"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Except the Music" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

She had stood out, even on the first night of the festival, wearing a lavender silk blouse that made her
honey hair seem blond. She was statuesque, overdressed for the Oregon Coast, and yet, he had a sense
then--which he still had--that she had dressed down for every one of the concerts she attended. Her hair
was long, where most of the middle-aged women wore theirs too short--and she wore no make-up: she
needed none.

"You seem startled," she said, and that was when he realized how ridiculous he looked. He still had his
shoe in his hand, one sock-clad foot resting on his knee, his shirt unbuttoned and his pants unzipped.

A man who was trying to escape. A man who was done with this one-night stand, as pleasurable as it
had been.

A man who should have known better, but had--even at the ripe old age of forty-five--let his penis get
the best of him.

"I just never heard anyone claim they specialized in death before," he said.

"I don't specialize," she said. "I dabble."

She fumbled in the end table's only drawer, finally pulling out a cigarette with an air of triumph. Max
winced. The place didn't smell of tobacco, but apparently that didn't mean anything. She hadn't tasted of
tobacco either. Maybe the cigarette was of a different kind.

She lit it, and he realized he was both right and wrong: the cigarette was a different type--he just hadn't
expected to smell cloves instead of marijuana.

"I wouldn't have bought the season tickets if it weren't for the Mozart on the bill." She took a long drag
from the cigarette, then let the blue smoke filter slowly out of her lungs. "I so love that requiem. I think it's
the best of all of them."

Max didn't; he preferred Fauré's. "Mozart never finished it. There's some argument about how much
of it is his work."

"Precisely." She jabbed the cigarette toward him with the movement of a long-standing smoker. "A
requiem partially composed by a dead man. Don't you find that amazingly appropriate?"

"I think it's more appropriate that I find my coat before I leave." He slid the other shoe over his foot. "Did
you see where I dropped it?"

She gave him a wicked smile. "I wasn't looking at your clothes."

He gave her a wicked smile in return. No sense letting her know that she was freaking him out.

He stood, looked around the small space for the tuxedo jacket that had cost him more than she probably
paid for everything in this place. He remembered this feeling; he'd had it in his twenties before he married,
this sinking sensation that if he had simply taken five minutes to talk with the woman before slipping into
bed with her, he would never have touched her.

Then he saw the jacket, lying in a heap on top of a fake Persian rug.