"Ritual" - читать интересную книгу автора (Masterton Graham)
Martin put down his fork. 'Dad? Is it okay if I have another 7-Up?'
Charlie said, 'You know - you can call me Charlie. I mean, you don't have to. But you can if you want to.'
Martin didn't say anything to that. Charlie beckoned the waitress. 'You want to bring me another 7-Up, no cherry, and another glass of the chardonnay?'
'You're not on vacation,' the waitress said. It wasn't a question. She wore a blue satin dress that stuck to all the most unflattering parts of her hips and her buttocks with the tenacity of Saran-wrap. She could have been quite pretty, except that one side of her face didn't quite seem to match the other, giving her a peculiarly vixenish appearance. Her hair was the colour of egg-yolk, and stuck up stiffly in all directions.
'Just making the rounds,' said Charlie, winking at Martin. There was a distant grumble of thunder, and he pointed with a smile towards the window. 'I was telling my son about the Indian demons, chained up in the clouds.'
The waitress stopped writing on her pad for a moment and stared at him. 'Pardon me?'
'It's a legend,' said Martin, coming to his father's rescue.
'You're not kidding,' the waitress remarked. She peered down at Charlie's plate. 'You really hate that veal, don't you?' she told him.
'It's acceptable,' said Charlie, without looking at her. Like each of his five fellow inspectors, he wasn't permitted to discuss meals or services with the management of any of the restaurants he visited, and it was a misdemeanour punishable by instant dismissal to tell them who he was. His publishers believed that if their inspectors were allowed to reveal their identity, they would be liable to be offered bribes. Worse than that, they would be liable to accept them. Charlie's colleague, Barry Hunsecker, paid most of his alimony out of bribes, but lived in a constant cold sweat unless he was found out, and fired.
The waitress leaned over, and whispered to Charlie, 'You don't have to be embarrassed. It's awful. Listen, don't eat it if you don't want to. Nobody's forcing you to eat it. I'll make sure they charge you for the chowder, and leave it at that.'
Charlie said, 'You don't have to worry. This is fine.'
'If that's fine, I'm a Chinese person.' The waitress propped her hands on her hips and looked at him as if he were deliberately being awkward.
'It's fine,' Charlie repeated. He could hardly tell her that he was obliged to eat it, that doggedly finishing his entire portion was part of his professional duties. And he was supposed to order dessert, and cheese, and coffee; and visit the restrooms, to scrutinize the towels.
'Well, I took you for a gourmand,' the waitress told him. She scribbled down '7~Up + Char' and tucked her pad into the pocket of her dress.
'A gourmand?' asked Charlie. He lifted his head a little, and as he did so the last of the sunlight caught him, and gave his age away, but that was all. A round-faced man of forty-one, his roundness redeemed by the lines around his eyes, which
gave him a look of experience and culture, like a Meissen dish that had been chipped at the edges. His hair was clipped short and neat as if he still believed in the values of 1959. His hands .were small, with a single gold ring on the wedding finger. He wore a grey speckled sport coat and plain grey Evvaprest pants. Perhaps the only distinctive thing about him was his wristwatch, an eighteen carat gold Corum Romulus. That had been given to him under circumstances that still made him sad to think about, even today.
Nobody had ever guessed what he did for a living, nobody in twenty-one years. Most of the time, this anonymity gave him a slightly bitter sense of satisfaction; but at other times it made him feel so lost and isolated that he could scarcely breathe.
'Of course, this place has been going to the dogs ever since Mrs Foss took over,' the waitress said, as if they ought to know exactly who Mrs Foss was, and why she should have such a degenerative influence. She curled up her lip. 'Mrs Foss and all the other Fosses.'
'How many Fosses are there exactly?' asked Charlie. Martin covered his mouth with his hand to hide his amusement. He enjoyed it when his father was being dry with people.
'Well, there's six, if you count Edna Foss Lawrence. There used to be seven, of course, but Ivy went missing the week before Thanksgiving two years gone.'
Charlie nodded, as if he remembered Ivy Foss going missing just like it was yesterday. 'It sounds to me like too many Fosses spoil the broth,' he remarked.
'She'd burn a can of beans, that woman,' said the waitress. 'Come on, now, why don't you let me get you the snapper. I should of warned you not to have the veal.'
There was a sharp sizzling crack, and the restaurant flickered like a scene out of a Mack Sennett movie. One of the matrons pressed her hands to her face, and cried out, 'Mercy!' Everybody looked around, their retinas imprinted with
luminous green trees of lightning. Then a bellowing thunderclap rattled the plates and jingled the glasses, and set the panes of the old colonial windows buzzing.
'I thought you said they were demons,' Martin reminded him.
'I don't believe in demons.'
'Do you believe in God?'
Charlie looked across at Martin, narrow-eyed. The rain began to patter against the windows. 'Would it make any difference to you if I said that I didn't?'
'Marjorie always says that you have to believe in something.'
'How come you call your mom Marjorie but you won't call me Charlie?'
'How come you never say you hate anything?'
Charlie looked down at his plate. Then, for the first time in years, he put his knife and fork together, even though he hadn't scraped the plate clean. 'You may find it difficult to understand, but when you're somebody's employee, as I am, you have to do what's expected of you, regardless of your own personal feelings.'
'Even if you don't respect yourself?'
Charlie was silent for a moment. Then he said, 'If you and I are going to be friends, you should try to get out of the habit of quoting your mother at me.'
Martin flushed. The waitress came over and set down their drinks. 'You saved your stomach some extra torture there, sir,' she told Charlie, taking his plate away.
'We'll have the apple pandowdy,' said Charlie.
'Are you that tired of life?' the waitress remarked.
The rain trailed across the parking lot and dripped from the yew hedges that surrounded the restaurant gardens. There was another dazzling flicker of lightning, and another
8
furniture-moving bout of thunder. Charlie sipped his wine and wished it were colder and drier. Martin stared out of the window.
'You could have gone to stay with the Harrisons,' said Charlie.
Martin was frowning, as if he could see something outside the restaurant, but couldn't quite decide what it was. 'I didn't want to stay with the Harrisons. I wanted to come around with you. In any case, Gerry Harrison is such a turd-pilot.'
'Would you keep it clean?' Charlie requested. He wiped his mouth with his napkin. 'In any case, what the hell is a - turd-pilot?'
'There's somebody outside there,' said Martin.
Charlie turned around in his seat and looked out into the garden. All he could see was a sloping lawn and a row of badly trimmed hedges. In the middle of the lawn stood an old stone sundial, leaning at a derelict angle; and further back, surrounded by a tangle of old man's beard, hunched a wet, half-collapsed shed.
'I don't see anybody,' he said. 'And who the hell would want to stand out there in the middle of a storm?'
'Look - there!' Martin interrupted him, and pointed.
Charlie strained his eyes. For one moment, through the rain that herringboned the windowpanes, he thought he glimpsed somebody standing just to the left of the shed, veiled like a bride with old man's beard. Somebody dark, somebody stooped, with a face that was disturbingly pale. Whoever it was, man or woman, it wasn't moving. It was standing staring at the restaurant window, while the rain lashed across the garden so torrentially that it was almost laughable; like a storm-at-sea movie in which all the actors are repeatedly doused with bucketfuls of water.
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