"Enchanted, Inc" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swendson Shanna)

a onetime situation, this Brooklyn-bound N train will stop next at City Hall. If you need stops
prior to this, please exit the train here and board an R train or another N train. Thank you." There
was a chorus of mutters and groans as passengers poured out of the train. I took a now-empty seat
and looked at my watch. At this rate I'd be early to work. This wasn't a bad way to start the week.
Mr. Right was still on board, as was Miss Airy Fairy. Mr. Right exchanged a grin with the guy
sitting next to me. I turned to look at that guy and then wondered if there was a polite way I could
move to another seat without it being obvious that I was avoiding him.

He looked like the kind of guy who spends his lifetime defending against sexual harassment
charges, the kind who thinks of himself as so irresistible that he can't imagine his advances being
unwanted. Unfortunately, that type is never as attractive as he'd like to think. This one wasn't
exactly hideous. With a little effort and the right personality he might not have been so bad.
Unfortunately, he made no effort at all, so that his hair was poorly styled and greasy, while his
skin would have made my mother, the Mary Kay representative, faint in horror. But he acted like
he thought every woman on that train should be drooling over him, which made him even more
unattractive to me. The funny thing was, all the women on the train were looking at him over the
tops of their books and newspapers like they thought Pierce Brosnan had joined us on the subway
car, and he grinned at them like he was totally used to that kind of attention. Maybe they could
tell he was particularly well-endowed. Or maybe he was a famous rock star I didn't recognize. I
wasn't hip enough to know what most rock stars looked like. He had the kind of smug slickness
you'd expect from a famous rock star who didn't have to do anything to make women fall at his
feet. As for me, I'd rather look at Mr. Right, who was getting his fair share of admiring glances
but who looked shy about it, not like he expected the attention. That made him infinitely cuter in
my book. "On your way to work?" Slick asked. It wasn't among the top five pickup lines I'd ever
heard. Not that I heard a lot of them. "Actually, I just like being crammed like sardines in an
underground tin can to head to lower Manhattan in the morning," I said. He stretched his arm out
along the back of the seat, like he was angling to put his arm around me. I'm from a part of the
world that still has drive-in movies, so I recognized the move and edged away as subtly as I
could. "You're obviously not a native New Yorker," he said, oozing charm like my dad's old
tractor oozes oil. "I love your accent." Little did he know, but he wasn't paying me a compliment.
As effective as the steel magnolia routine could be when I was asking for something or trying to
get my way, it was a liability at work, where everyone seemed to think my Texas drawl meant I
was dumber and less educated than they were. I'd been trying to lose my accent, but it kept
slipping out when I was being particularly sarcastic. I guess I inwardly thought the drawl took the
sting out of whatever ugly thing I'd just said. In this case, it seemed to have worked, just when I
didn't want it to. I wished I'd brought a book to bury my face in, but I'd planned to walk to and
from work when I left the apartment, so I hadn't brought anything to read. In fact, the only things
in my oh-so-professional-looking briefcase were my sack lunch and my dressier shoes for the
office. Instead, I just gave Slick a glare and turned my attention to Mr. Right. Maybe he'd have a
Galahad complex and feel compelled to rescue me from the subway stalker. Then I noticed that
Slick was looking at Mr. Right as well, and suddenly his face was totally serious. Mr. Right, also
serious, nodded his head slightly. Miss Airy Fairy was also staring at me. Now I couldn't help but
wonder if this was a conspiracy. Were they going to rob me or try to scam me? Goodness knows,
I might as well have been wearing a big yellow button saying "Hick from Out of Town! Please
Take Advantage of Me!" Just then the door between cars opened and a giant chicken entered our
car. To be more precise, it was a bored-looking man in a chicken suit--and how sad was it that he
was more bored than embarrassed to be wearing that costume in public? I added to my mental list
of jobs that were worse than mine.

He shook a little plastic box in his left hand, and clucking sounds came out of it. I felt a pang of