"Let's All Kill Constance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bradbury Ray Douglas)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

we didn't have to time it right.

When Crumley dropped me in front of the Other Church, the great loud boisterous romantic tearstained celluloid cathedral… There was a sign on the red Chinese front door, CLOSED FOR ALTERATIONS, and some workmen moving in and out. A few people were in the forecourt, fitting their shoes in the footprints.

Crumley dropped me and vamoosed.

I turned to look at the great pagoda facade. Ten percent Chinese, ninety percent Grauman's. Little Sid's.

He was, some said, knee-high to a midget, the eighth Dwarf Cinema Munchkin, all four feet bursting with film clips, sound tracks, Kong shrieking on the Empire State, Colman in Shangri-la, friend to Garbo, Dietrich, and Hepburn, haberdasher to Chaplin, golf buddy to Laurel and Hardy, keeper of the flame, recollector of ten thousand Pasts… Sid, pourer of cement, imprinter of fair and flat feet, begging and getting pavement autographs.

And there I stood on a lava flow of signatures of ghosts who had abandoned their shoe sizes.

I watched the tourists quietly testing their feet in the vast spread of cement prints, laughing softly.

What a church, I thought. More worshipers here than at St. Vibiana's.

"Rattigan," I whispered. "Are you here?"