"Howard Waldrop - Occam's Ducks" - читать интересную книгу автора (Waldrop Howard)

Mantan took his friend Freemore up to the place they told him Marcel Slavo
lived.
They knocked. Three times before there was a muffled answer.
“Oh, Mr. Brown,” said Slavo, as he opened the door. “Who’s this?”
“This Joe Freemore. We’re just heading out on the `chitlin circuit’ again.”
“Well, I can’t do anything for you,” said Slavo. “I’m through. Haven’t you
heard? I’m all washed up.”
“We wanted to show you our act.”
“Why me?”
“Because you’re an impartial audience,” said Mantan.
Slavo went back in, sat in a chair at the table. Mantan saw that along with
bootleg liquor bottles and ashtrays full of Fatima and Spud butts, the two razors
from the movie lay on the table. Slavo followed his gaze.
“Souvenirs,” he said. “Something to remind me of all my work. I remember
what you said, Mr. Brown. It has been a great lesson to me.”
“Comfortable, Mr. Slavo?” asked Freemore.
“Okay. Rollick me.”
“Empty stage,” said Mantan. “Joe and I meet.”
 “Why, hello!” said Joe.
“Golly, hi,” said Mantan, pumping his hand. “I ain’t seen you since--”
“--it was longer ago than that. You had just--”
“--that’s right. And I hadn’t been married for more than--”
“--seemed a lot longer than that. Say, did you hear about--”
“--you don’t say! Why, I saw her not more than--”
“--it’s the truth! And the cops say she looked--”
“--that bad, huh? Who’d have thought it of her? Why she used to look--”
“--speaking of her, did you hear that her husband--”
“--what? How could he have done that? He always--”
“--yeah, but not this time. I tell you he--”
“--that’s impossible! Why, they told me he’d--”
“--that long, huh? Well, got to go. Give my best to--”
“--I sure will. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye.”
They turned to Slavo.
“They’ll love it down in Mississippi,” he said.
It was two weeks later, and the South Carolina weather was the crummiest,
said the locals, in half a century. It had been raining--a steady, continuous,
monotonous thrumming--for three days.
Mantan stopped under the hotel marquee, looking out toward a gray
two-by-four excuse for a city park, where a couple of ducks and a goose were
kicking up their feet and enjoying life to its fullest.
He went inside and borrowed a Columbia newspaper from the catatonic day
manager. He went up the four flights to his semiluxury room, took off his sopping
raincoat and threw it over the three-dollar Louis Quatorze knock-off chair, and
spread the paper out on the bed.
He was reading the national news page when he came across the story from
New Jersey.
The police said that, according to witnesses, during the whole time of the
attack, the razor-wielding maniac had kept repeating, “Bend, d--n it, don’t break!
Bend, d--n it, don’t break!”