Read Online Liars and Tyrants and People Who Turn Blue by Barbara Paul - Free Book Online

Ballet started rehearsing The Nutcracker today. The obligatory Christmas ritual for kids. Tee isn’t exactly overjoyed.”
    Shelby smiled at her sister in sympathy.
    â€œI sometimes wonder,” Tee said, “whether children enjoy The Nutcracker as much as we like to think they do. It really is a boring ballet. Both to listen to and to watch. And I’m not altogether sure it’s a wholesome thing for children to see. Here we have this rather peculiar little girl who has sexual fantasies about a, ahem, nut -cracker—a nutcracker that’s been brought to her by an uncle who seems to be a sort of pander. In addition, the girl feels threatened by mice! So her way of coping with all this is to go dancing in the snow wearing nothing but a thin cotton nightgown. This child has problems.”
    â€œWhy, Tee,” laughed Shelby, “what a dreadful thing to say!”
    â€œTee doesn’t like Tchaikovsky,” Max explained unnecessarily.
    â€œHey, we’re supposed to be celebrating, remember?” Eric poured more champagne. “To San Diego!”
    Shelby lifted her glass dutifully. “Which we’ll be calling ‘home’ exactly two months from tonight. To San Diego.”
    â€œWhere I hope you’ll both be very, very happy,” Tee said earnestly.
    â€œWe will be,” said Shelby. Even if it kills us .
    â€œWhat are you going to be doing instead of police work?” Max asked Shelby.
    Eric answered for her. “Dr. Wedner gave us the name of a man at Cal Tech. Maybe more tests, maybe something else. He’ll find something for her to do.”
    â€œSomething to keep the little woman busy,” Shelby said.
    â€œNow, Shel, you agreed,” said Eric, annoyed at her tone.
    â€œYes, yes, I agreed.”
    â€œTo sunny California,” said Tee hastily, lifting an empty glass. “Where the skies are blue and the landscape is—”
    â€œBeige,” finished Shelby.
    Eric forced a smile. “Ecru?” he said hopefully.
    Max laughed. “That reminds me of a technical stage director I worked for once, when I was about nineteen.” Change the subject . “Man named Ace, summer theater in Connecticut. Ace was shade blind. Not color blind—he could tell green from yellow and so on. But he couldn’t distinguish among close shades of the same color. He couldn’t tell beige from ecru, or even sky blue from aquamarine. He was still using the kind of scene paint that comes in powdered form that you mix with size water. Doesn’t cost much that way. And Ace was a tight-fisted son of a gun—he never had us mix up any more paint than he thought we’d need. Which meant we often mixed up less than we needed, and then had to mix some more. So of course there was always the problem of making sure the shades matched exactly. Ace was always asking one of us if the new batch of paint matched the shade we’d already used. He pretended he was just checking to make sure, but he really couldn’t see any difference at all.
    â€œSo one day when we’d just finished the flats for some musical we were doing, we were all standing around admiring our handiwork—airy, cheerful flats, all yellows and light greens and even some pinks, I think. Ace stood there for a minute and then said, ‘One thing you have to say for this set, it sure is loud!’ And in my usual tactful way I said, ‘But Ace, they’re all pastels!’ Ace looked at me, and then looked at the flats, then looked at me again, then looked back at the flats. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘pastels are cheaper!’ And they are—dark shades cost more. But the man was so determined not to admit he couldn’t tell the difference between ‘loud’ and ‘pastel’ that he pretended economy was the reason for his choice of colors.”
    Eric laughed politely while Tee played with her champagne glass; she’d heard all