A place of hiding (aláírt példány) [antikvár]

Santa Ana winds were no friends of photography, but that was something you could not teli an egomaniacal architect who believed his entire reputation rested upon capturing for posterity - and for Architectural Digest - fifty-two thousand square feet of unfinished hillside sprawl today. You couldn't even try to teli him that. Because when you finally found the location after making what felt like two dozen wrong turns, you were already late, he was already ticked off, and the arid wind was already throwing up so much dust that all you wanted to do was get out of there as fast as possible which wasn't going to be possible if you argued with him over whether you were going to take the pictures in the first place. So you took them, never mind the dust, never mind the tumbleweeds which seemed to have been imported by a special effects team to make several millión dollars' worth of California ocean-view real estate look like Barstow in August, and never mind the fact that the grit got under your contact lenses and the air made your skin feel like peach pits and your hair like burnt hay. The job was everything; the job was all. And since China River supported herself by doing the job, she did it. But she wasn't happy. When she completed the work, a patina of grime lay on her clothes and against her skin, and the only thing she wanted - other than a tall glass of the coldest water she could find and a long soak in a very cool tub - was to be out of there: off the hillside and closer to the beach. So she said, 'That's it, then. FB have proofs for you to choose from the day after tomorrow. One o'clock? Your office? Good. FII be there,' and she strode off without giving the man a chance to reply. She didn't much care about his reaction to her abrupt departure, either. She drove back down the hillside in her ancient Plymouth, along a smoothly paved road, potholes being permanently banned in Montecito. The route took her past houses of the Santa Barbara super-rich who lived their shielded privileged lives behind electronic gates where they swam in designer swimming pools and towelled themselves off