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

clothes, some of other eras, long-waisted jackets complete with tails and
spats.
One man stood under the fake gaslight beside the door, his skin so pale it
looked bloodless, his hair slicked back like a thirties gangster's, his eyes
hollow dark points in his empty face. He supervised the attendants parking the
cars, giving directions with the flick of a bejeweled right hand. When he saw
me, he nodded as if I were expected, and inclined his head toward the door.

I flitted through. A blonde woman, her hair in a marcel, gripped my arm as if
we
had come together, her bow-shaped lips painted a dark wine red. The crowd
parted
for us, and she said nothing just squeezed my ann, and then disappeared up a
flight of stairs to the right.

It was impossible to judge the house's size or decor. People littered its
hallways, sprawled along its stairs. Waiters, carrying trays of champagne
aloft,
slipped through the crowd. Tables heaped in ice and covered in food lined the
walls. The orchestra played on the patio, and couples waltzed around the pool.
Some of the people had a glossy aura, as if they were photographs come to
life.
I recognized a few faces from the jumble of Wall Street, others from the
occasional evening at the Met, but saw no one I knew well enough to speak to,
no
one with whom to have even a casual conversation.

When I arrived, I made an attempt to find my host, but the two or three people
of whom I asked his whereabouts stared at me in such an amazed way, and denied
so vehemently any knowledge of his movements that I slunk off in the direction
of the open bar -- the only place on the patio where a single man could linger
without looking purposeless and alone.

I ordered a vodka martini although I rarely drank hard liquor -- it seemed
appropriate to the mood -- and watched the crowd's mood switch as the
orchestra
slid from the waltz to a jitterbug. Women dressed like flappers, wearing
no-waisted fringed dresses and pearls down to their thighs, danced with an
abandon I had only seen in movies. Men matched their movements, sweat marring
the perfection of their tailored suits.

A hand gripped my shoulder, the feeling tight but friendly, unlike Tom's clap
of
the week before. As I looked up, I realized that the crowd of single men
around
the bar had eased, and I was standing alone, except for the bartender and the
man behind me.

Up close, he was taller and more slender than he had looked in the moonlight.
His cheekbones were high, his lips thin, his eyes hooded. "Your face looks