"Robert Rankin - Waiting for Godalming" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robert Rankin)

"Holy humdinger," flustered Fangio, fanning his face with his fat.
"If you make wind in my bar one more time, Laz, I'll kick your
sorry ass out." Oh how we laughed.
"I'm not kidding," the fat boy flustered further. "I put up with a
lot from you, Laz. The running gags about your trenchcoat and
your trusty Smith and West Bromwich Albion. The dame that
does you wrong always bopping you on the head in my bar. And
you calling me the fat boy all the time. But I do draw the line at
you making wind. I'm running a business here."
"But you are a very fat boy," says I, faster than a ferret in a
felcher's footbath.
"And those dumb surrealistic metaphor jobbies you insist on
using all the time because you think it gives you your own style.
The ones that gradually get more and more obscene and obscure
and are neither funny nor clever."
"Ease up, Porkie," says I. "I may be down, but I'm far from out."
"Do you want to settle your tab?"
"I'm out," says I. "You have me there."
Oh how we laughed again.
"By the by, Laz," says Fangio to me, when the laughter has died
down once more in the bar that bares his name. "I've been
thinking of taking up a hobby. Is there anything you'd
recommend to me?"
"How about slimming?" I offered in ribald recommendation.
"Would that involve eating less?" asked Fangio. "Because as you
know I gorge like a pig, for it's my only pleasure."
"Rubber bondage?"
"Well, almost my only pleasure. I was thinking of something
cerebral that required next to no exercise, cost but a penny or
two and could win me a first prize at the annual bartenders'
orchid-breeding competition."
"How about orchid-breeding, then?"
"What, with my back? Come off it."
"Hang-gliding?"
"Too high."
"Bass-playing?"
"Far too low."
"Asking after the good health of folk?"
"Fair to middling. Mustn't grumble."
"How about a card game?" says I.
"Not with you, you cheating Arab."
"No, not with me, Fange. How about taking up a card game as a
hobby?"
"Well," the fat boy stroked at his chins and a bird blew by in
Brooklyn. "I used to play cards a lot when I was a grunt in 'Nam."
"You're still a grunt in my book, Fange."
"Thanks very much, my friend."
"So," says I. "Card games it is. What kind of card game do you
fancy?"
The Fange gave his chins another stroke for luck and asked,