kristja1985: переводы

→It had been a few days since Schuyler had visited Dr. Pat’s clinic, and her new life in New York was finally starting to take shape. That afternoon she and Oliver stopped by the real estate office that was holding the keys to the small studio apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, which Oliver had secured for her, paying a year’s rent in cash. To obscure her identity, Schuyler would pretend to be the only daughter of a single mom: an ex-hippie folk singer who was usually on tour with her band. With Schuyler’s ability to transform her facial features, she could even pretend to be the mom on occasions that demanded it. Mutatio was easier now that she felt like herself again.

→Schuyler had entered the building wearing the hippie-mom mask, and she felt her features relax back into her own as soon as he had closed the door.

→The studio was located in one of the shabbier buildings, as Schuyler had wanted, and it was very small: if she stood in the middle of the room, she could almost touch all four walls with her fingertips. The apartment came furnished with a hot plate, a microwave, and a futon that rolled into a corner. The lone window opened up to a view of the light shaft. Still, it was better than living in a hotel. It was New York. It was home.

→They took the subway across town and ended up in a bustling section of Ninth Avenue, a neighborhood that was a mixture of corporate dormitories for Wall Street newbies as well as shabbier walk-up buildings next to strip clubs and triple-X video stores. But there was a grocery store not too far away, and Schuyler and Oliver loaded up on a week’s worth of food: organic vegetables, a loaf of raisin bread from Sullivan Street Bakery, cans of beans. Oliver pushed her to splurge on the Spanish ham and a block of French double- cream cheese. The clean, wide aisles of the supermarket gladdened her heart; it was good to be back in America again, where everything was so easy and convenient.

→“You don’t have to stay here, you know. My dad has a place downtown, for when he works late. You could stay there,” he told her.

→Hopefully she would still fit into her dress. . . .

→A wry smile played on Mimi’s lips even if her heart suddenly clenched and an image of Kingsley’s smirking face came to mind.

→“Madeleine. Thanks for stopping by,” Forsyth said. “Doris, hold my calls, will you dear?”

→As she walked into the Force Tower that afternoon, she wondered what the senator wanted to talk to her about. Forsyth had never sought out her company before, and they had not spoken about her objection to his crowning.

→“This is a mixed-class elective, and it is seminar-style, which means I will expect my students to participate in discussions and not just doze off or text each other. I don’t promise not to bore you, but you may bore each other if you don’t bring your own thoughts and ideas to the table,” she said brightly, looking around with a cheerful smile.

→This one was different. Miss Jane Murray was an apple-cheeked sturdy woman of early middle age, with bright red hair and a ruddy Irish complexion. She wore a plaid skirt and a yellow shirt with an argyle vest. Her hair was cut in a blunt pageboy and her blue eyes twinkled when she spoke. Miss Murray (she wrote it on the blackboard, and it was decidedly “Miss” not “Ms.” (She had gone to Miss Porter’s, and in her mind a lady was not called by a buzzing sound) did not look like she had been around during the dinosaur era, nor did she have that lost fearful look of the post collegiate.

→The teacher was a newbie, of a different type than the usual Duchesne faculty. Most of the teachers had been at the school forever, and looked it. Madame Fraley taught French, and the students were convinced she’d been at the school since the 1880s. (She probably had, since Madame was a Blue Blood.) Or else they were recent college grads, kids who had somehow flubbed their Teach for America applications and were stuck with a bunch of preppie brats instead of needy hardship cases.

→The course had sounded intriguing, a mixture of history and philosophy, studying the Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians. She took a seat in the middle row, next to Carter Tuckerman, who always smelled like the egg sandwiches he ate for breakfast.

→But somehow she hadn’t really believed they would be gone. During the course of the day she half expected to see Oliver sitting by the radiator in her AP European History class, or Schuyler looking up from her clay pots in Independent Art. Bliss walked to her third class before lunch period, Ancient Civilizations and the Dawn of the West. The first week of school was a shopping period, when students hopped from class to class until they decided which ones they were going to register for.

→Bliss had heard the Force twins were also back at school. She would have to try to contact them as soon as possible. Mimi and Jack had to help her. As she walked to the locker room, noting the names engraved on each metal plate, she saw that Schuyler’s and Oliver’s names were missing. Facing the truth of their absence made her sad. She’d found out finally what had happened to them, something about the Conclave doubting Schuyler’s version of events surrounding Lawrence’s death, and how the two teenagers had decided to run from the Venators rather than face judgment.

→Bliss walked up the steps into the main building, nodding to a few familiar faces. Everyone was still a little tan from a Hamptons or Nantucket summer, the girls not quite ready to give up sundresses and sandals for wool and plaid, while the boys wore their broadcloth shirts untucked and their ties askew, holding their jackets over one shoulder with a rakish air.

→The fall semester at Duchesne always unrolled in the same tradition, never wavering from a schedule of activities that had been set a hundred years ago, or so it must have seemed to the students who were indoctrinated into the soothing, predictable rhythms of cushy private-school life.

→Allegra sighed. “I understand your disappointment in me. I hope that one day you will understand and forgive. There are consequences to every action. It is true, I have deep, deep regrets sometimes. But without your father I would never have had you. I was only with you for such a brief moment of time, but I treasured every moment, with you and your father. I would do it all over again if I had to. So yes. It was worth it.”

→She loved her mother, she did. But she didn’t want an angel who only appeared once in a lifetime to give her some enchanted sword. Schuyler wanted a real parent: one who was there for her when she cried, who encouraged and prodded and annoyed her, a little bit, only because they cared so much. She wanted someone ordinary. Like Oliver’s mom. She had no idea how Mrs. H-P knew where they would be, but every few months a package would arrive at their hotel, and inside would be chocolates and new socks and things they didn’t even know they needed, like flashlights and batteries.

→“My father is dead. And you’re in a coma. I practically grew up an orphan,” Schuyler said, not even trying to keep the bitterness out of her voice. She had never known her father, he had died before she was born. As for Allegra? well, there wasn’t much of a relationship anyone could have with a living corpse, now was there. ‘tell me, Mother, was it worth it? Was your “great” love for my father worth what has happened to your family?”