Etutor

Вот отрывок из текста по чтению пятничного ЕГЭ (A14-A21): The receptionist echoed the décor, a human accessory precisely in tone with the restrained, almost severe, chic of her pearly mauve surroundings. Glossy and cool in white and black, she murmured into the phone, ignoring the rumpled young man in scruffy jeans standing in front of her. A slight frown threatened the smooth mask of her makeup as she glanced at the scarred leather shoulder bag that the young man had put on her otherwise immaculately bare desk of polished sycamore. She put down the phone, pushing back a lock of blonde hair to replace the gold earring that had been removed to facilitate conversation. Her eyebrows, plucked to perfection, rose in two questioning arcs. The young man smiled. “Good morning. I have an appointment with Camilla.” The eyebrows stayed up, “You are?” “Andre Kelly. Are you new here?” The receptionist declined to answer, as she unhitched her earring and took up the phone. Andre wondered why Camilla kept on hiring girls like this. They rarely lasted more than a couple of months before being replaced by another polished clone – decorative and faintly unwelcoming. “Her meeting’s running late.” A finger flicked toward the far corner of the reception area. “You can wait over there.” Andre smiled at her again as she picked up his bag. “Were you always this unpleasant, or did you have to take classes?” But it was wasted. The phone was already tucked beneath the burnished lock of hair, the murmuring already resumed. Andre settled into a chair and wished he had a magazine to help him, while away the time which he expected to be long and tiring. Camilla was known – and, by some admired – for her deliberate unpunctuality, for double-booking appointments, for manufacturing situations that emphasized her editorial charisma and her social importance. It was she who had broken new ground in the world of power lunches by booking two tables for a sumptuous lunch at the Royalion on the same day, shuttling from one table to the other – a nibble of arugula and endive here, a sip of Evian there – while she simultaneously entertained an important advertiser and a promising South American architect. It was a tribute to her reputation that neither of them was offended, and such lunches became an occasional part of Camilla’s sociocorporate repertoire. In the end, of course, nobody criticized her for such displays because she had achieved success, for which, in New York all manner of bad behavior is forgiven. She had rescued an elderly magazine from its lingering death changing its name… Как Вам?