"James Morrow - City of Truth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morrow James)

searing your heart, dropping you straight to hell in a bucket of pain. So to speak.

What do you write? I asked.

Doggerel. Greeting card messages, advertising jingles, inspirational verses like you see in—

Sell much?

A grimace distorted her luminous face. I should say I'm anaspiring writer.

I'd like to read some of your doggerel, I said. And I'd like to have sex with you, I added, wincing at my
candor. It wasn't easy being a citizen.

Her grimace intensified.

Sorry if I'm being offensive, I said. Am I being offensive?

You're being offensive.

Offensive only in the abstract, or offensive to you personally?

Both. She slid a wedge of orange into her wondrous mouth. Are you married?

Yes.

A good marriage?

Pretty good. To have and to hold, to love and to cherish, to the degree that these mischievous and
sentimental abstractions have any meaning : Helen and I had opted for a traditional ceremony. Our
son is terrific. I think I love him.

If we had an affair — a furtive smile — wouldn't you feel guilty?

I've never cheated. An affair, I mused. Scary stuff. Guilt? Yes, of course. I sipped my Bloody Mary. I
believe I could tolerate it.

Well, you can drop the whole fantasy, Mr. Sperry, said the stranger, a declaration that filled me with an
odd mixture of relief and disappointment. You can put the entire thought out of your—

Call me Jack. I unpackaged my Danish; the wrapper dragged away clots of vanilla icing like a band-aid
pulling off a scab. And you're—?

Martina Coventry, and at the moment I feel only a mild, easily controlled desire to copulate with you.

'At the moment,' I repeated, marveling at how much ambiguity could be packed into a prepositional
phrase. In a fashionably gauche move I licked the icing off the Danish wrapper (The Mendacity of
Mannershad recently hit the top slot on theTimes bestseller list). Will you show me your doggerel? I
asked.
It's bad doggerel.