I agree," added Elen. "St. Ives's basic essence…"
"His interest is to convince you all of that, but really he is as capable as the next fellow of coming to terms
with…"
"Dock his wage," suggested Pádraig, with a shade of malice.
Martha put her back to the wall and tucked her skirt neatly around her legs. "I forbid you all to bother me
further about this," she said.
"Oops," said Elen, and they all relapsed into silence.
The walls of the motel room were white, brightened by the light of sky, sea, and pavement. Occupied as it
was by slumped figures and dull faces, it might have been a dentist's waiting room. Marty Frisch-Macnamara
hopped over and pulled the Levolor blind awry to look out at the beach and the Santa Cruz pier. The others,
deprived of their wrangle, hadn't as much energy. They looked at each other.
"I'm sorry," said Pádraig, speaking to Elen. "To be at hitting people in front of you. I'm not a brute."
Her small dark face went round through astonishment. "A brute? You, Pat? Perish forfend!"
Pádraig shifted uncomfortably, because he wasn't quite sure what she had said. His blue jeans gapped a bit
at the waist, for Pádraig Ó Súilleabháin had lost weight on this tour.
Martha, leaning against the headboard of the other bed, slapped both hands on her knees. "Eight weeks,"
she repeated. "This tour has lasted for eight weeks and taken in nineteen American states plus B.C. I think
no one is responsible for anything he or she has said or done in a long while. Except me, for making you all
go through this."
Mayland Long turned toward her. Such was the peculiarity of his attenuated frame that it seemed not only his
head and neck that twisted about, but his whole torso. Sunlight glowed against his suit of raw silk and made
his pale eyes almost yellow, but the brightness could not touch the skin of his face and hands.
"Are you regretting it, Martha?" The question was wondering, and Long folded his hands together (the fingers