"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Beautiful Damned" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

"You must tell me everything that's happened to you," she said, and I did.
Under
her intense gaze my life felt important, my smallest accomplishments a
pinnacle
of achievement. We had reached the terrace before I had finished. A glass
table,
already set for three, stood in the shade of a maple tree. The garden spread
before us, lush and green. Each plant had felt the touch of a pruning shears
and
was trimmed back so severely that nothing was left to chance.

I pulled out a chair for Ari and she sat daintily, her movements precise. I
took
the chair across from her, feeling cloddish, afraid that my very size would
cause me to break something. I wondered how Tom, with his linebacker's build,
felt as he moved through his wife's delicate house.

She shook out a linen napkin and placed it on her lap. A man appeared beside
her
dressed as a waiter -- he had moved so silently that I hadn't noticed him--
and
poured water into our crystal glasses. He filled Tom's as well, and Ari stared
at the empty place.

"I wish he wouldn't call her before lunch," she said. "It disturbs my
digestion."

I didn't want to ask what Ari was referring to. I didn't want to get trapped
in
their private lives.

She sighed and brushed a strand of hair out of her face. "But I don't want to
talk about Tom's awful woman. I understand you live next door to the man they
call Fitz."

I nodded as the waiter appeared again, bringing fresh bread in a ceramic
basket.

"I would love," she said, leaning forward just enough to let me know this was
the real reason behind my invitation, "to see the inside of his home."

Tom never joined us. We finished our lunch, walked through the garden, and had
mint juleps in the late afternoon, after which everything seemed a bit funnier
than it had before. As I left in the approaching twilight, it felt as if Ari
and
I had been friends instead of acquaintances linked by a happenstance of birth.

By the time I got home, it was dark. The house retained the heat of the day,
and
so I went into the back yard and stared at the path that led up to Fitz's