"Karl Edward Wagner - Deep in the depths of the Acme Warehouse" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wagner Karl Edward)

DEEP IN THE DEPTHS OF THE ACME WAREHOUSE

I think I want to be raped,” Lucy touched her breast and said. She
stretched slowly against the plastic lounge chair. Her sunscreen smelled hot
and buttery. Her brain was clouded with sun and ‘ludes.
Lucy Minx tugged her thong straps further down her hips, exposing just
the shaved beginnings of her mons. She turned her head and flipped up her
mirror shades, flashing her wonderful Italian eyes.
“I think I want to be raped by you.” She slid back her sunglasses and
shivered in the sun. Languidly she reached for her white wine spritzer, sipped
from the straw.
Mina Rush chugged her beer. It was tepid and tasted like the plastic
poolside cup. She glanced at Lucy, wondering: What next? Mina was wearing a
black one-piece and wishing she had Lucy’s figure and could get away with a
chartreuse thong bikini.
“Say, what?”
A black man in a dark blue jumpsuit was pushing a red vacuum cleaner
across the lighter blue poolside carpet. Mina stared at his crotch. Breeze
fluttered across the pooi, whipping false waves through the chlorine-drugged
surface. A slight bit of crumpled newspaper rolled against her bare feet. Mina
picked it up. Elvis had been seen in Brazil. Elizabeth Taylor was pregnant by
Prince Andrew. Rock Hudson was assassinated by the CIA. Plastic extrusions
from flying saucers had raped a nun in France.
Lucy examined her straw, flicked it behind her shoulder, followed it
with her cup. She had a luxuriant mass of black hair with a lazy natural curl,
and she liked to toss it about for emphasis, just as she liked to flash her
eyes. Tossing and flashing, she pulled and twisted bits of her bikini, fussed
with her bag of things, and then she left for the shower.
During all this, Lucy said to Mina, “Or forget it.”
There was a dead thing in Mina’s beer cup. She said, “Shit.” And then
she repeated it, really meaning it this time. Lucy was a nut case, but Mina
had dreamed about her too many times not to have scored. She knew that Lucy
knew that she wanted her, and she knew that Lucy enjoyed this sense of
control. Lucy might tease and flirt, but for Mina she never gave more than a
mocking smile and a brief heartless kiss. “A prick-tease,” their drummer had
once confided.
Mina Rush was a henna-head with expressive if narrow green eyes and a
Prince Valiant haircut that did little to help her rather angular jaw. Her
right upper front tooth had been broken when someone lobbed a
Jack Daniel’s bottle early on in her career, and she flashed a neat gold
cap with an inverted pentacle when she smiled. She had long legs, boyish
hips, girlish breasts, and a bad attitude. She was maybe the finest white
female blues singer since Janis Joplin, but she couldn’t hold a group together
for more than one tour, and her next album was a year late.
On the edge of superstardom, Mina Rush made only three mistakes:
She had a weakness for cocaine, she had an obsession for Lucy Minx, and
she had an encounter with Kane.
Something was blocking the sun. Already testy, Mina raised herself on
her elbows and glared suddenly upward.
It was not as large as a refrigerator, but only just. He wore denim