"Howard Waldrop - Flying Saucer Rock & Roll" - читать интересную книгу автора (Waldrop Howard)

"That's one thing?" asked Vinnie.

"A few. But that place is great, man. We can't lose there."

Vinnie smiled, and it was a prison-guard smile, a Nazi smile. "If you
lose, kid, after the Monsters get through with you, the Hellbenders are
gonna have a little party."

He pointed over his shoulder to where something resembling testicles
floated in alcohol in a mason jar on a shelf. "We're putting five empty jars
up there tomorrow. That's what happens to people who get the
Hellbenders involved without asking and then don't come through when
the pressure's on. You know what I mean?"

Leroy smiled. He left smiling. The smile was still frozen to his face as he
walked down the street.

This whole thing was getting too grim.


Leroy lay on his cot listening to his sister and her boyfriend porking in
the next room.
 It was late at night. His mind was still working. Sounds beyond those in
the bedroom came to him. Somebody staggered down the project hallway,
bumping from one wall to another. Probably old man Jones. Chances are
he wouldn't make it to his room all the way at the end of the corridor. His
daughter or one of her kids would probably find him asleep in the hall in a
pool of barf.

Leroy turned over on the rattly cot, flipped on his seven-transistor
radio, and jammed it up to his ear. Faintly came the sounds of another
Beatles song.

He thumbed the tuner, and the four creeps blurred into four or five
other Englishmen singing some other stupid song about coming to places
he would never see.

He went through the stations until he stopped on the third note of the
Monotones' "Book of Love." He sang along in his mind.

Then the deejay came on, and everything turned sour again. "Another
golden oldie, 'Book of Love,' by the Monotones. Now here's the WBKD pick
of the week, the fabulous Beatles with 'I've Just Seen a Face,' " Leroy
pushed the stations around the dial, then started back.

Weekdays were shit. On weekends you could hear good old stuff, but
mostly the stations all played Top 40, and that was English invasion stuff,
or if you were lucky, some Motown. It was Monday night. He gave up and
turned to an all-night blues station, where the music usually meant