"Lucy Sussex - Matricide" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sussex Lucy)

wandering around, seeing sights, Miles's Paris.

"What is your dream life?"

He answers unhesitatingly. "A studio apartment in a building so full of history the similes fail me. Writing
my books. Being a consultant on various art and museum projects, even a film. Just being here."

"I can see why."

He nods, staring back into her face. And so the day passes. Without a word being spoken, just the
pressure of her gloved hand on the woollen sleeve of his greatcoat, after dinner they go back not to her
hotel but to his apartment. If a pass has been made, she has caught it. And so she falls into his bed, to
sleep profoundly, the bulk of his body keeping a chaste distance, on that night at least.

As her head hits his feather pillow in its cool linen cover, the images of Paris slowly fade. They are
replaced by something closer in time, something painful: a doctor's surgery in Brooklyn. A vial of yellow
liquid, as yellow as the good French wine she drank with Miles, sits on the table. Beside it, a sensor
slowly turns a lurid pink.

"It was just a one-night stand," she says.

Or rather a succession of one-night stands, every time I flew into Paris … To the studio apartment, a
small space, monastic in its simplicity, the furnishings of good quality, from china to towels, but austere
and plain. Everything is functional, no thing extraneous or frivolous. And this from an expert on the beaux
arts! She intuits it is a reaction to the collections and collectors he associates with on a daily basis, other
people's frippery …

"Maybe. But my dream life is stripped down to essentials," was all he said. "Paris is an expensive place."

She compares her succession of rooms in share houses, her flats here and there, full of mess, valuable or
otherwise. Working for Sotheby's, then as a freelance, setting up her own business, meant she was
forever discovering arty bits and pieces imminently about to appreciate in value or that she just had to
have. Riots of fabrics, and rugs, paintings and photos, cushions and objets d'art, pouffes and feathers,
bric-a-brac and unalloyed kitsch. Completely unlike the decor chez Miles. There is no place for her here,
she thinks, except as a brief visitor, a one night's guest.

"A one-night stand," she repeats firmly.

The Brooklyn doctor very slightly purses her lips. In answer Sylvie feels first a twinge, then a rush, of
nausea. She turns away from that scene, into the blackness behind her eyelids again. No, she thinks, I'm
going too fast, slow down.

She opens her eyes, to see the terminal again. A man clears his throat behind her."You're Sylvie Lester?"

In answer she reaches for her card carrier, of antique jet, and withdraws the card. Sylvie Lester, Dealer
and Location Service, Antiques, Fine Arts and Collectables.

"Then you're my date."
He looks—there is no other way of saying this—like some sort of Samoan Goth. Dark crinkly hair, a
mid-Pacific face offset by small round shades, black as night, that resemble eyeholes in a skull. The