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

exaggerated precision between his lips. Eva found his silence, his meticulous actions, distinctly unnerving. His eyes seemed less penetrable than ever.
If only she didn't want him so much, and need to know that he still loved her. If only she was weak enough to stay at home and be satisfied with what she had.
Outside, a fire siren warbled and whooped along the Avenue of the Stars. Gerard waited until the echoes had died away, and then he said: "You were that suspicious, huh? Suspicious enough to call up David?"
"What would you have done, Gerard, if I'd stayed away for three nights?"
He opened a box of kitchen matches. "You forget that you don't have any reason for staying away nights. I do."
She tried to smile, but her mouth couldn't manage it. "That's obvious enough," she said. "But the reason isn't work, is it? It's her."
"Her?"
Eva nodded toward the half-open office door. "She's the one, isn't she? Francesca?"
Gerard let out an abrupt, uncertain laugh that was almost a cough. "Evie—" he said, "I don't really think you're being very fair to me here—"
"You don't think I'm fair?" Eva interrupted, in an intense whisper. "What the hell do you call fair?"
"I mean understanding," protested Gerard. "I mean you don't seem like you're trying to understand what's going down here."
"What's to understand? You're going to bed with your receptionist!''
"Evie," Gerard said, raising his hand, as if he were fending off a flapping bird. "Evie, every human situation has its two sides. You don't seem to understand that."
Eva turned away. "You're just the same, aren't you?" she said. "Always trying to make me feel guilty for the things that you've done. Well, it won't work this time, Gerard, because I do understand. I understand that you've been leaving me at home to run your house and look after
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your daughters while you go off fornicating with your twenty-five-year-old receptionist.''
Gerard let out a breath.
"Can you understand that I still love you?" he asked her. "Can you understand that what I feel for Francesca hasn't made the slightest difference to my appreciation of what you are?"
She turned back toward him. She was frowning. "Are you serious?" she asked.
"Never more serious in my whole life."
"My God," she said. "I don't believe you sometimes. You treat love and appreciation as if they were brands of tobacco."
He struck a match. It flared up, and there was a sharp smell of burned phosphorus. He kept his eyes on her while he lit his cigar. Then he waved the match to extinguish it, and puffed smoke. Eva hated the smell of cigars.
"I love you, Evie. That's all I can say. If you don't believe me, then I'm really sorry. But it's true."
"Do you love Francesca, too?"
He nodded. "Yes. In a different sort of way."
"What different sort of way? You mean, more sexually? Is she better in bed than me? She's younger, I suppose? Her breasts are more—I mean, her breasts are firmer? And does she do things I won't do?"
Gerard continued to puff at his cigar. "She's different, that's all. She's a different person."
"I see. Different. That tells me precisely zilch."
Gerard held out his hand toward her. She didn't take it. She wished she could. Her anger had almost burned itself out now, and a numb depression was gradually filling her up, as if she were lowering herself into an unpleasantly tepid tub of water. She could feel the tears on her eyelashes, and she knew that if Gerard gave her any sympathy now, any warmth, she was going to be lost.
"Evie," Gerard told her, in a gentle voice, "I'm the kind of man who can never stay still. It's in my nature. You've known that from the start. That was one of the
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reasons you married me. You knew I wanted to go places, make money, widen my horizons."
"I didn't think your horizons included other women," said Eva sharply.
"It was inevitable. It's not a disaster. It won't do anything to break us up. I needed a different kind of relationship with a different kind of woman, and I found it with Francesca. That's all. There's no reason why we should have to make a big production out of it. It's happening all the time."
Eva opened her pocketbook and took out a crumpled piece of tissue. She dabbed at her eyes, and said, "You needn't think I'm crying. I'm angry, that's all."
"You don't have to be angry."
"I don't have toJbe angry? I've found out my husband's unfaithful and all I have to do is congratulate him?"
"You can accept, can't you? Take it for what it is?"
Eva looked at him, and slowly nodded. "I can accept, Gerard, but I can't forgive."
"What does that mean? You want a divorce?"
"I don't know. Yes. I mean, no, I don't."
He came nearer and held her arms. He gave her a wry, comforting smile, almost sad, and she could hardly believe that he was the same Gerard she'd married, the same earnest, ambitious, courteous young man who had given up his seat on a crosstown bus on a wet day in New York, and then sheltered her under his umbrella all the way back to her apartment door. The same young man who had taken her out to Mexican restaurants, and told her over the enchiladas, by the swiveling light of a tabletop candle, that he was going to be rich and famous, and that he wanted her to marry him and come to live in L.A., so that she could share his wealth and his fame, and his love too.
Here he was—rich, well known in his own business, but distant now, a remote and incomprehensible man who seemed to have sold himself somewhere along the line of their married life to some other idea of what life should really be. He looked the same, and she still adored him the
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same, but his attention appeared to be focused someplace else.
She saw herself in the amber-tinted mirror on the other side of the office. She looked pale and odd, but far less distraught than she'd imagined. In fact, she was surprised at her calmness. Gerard's back, dark and tall, looked like the back of a complete stranger.
"Well," said Gerard. "What are you going to do? If you're not going to divorce me—what?"