"Rob Swigart - AKA" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swigart Rob)

"Is that wise?" Avery murmured.
"Well, it should liven things up. The President can't come, but he's sending the Secretary of
State."
"Oh, him," said Avery.
"Yes. And Dr. Merkin and his new wife. She was a Ballinger, I believe. And the
Sparrows."
"Birds?"
 ""No, no," Kay said impatiently, without a smile. "The people. He's in frozen foods. He's
bringing his wife, his mother and his niece, so we have an extra woman. I understand the niece
is, uh, overweight. Do you suppose it would be all right to pair her off with your brother
Nelson? After all, he's also fat."
"Ah, yes. Sparrow Frozen Peas. I'm sure Nelson will do fine for the Sparrow niece."
Kay's buttocks bunched and unbunched across the parquet to the dining room. She carried a
huge spray of goldenrod, to which Avery was intensely allergic. He sneezed.
"And" - she paused to look back at him dragging along behind her - "of course the Countess
is coming."
"Of course."
Avery's daughters, six and eight, tumbled from the solarium. "Come look at Freddie, come
look at Freddie," shouted Alicia Katherine, the oldest. "He's mating with the tortoise, with
Arthur!" Alicia Katherine kept the rabbits; Angela Kismet kept the turtle. She didn't like
bunnies.
"Who's Freddie?" Kay asked through her lemon-sucking lips.
"Freddie's the Dutch gray. Come see. Daddy, come see, Freddie's mating with Arthur."
"That certainly is interesting, pumpkin," said Avery. Both his daughters had their mother's
stiff orange hair and amoebic freckles. "I should certainly like to see that."
The animal cages were mounted on a large three-tiered trolley so the girls could wheel their
pets from room to room. Besides the five rabbits there was Arthur, the Galápagos tortoise; two
boa constrictors, small and unnamed as yet; a coatimundi named Pecker; a cage with a fluid
population of gerbils whose patriarch was named Pee Pee; and on top a revolting parrot in
midmolt named Fats.
Freddie, the Dutch gray, was in the cage with Arthur, who weighed fifty-three pounds, but
Freddie was no longer humping. He was lying on his side gasping painfully for breath, utterly
spent. Arthur was munching sedately on a cabbage leaf. He looked very wise and serene.
"Don't you think he looks wise 'n' serene, Daddy?" asked Angela Kismet with a lewd wink
Avery wasn't sure he had seen.
"Why, uh, yes, I think he does." He was about to leave when Freddie suddenly leaped up and
went back to work, vainly stabbing at Arthur's vast shell.
"Oh, goody," said Angela Kismet. "I just love reptiles. They're cool."
"That they are," said Avery. Arthur finished his cabbage leaf and began another.
"Wow!" Alicia Katherine was excited. "Do you think they'll mix - a hopping turtle or a
rabbit with a shell?"
Silently August entered the solarium. He was a movie version of a cadaver, slightly green
with opaque eyes and hair that lay submissively on his damp cranium.
"Mrs. Augenblaue would like to speak with you in the dining room, sir. And she wishes the
children to return their pets to their rooms." His voice seemed to be coming from underground.
Not British, Avery had thought. No, Central Europe somewhere. But Kay simply doted on
him.
 August crept away, and Avery returned to the dining room. "What is it, dear?" he asked, and
sneezed again. The sideboard was covered with vases of goldenrod.
"The Countess just called. She's coming over this afternoon to help me prepare for the party.