Mistral's daughter [antikvár]

Fauve dashed through the lobby, her Stop-sign red slicker flapping around her, and managed to squeeze her way through the elevator doors a split second before they closed. Panting, she tried to furl her big striped umbrella so that it wouldn't drip on the other people who were jammed in with her, but, in the crowd, her arms were pinned to her sides.Earlier in the morning Fauve would have had the elevator pretty much to herself, but there hadn't been a single empty taxi in Manhattan on this rainy September morning in 1975. She'd had to wait endlessly for a bus on Madison Avenue and run the rest of the way across Fifty-seventh Street. Soaking and uncomfortable, she cautiously swiveled her neck around to survey the mob that hemmed her in. Would any of them get off before the tenth floor? No hope of that, she realized. The creaky, ancient elevator that rose so slowly in the Carnegie Hall office building was charged with a palpable cloud of tension and terror. Except for the operator, the small space was packed with young women who were gripped in silent, fierce and frightened concentration. Each one of them had grown up