"Robin Wilson - The Grift of the Magellanae" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilson Robin)

THE GRIFT OF THE MAGELLANAE
By Robin Wilson

What would mild-mannered Mr. Wilson know about grifting? Read on and see.

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ALTHOUGH BOBBY JUNCO has never taken much note of tales of UFOs, of
extraterrestrials skulking on mysterious errands, he does not long doubt that the two
creatures who show up one April morning in his Manzanita Street storefront office
are just that.

His first glimpse of them sparks a phrase from his beginnings in show
business, when he was still a kid doing summer road company Shakespeare thirty
years before:...none of woman born. But it takes him a while to accept the evidence
of his senses.

“I mean,” he says early that afternoon to Marianne Kusic in the Downtown
Diner, “they looked sort of human, even kinda — uh — cute I guess. Maybe five
feet tall, tops, great big wet-lookin’ eyes like on all those little dolls and animals you
got, real bushy eyebrows that kinda wiggle a lot, little pointy ears sticking straight up,
couple of holes for a nose with — urn— whiskers kinda like a cat’s, little tiny
mouths without hardly any lips and what looks sorta like a snake’s tongue when they
talk. I mean they were weird.”

Marianne sets his hamburger and fries on the damp counter between them.
Tall in starchy peach, blonde hair up, a pencil inserted above her left ear, she is wary
of Bobby’s wild tales, even wilder schemes. The son of a roustabout and a
short-lived tattooed lady about whom he has only fragmentary— albeit colorful —
memories, he has spent nearly all but the last five of his forty-eight years in show
business, mostly carnivals. He feels at home in a world of humbug and illusion that
she does not think she can share, which saddens her. She believes Bobby loves her
— as she does him — but she despairs that she can take a hand in those enterprises
which seem so much a part of him.

“So what were they wearing?” she asks him.

Bobby shakes his head: “Christ, I don’t know what they had on, babe. They
were — uh — kinda furry with some kinda plastic here, some shiny stuff there.”

“Were you scared? I sure would’ve been.”

“Well, for a second there I figured they were carnies working somebody’s
show, couple of freaks the guys down at The Wet Spot had sicced on me, and then
I took a good look. And you know what, Marianne? By the time I wound up here in
the boonies, man and boy, I’d been with B & B and then Sanders Bros.
Amusements what? Thirty-five years; And before I started doin’ advance, I was ride
jockey for the Tilt-O-Spin, steered for the Monte table, was a barker for Mr. Lifto,
hyped every sideshow exhibit they had. I mean your two-headed calves and your fat
lady and your human goat and the geek bit the heads off of live chickens — all that