"Paul McAuley - The Secret of Life" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mcauley Paul J)

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 Paul McAuley - The Secret of Life

Anything that can be bought can be bought here, in Shanghai.

Pan and scan the restless crowds.

Here's a man ambling along with a slouch hat angled over his face. An American, a businessman—
peacock blue suit, rouged cheeks, blue eye shadow. He plunges down reeking steps into a cellar bar and
orders a beer he does not drink, watching the re-flection of the bar's entrance in the mirror behind the
pairs and trios of naked dancers who, in cones of smoky red laser light, mime rucking with the dazed
compliance of sleepwalkers. After an hour, the American checks his discreet Patek-Philippe tattoo and
moves on, anonymous in the crowds. There are many businesspeople and tourists here, many gwailos.
He passes a Cuban bar, a German bar, an Icelandic bar where customers are handed fur-lined parkas as
they enter—the inside's all ice. Another bar, this one a shack so small its half-dozen customers sit side
by side, serves only whiskey; more than a hundred bottles are racked up behind the bamboo-and-rattan
counter. The American waits until a stool is free and sits and orders a Braveheart on the rocks—despite
the name, it is made in Kenya. He doesn't drink but turns the tumbler around and around in his long,
manicured fingers. Three drunken salary-men are watching a postcard-size TV that shows baseball live
from Tokyo, betting on each pitch in a flurry of fingers and coins.

The bar squats under a sign advertising the Peking Disneyland.

This is the American century.

A young, skinny Chinese man sits beside the American and orders a Rob Roy. They don't talk, but when
the American stands up and leaves the other man gulps down his shot of whiskey and follows him into
an alley, where the American suddenly turns and embraces and kisses him.

The Chinese man is startled and angry and tries to push away, but the American holds him tight. "They
might be watching, so make it real," he says, and kisses the man again, tasting the whiskey on his breath.

They hire a room in a short-time hotel and go up the rickety stairs, stepping between the sleeping bodies
of an entire family, from shrunken grandmother to fretful baby.

The room is tiny and overheated, smells of disinfectant, mold, and sex. It is almost entirely filled by a
gel slab bed covered in purple, vat-grown fur.

The young Chinese man sits down and strokes the coarse fur and says, "My company makes this." His
long black hair is brushed back from his round face; his skin is sallow and shiny with sweat. The width
of his smile is a precise index of his discomfort.

The American tosses his hat onto the bed and says impatiently, "Let's do it."

The Chinese man, his eyes fixed on the American, slowly pulls a pair of flat-ended tweezers from the

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 Paul McAuley - The Secret of Life

inside pocket of his snakeskin jacket. He uses them to lift up the nail of his left thumb, picks a glass