Цитаты из книги Птицы Америки

“It says here, ‘Darling, is there life on Mars? Yes or no.’ ” Mack has gone back to thinking about the paintings. “I say no,” he says absently. “Hmmm,” says Quilty, putting the card down. “I think the answer is yes. Look at it this way: they’re sure there are ice crystals. And where there is ice, there is water. And where there is water, there is waterfront property. And where there is waterfront property, there are Jews!”

In the mornings, the phone rang too much, and it sometimes annoyed Mack. “Are you sans or avec?” Quilty’s friends would ask. They spoke loudly and theatrically—as if to a deaf person—and Mack could always hear. “Avec,” Quilty would say. “Oooooh,” they would coo. “And how is Mr. Avec today?”

Mack himself would be a genius now if only he had been born a completely different person. But what could you do? He’d read in a magazine once that geniuses were born only to women over thirty; his own mother had been twenty-nine. Damn! So fucking close!

“No more weddings,” Albert announces. “No more divorces. No more wasting time. From here on in, I’m just going to go out there, find a woman I really don’t like very much, and give her a house.”

You couldn’t pretend you had lost nothing—you had to begin there, not let your blood freeze over. If your heart turned away at this, it would turn away at something greater, then more and more until your heart stayed averted, immobile, your imagination redistributed away from the world and back only toward the bad maps of yourself, the sour pools of your own pulse, your own tiny, mean, and pointless wants. Stop here! Begin here!

“He had his ‘food’ mew, and I’d follow him to his dish. He had his ‘out’ mew, and I’d follow him to the door. He had his ‘brush’ mew, and I’d go with him to the cupboard where his brush was kept. And then he had his existential mew, where I’d follow him vaguely around the house as he wandered in and out of rooms, not knowing exactly what or why.”

“I’d rather live in Russia,” she said. “I’ll be back around ten or so,” he said.

I tell them dance begins when a moment of hurt combines with a moment of boredom. I tell them it’s the body’s reaching, bringing air to itself. I tell them that it’s the heart’s triumph, the victory speech of the feet, the refinement of animal lunge and flight, the purest metaphor of tribe and self. It’s life flipping death the bird.

“Please don’t think I’m some kind of emotional Epstein-Barr,” he said, quoting from other arguments he’d had with women. “I’m not indifferent or dispassionate. I’m calm. I’m romantic, but I’m calm. I have appetites, but I’m very calm about them.”

“Sidra. This is not right! You need to go out with someone really smart for a change.” “I’ve been out with smart. I’ve been out with someone who had two Ph.D.’s. We spent all of our time in bed with the light on, proofreading his vita.”

“I always thought someday I would have a little girl and name her after my grandmother.” Sidra sighed, peered wistfully into her sherry. “What was your grandmother’s name?” Sidra looked at his paisley mouth. “Grandma. Her name was Grandma.”

He looked around the bar, then back at her. “Is this a great country or what?” he said. She smiled at him, with longing. “Where do you live,” she asked, “and how do I get there?”

“You have the body,” studio heads told her over lunch at Chasen’s. She looked away. “Habeas corpus,” she said, not smiling. “Pardon me?” A hip that knew Latin. Christ. “Nothing,” she said.