Tricks полностью

It turned out that the woman whose apartment they were in was celebrating her sixty-third birthday tonight, which was why there was a party in the first place, never mind Halloween. Her name was Sandra, and she was the one Peaches had been expecting a call from earlier tonight, which was the only reason she'd answered the phone after that heavy-breathing creep got off the line. Sandra was her next-to-best friend; her best friend was the woman who'd thrown the costume party. Still, Peaches liked Sandra a lot, especially because she never expected a present on her birthday. She was a bit surprised, therefore, and somewhat annoyed, when Parker flatly and rudely expressed the opinion that no one over the age of sixty should be asked to blow out all the candles on a birthday cake in a single breath. And she was even more surprised when Sandra burst out laughing and said, "Oh, baby, how true! Who the hell needs such a humiliating stress test?"

Everyone laughed. Even Peaches.

Sandra then blew out all the candles in a single breath, and pinched Parker on the behind and asked him if he'd like the candles on his cake blown. "Out," she added.

Everyone laughed. Except Peaches.

A little later on, encouraged by the attention a lot of these very interesting women were paying to ideas he'd never even known he'd had, Parker ventured a bit closer to home and suggested to a lady trial lawyer that anyone committing a murder was at least a little bit crazy and that therefore the "legal insanity" defense was meaningless. The lady lawyer said, "That's very interesting, Andy. I had a case last week where…"

It was astonishing.

Parker said to a woman wearing horn-rimmed eyeglasses and no bra that he found pornographic movies more honest than any of the nighttime soaps on television, and the woman turned out to be a film critic who encouraged him to expand upon the idea.

Parker told a woman writer—a real writer—that he never spent more than five pages with any book if he wasn't hooked by then, and the woman expounded upon the importance of a book's opening and closing paragraphs, to which Parker said, "Sure, it's like foreplay and afterplay," and the woman writer put her hand on his arm and laughed robustly, which Peaches did not find at all amusing.

Peaches, in fact, was becoming more and more irritated by the fact that Sandra had invited her to a party where the women outnumbered the men by an approximate two-to-one and where Parker was suddenly the center of all this female attention. She had liked it better when they were a couple pretending to be a cop and a victim. They were sharing something then. Now Parker seemed to be stepping out on his own, the small-time flamenco dancer who'd been offered a movie contract provided he ditched his fat lady partner. This miffed Peaches because for Christ's sake she was the one who'd introduced him to show biz in the first place!

When the female midget walked in at twenty-five minutes to twelve, Peaches immediately checked out the man with her. Burly guy going a bit bald, but with a pleasant craggy face, and a seemingly gentle manner. Five-ten or -eleven, she guessed, merry blue eyes, nice speaking voice now that she heard him wishing Sandra a happy birthday. Sandra took their coats and wandered off, muttering something about mingling. Peaches moved in fast before the other sharks smelled blood on the water. She introduced herself to the man and the midget—

"Hi, I'm Peaches Muldoon."

"Quentin Forbes. Alice…"

—and then took the man's arm before he could finish the midget's name, and said, "Come on, I'll get you a drink," and sailed off with him, leaving the midget standing there by the door looking forlornly and shyly into the room.

Parker had never seen a more beautiful woman in his life.

He went over to her at once.

"Small world," he said.

And to his enormous surprise—the night was full of surprises—she burst out laughing, and said, "I feel like a fire hydrant waiting for an engine company. Where's the bar?"

Hal Willis came into the squadroom at twenty minutes to midnight. The teams usually relieved at a quarter to the hour, and so he was early—which was a surprise. Nowadays, ever since he'd taken up with Marilyn Hollis, he was invariably late. And rumpled-looking. He was rumpled-looking tonight, too, giving the impression of a man who'd leaped out of bed and into his trousers not five minutes earlier.

"Getting a bit brisk out there," he said.