Английский язык с Крестным Отцом

up and melt all over you just like those girls do on the screen."

Johnny laughed outright. When he had been younger, he had done just such things

and the result had always been stagy (неестественный, театральный), the girls trying

to look sexy and melting, making their eyes swim with desire for an imagined fantasy

camera. He would never dream of singing to a girl now; for one thing, he hadn't sung for

months, he didn't trust his voice. For another thing, amateurs didn't realize how much

professionals depended on technical help to sound as good as they did. He could have

played his records but he felt the same shyness about hearing his youthful passionate

voice as an aging, balding man running to fat feels about showing pictures of himself as

a youth in the full bloom of manhood.

"My voice is out of shape," he said. "And honestly, I'm sick of hearing myself sing."

They both sipped their drinks. "I hear you're great in this picture," she said. "Is it true

you did it for nothing?"

"Just a token payment," Johnny said.

He got up to give her a refill on her brandy glass, gave her a gold-monogrammed

cigarette and flashed his lighter out to hold the light for her. She puffed on the cigarette

and sipped her drink and he sat down beside her again. His glass had considerably

more brandy in it than hers, he needed it to warm himself, to cheer himself, to charge

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himself up. His situation was the reverse of the lover's usual one. He had to get himself

drunk instead of the girl. The girl was usually too willing where he was not. The last two

years had been hell on his ego, and he used this simple way to restore it, sleeping with

a young fresh girl for one night, taking her to dinner a few times, giving her an

expensive present and then brushing her off in the nicest way possible so that her

feelings wouldn't be hurt. And then they could always say they had had a thing with the

great Johnny Fontane. It wasn't true love, but you couldn't knock it if the girl was

beautiful and genuinely nice. He hated the hard, bitchy ones, the ones who screwed for

him and then rushed off to tell their friends that they'd screwed the great Johnny

Fontane, always adding that they'd had better. What amazed him more than anything

else in his career were the complaisant (обходительный, неконфликтный

[km'pleiznt]) husbands who almost told him to his face that they forgave their wives

since it was allowed for even the most virtuous matron to be unfaithful with a great

singing and movie star like Johnny Fontane. That really floored (to floor – валить

наземь, сбивать с ног; смущать, поражать) him.

He loved Ella Fitzgerald on records. He loved that kind of clean singing, that kind of

clean phrasing. It was the only thing in life he really understood and he knew he

understood it better than anyone else on earth. Now lying back on the couch, the

brandy warming his throat, he felt a desire to sing, not music, but to phrase with the

records, yet it was something impossible to do in front of a stranger. He put his free

hand in Sharon's lap, sipping his drink from his other hand. Without any slyness but with

the sensualness of a child seeking warmth, his hand in her lap pulled up the silk of her

dress to show milky white thigh above the sheer netted gold of her stockings and as

always, despite all the women, all the years, all the familiarity, Johnny felt the fluid sticky

warmness flooding through his body at that sight. The miracle still happened, and what

would he do when that failed him as his voice had?

He was ready now. He put his drink down on the long inlaid (мозаичный,

инкрустированный) cocktail table and turned his body toward her. He was very sure,

very deliberate, and yet tender. There was nothing sly or lecherously lascivious

(похотливый, сладострастный [l’sivijs]) in his caresses. He kissed her on the lips

while his hands rose to her breasts. His hand fell to her warm thighs, the skin so silky to

his touch. Her returning kiss was warm but not passionate and he preferred it that way

right now. He hated girls who turned on all of a sudden as if their bodies were motors

galvanized into erotic pumpings by the touching of a hairy switch.

Then he did something he always did, something that had never yet failed to arouse

him. Delicately and as lightly as it was possible to do so and still feel something, he

brushed the tip of his middle finger deep down between her thighs. Some girls never

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even felt that initial move toward lovemaking. Some were distracted by it, not sure it was

a physical touch because at the same time he always kissed them deeply on the mouth.

Still others seemed to suck in his finger or gobble it up (жадно есть, заглатывать) with

a pelvic (тазовый) thrust. And of course before he became famous, some girls had

slapped his face. It was his whole technique and usually it served him well enough.

Sharon's reaction was unusual. She accepted it all, the touch, the kiss, then shifted

her mouth off his, shifted her body ever so slightly back along the couch and picked up

her drink. It was a cool but definite refusal. It happened sometimes. Rarely; but it

happened. Johnny picked up his drink and lit a cigarette.

She was saying something very sweetly, very lightly. "It's not that I don't like you,

Johnny, you're much nicer than I thought you'd be. And it's not because I'm not that kind