"Thomas M. Disch - Ringtime" - читать интересную книгу автора (Disch Thomas M)

RINGTIME
By Thomas M. Disch
One day (my story begins) I found myself on the shady side of Memory Lane,
which is a place, like Wall Street, that can be anywhere the sellers and the
sold chance to collide. In this case, in the IRT Antique Arcade, between
Twenty-third and Twenty-eighth, where I had come with four hundred in
over-the-counter unregistered cash and a need to spend it all immediately. I
knew where. At the downtown end of the Arcade was a dealer ostensibly dealing
in old paperbacks, most of them just powder sealed in cellophane, but who was
in fact a fence for hot rings.
Morton Shure had the pale skin and opossum eyes common to the denizens of the
IRT Arcade and a straggly beard that looked like acne that had undergone a sea
change. With browsers who stopped to inspect his baggies of powdered prose he
affected the Cranked-down speech of a zombie in custodial care. With real
customers he revved up to a laconic mumble. Not a candidate for Salesman of
the Month, but Morton's merchandise sold itself. I told
him what I was after, and we stepped to the back of the booth. Morton drew the
curtain and brought out his black velvet tray of lost silver souls. Most of
the rings on the tray were familiar to me from earlier shopping expeditions.
One or two I'd tried on for size and resold to Morton. The selection was as
varied, and as tempting, as the index of a sex manual. It is my opinion that
anyone who buys a ring as an alternative to getting laid in the
phenomenological flesh has his ass screwed on backwards. Orgasm is like the
sunrise; another will be along soon. Most collectors of any affluence agree,
and so raw sex is a buyer's market on Memory Lane. Four hundred dollars would
have bought up half the rings on Morton's tray and left me change for a
doughnut and coffee. On the other hand, I knew that four hundred dollars
wasn't going to buy me the bluebird of happiness. A felony was as much as I
could hope for.
"How about a life of crime?" I hinted.
Morton blinked his opossum eyes. "You, uh, wouldn't want me to break any
laws?"
"Laws? Morton, we're grown-ups. Grown-ups can distinguish between
entertainment and real life. If I can put on a ring, I can take it off. Right?
At my age, with my blood pressure, do you think I can be corrupted by The
Adventures of Robin Hood?" I continued babbling in this vein until Morton had
been soothed sufficiently for his greed to get the better of his distrust.
"There's one item. I personally know nothing about it."
"Right, right. Show me."
He unlocked a metal file and took out a cassette. He plugged the cassette into
a pair of video specs and handed them to me. "Personally . . ." he began
again.
"You know nothing about it."
I turned on the spectacles. They bubbled with blue
blips, and then a man in a facemold of the aged Woody Allen told me what to
expect from the ring he was pawning. I will not anticipate the ring's spinning
of its own tale except to say that the masker (who was not the ring's maker,
only its third owner) admitted candidly (and a little nervously) that it
recorded the commission of a felony. To be found in possession of such a ring
brings a mandatory sentence of a year's imprisonment-longer, if the nature of