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

clothes are very expensive but worn like a Thunderbird puppet's. They don't fit, and neither does he, in
this life or any other.

"Mr. Ween," she recalls.

"Call me D.C. Remember I wanted to buy you a drink, as a grateful client?"

"You're trying to kill me," she says.

He stares at her, impassive. "Not just yet. This is the only time we met, remember, outside the Internet."

Behind him the terminal swirls in her vision, changes slightly, imperceptibly, the colorful plaques of tourist
advertisements now showing images of Jazz Festivals, Mardi Gras, the voices around them suddenly
dripping Southern U.S. honey.

"This is Baton Rouge," she said. "Or New Orleans. And I'd been asked to give a speech at some antique
collector's fair."

"Of which I could only make one afternoon. So I said, let's meet at the airport."

He leads the way through the crowd, people eddying as if preferring not to touch or be near him, to a
elevator doorway.

"The VIP lounge. I'm a member."

"Of course."

They disembark at the top floor of the terminal, a big, gilded room looking over the expanse of tarmac,
the planes taxiing, circling, landing, regular as some clockwork toy. He chooses a window table, and they
sit against a backdrop of metallic, stormbringing sky. As a waitress takes drinks orders, flakes of snow
blow past outside, some briefly attaching themselves to the glass before an ephemeral melting. This isn't
Baton Rouge, she thinks. Not exactly. But what or where it is, I don't know.

Two margaritas arrive, and, as she sips, he gestures sideways with his head.

"See the guy over there, the corner table?"

She follows his gaze, sees a mop of graying hair, thick glasses, a vaguely familiar face.

"That's Stephen King. My man, my kind of dude."

"He looks like a college professor," she says. A brutal one. Well, that's what they have to be these days
to survive, that's what Miles said … At the thought the scene wavers and dims slightly, as if something is
trying to return her to Paris and Miles. No, not so fast, she tells herself. You want to be back there, that's
obvious, but don't rush. Otherwise you'll miss something important.

"A great man," D.C. continues. "To reach into the world's psyche and extract a can of worms, bring out
what scares folks most and rub it in their faces."
He's a good client; she's not about to tell him he's mixing his metaphors.