"Rusch-BeautifulDamned" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

a mansion in the conservative New England style, white walls hidden by trees,
with only the wide walk and the entry visible from the gate. Once behind, the
walls and windows seemed to go on forever, and the manicured lawn with its
neatly mowed grass and carefully arranged marble fountains seemed like a
throwback from a simpler time.

The house had little life in the daytime, but at night the windows were thrown
open and cars filled the driveway. The cars were all sleek and dark--blue Saabs
and midnight BMWs, black Jaguars and ebony Cararras. Occasionally a white
stretch limo or a silver DeLorean would mar the darkness, but those guests
rarely returned for a second visit, as if someone had asked them to take their
ostentation elsewhere. Music trickled down the hill with the light, usually
music of a vanished era, waltzes and marches and Dixieland Jazz, music both
romantic and danceable, played to such perfection that I envied Fitz his sound
system until I saw several of the better known New York Philharmonic members
round the comer near my house early on a particular Saturday evening.

Laughter, conversation, and the tinkle of ice against fine crystal filled the
gaps during the musicians' break, and in those early days, as I sat on my porch
swing and stared up at the light, I imagined parties like those I had only seen
on film-- slender beautiful women in glittery gowns, and athletic men who wore
tuxedos like a second skin, exchanging witty and wry conversation under a dying
moon.

In those early days, I didn't trudge up the hill, although later I learned I
could have, and drop into a perpetual party that never seemed to have a guest
list. I still had enough of my Midwestern politeness to wait for an invitation
and enough of my practical Midwestern heritage to know that such an invitation
would never come.

Air conditioners have done little to change Manhattan in the summer. If
anything, the heat from their exhausts adds to the oppression in the air, the
stench of garbage rotting on the sidewalks, and the smell of sweaty human bodies
pressed too close. Had my cousin Arielle not discovered me, I might have spent
the summer in the cool loam of my Connecticut home, monitoring the markets
through my personal computer, and watching Fitz's parties with a phone wedged
between my shoulder and ear.

Arielle always had an ethereal, other-worldly quality. My sensible aunt, with
her thick ankles and dish-water blonde hair, must have recognized that quality
in the newborn she had given birth to in New Orleans, and committed the only
romantic act of her life by deciding that Arielle was not a Mary or a Louise,
family names that had suited Carraways until then.

I had never known Arielle well. At family reunions held on the shores of Lake
Superior, she was always a beautiful, unattainable ghost, dressed in white
gauze, with silver blonde hair that fell to her waist, wide blue eyes, and skin
so pale it seemed as fragile as my mother's bone china. We had exchanged perhaps
five words over all those reunions, held each July, and always I had bowed my
head and stammered in the presence of such royalty. Her voice was sultry and