"Tengu" - читать интересную книгу автора (Masterton Graham)

22
Tengu
Tengu
23
performance which this day demanded of her, she was wearing a dark gray suit with a pencil skirt, and black stiletto shoes. She could have been going to a board meeting, or a funeral.
Eva felt breathless as she waited in the deserted lobby for the elevator to take her to the twenty-seventh floor. She began to bite at her pearl-pink nails, and then stopped herself. She hadn't bitten her nails since she was an overweight young student in New York, plain and agonizingly shy, and hopelessly infatuated with an overbearing slob of a business administration senior called Hank Pretty. Her life in those days had been haunted by slipping grades, headaches, and the vision of spending the rest of her years with a man whose body stank of sweat and whose mind had about as much charm and order as the morning after Mardi Gras.
Eva and Hank had fought. Hank had hit her. She had spat red blood into the rose-colored washbasin, and the whole world had seemed to be coming to a close.
She hadn't attempted suicide, though. Eva had never been the suicidal type. These days, she put on weight when she was anxious, eating too many taco chips and guacamole, and she smoked, too. But she had the painful strength to make appointments with her fears and face up to them, as if her fears were imaginary doctors with bad news about her smear, or phantom dentists with bicuspids to pull.
She sometimes wished she had no strength at all, and could readily sacrifice herself to Gerard's faithlessness without a struggle. But she couldn't, and wouldn't. She was too much like her father. Ornery.
The elevator bell softly chimed the arrival of the twenty-seventh floor. The doors rumbled open and Eva stepped out. On the wall in front of the elevator bank was a brushed-aluminum sign with the inscription CROWLEY TOBACCO IMPORTS, INC. LOS ANGELES—CHICAGO —MIAMI. She stood and looked at it for a moment, because she remembered the day it had first been screwed in-
to place. Then she walked evenly along the corridor toward the tinted glass doors of the office itself.
It was a few seconds before eight o'clock. Gerard had always started work early. When they had first married, nineteen years ago, she had hardly ever seen him in the mornings. He had been out of bed and jogging along Lexington Road well before six, and she had only woken up at seven o'clock when the door of his Riviera slammed and the engine whistled into life. The kitchen would be left like the mess deck of the Marie Celeste—half-eaten crispbread, spilled milk, letters ripped open and left on the table—and there would never be any husband around to prove who had done it.
In later years, though, Eva had woken up earlier. Some mornings Gerard had opened his eyes, and she had been lying there watching him. He had mistaken her steady gaze for affection, even for adoration. In fact, she had been considering the empty and ungraspable nature of their marriage, and wondering who he really was.
She loved him. She had always known that. She wanted to stay married to him. But she had never been able to decide whether he loved her in return or simply used her as a hostess, and mother, and occasional bed partner. He always called her "Evie," and for three of their nineteen years she had protested about it. Then she had given up.
She opened the office door. There were decorative plants and white vinyl chairs, and a wide teak desk. There was nobody around. Eva waited for a moment, and then crossed the reception area to the door marked GERARD F. CROWLEY, PRESIDENT. She felt peculiarly numb, and her hesitation in front of the door seemed to last for whole minutes.
Here I am, she thought. I've seen him so tired that he was weeping. I've seen him laugh. I've seen him sick, and I've seen him happy. I've seen every detail of his naked body. The pattern of moles on his thigh. The curl of his pubic hair. I've borne him twins. And yet I'm standing in front of his office door, almost too frightened to knock.
She knocked.
J
24
Tengu
There was a pause. Then his voice asked, "Who is that?"
In a dry, tight falsetto, she said, "It's me."
"Evie?" he queried.
She opened the door. The office faced east, and it was suffused with the milky light of morning. Gerard, dark and unshaven, and wearing a black shirt with the sleeves rolled up, was sitting behind his wide white desk. On the corner of the desk, her eyes wide with anticipation, was his receptionist Francesca, auburn-haired, tall, and dressed in skin-tight white cotton jeans and an olive-green silk blouse.
There was a silver cigar box on Gerard's desk. It had been Eva's tenth-anniversary present to him. It was engraved: "With undying love, your Evie." That was how much he had taken her character away from her.
Gerard said, "You're up early."
He was a very lean man, with thick black wiry hair that was just beginning to turn gray. His face was long and angular, with a thin, sharp nose and sharply defined lips. His eyes were deep-set and dark, and yet she had always felt they were oddly lacking in expression. You couldn't look at him for very long without having to glance away in search of something more sympathetic.
Francesca stood up. Eva was conscious of the receptionists's breasts, shifting under the thin silk of her blouse. Thirty-six C cup, she guessed, but definitely braless today. There were cheap silver puzzle rings on the girl's fingers, and Eva could almost picture those fingers clutching Gerard's stiffened penis. The same way any prizewinner holds a trophy.
"I, er—Evie, it's good to see you," said Gerard. He stood up, and came around his desk to greet her. He was far taller than she was, nearly six two, but somehow he seemed shorter today, diminished.
Francesca said uneasily, "I think I'll go make that coffee now.''
"Sure," said Gerard, with pretended ease. "Would you
Tengu
25
like some coffee, Evie?"
Eva shook her head. "I don't think so, thank you."
There was a moment of tension. Gerard rubbed his hand across his mouth, as if he was unconsciously making sure that there were no traces of strange kisses. "Well," he said, "I kind of guessed that you wouldn't."
Francesca was still standing by the door, and Gerard glanced across at her and closed his eyes briefly in a catlike expression which meant. You go make coffee, I'll handle this. Francesca paused, then left, leaving the office door fractionally ajar.
"Sit down, why don't you?" Gerard asked Eva, indicating a white revolving armchair.
Eva said: "No, thank you. I don't think it's going to take me long to ask you where you've been these past three nights.''
He was walking back around his desk. He looked up at her, his dark head outlined against a bright golden painting of drying tobacco leaves. "Where I've been?" he asked her. "You know damn well where I've been."
"You've been working three days and three nights without sleep?"
"Almost. I had paperwork up to here." He raised his hand up to the level of his eyes.
"The Turkish consignment?"
He narrowed his eyes. "Mostly."
"So David Orlando's lying?"
"David Orlando? David's in Dallas."
Eva lowered her eyes. "I know he is," she said softly. "I called him there yesterday. He told me he handled the Turkish consignment all by himself, and finished up two days ago. He also told me you had almost no work in the office this week, and that you wouldn't be pushed until early next month."
Gerard stared at her for almost half a minute, without speaking. Then he opened his silver cigar box, hesitated, and finally chose a small Havana. He reached for his cutters, snipped the end off the cigar, and placed it with
26
Tengu