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

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

"THERE." Henry pointed his nose at the long line of mirrors. "What did I say?"

I moved along the aisle of glass, touching with my flash and then my fingers.

"So?" Fritz growled.

"There were names and now no names, just like there were pictures and now no pictures."

"Told you," said Henry.

"How come the sightless are never the wordless?" said Fritz.

"Got to do something to fill the time. Shall I recite the names?"

I said the names from memory.

"You left out Carmen Carlotta," said Henry.

"Oh, yeah. Carlotta."

Fritz glanced up.

"And whoever swiped the pictures upstairs?"

"Cleaned and scraped the mirrors."

"So all those ladies are like they never was," said Henry.

He leaned in along the line of mirrors and gave a last brush with his blind fingertips to the glass here, there, and farther on down. "Yeah. Empty. Damn. Those names were caked on. Took lots to scrub it off. Who?"

"Henrietta, Mabel, Gloria, Lydia, Alice…"

"They all came down to clean up?"

"They did and they didn't. We've already said it, Henry, that all of those women came and went, were born and died, and wrote their names, like grave markers."

"So?"

"And those names were not written all at once. So starting back in the twenties, those women, ladies, whatever, came down here for their obsequies, a funeral of one. When they looked in their first mirror, they saw one face, and when they moved to the next, the face was changed."

"Now you're cooking."

"So, Henry, what's here is a grand parade of funerals, births, and burials, all done with the same two hands and one spade."

"But the scribbles"-Henry reached out to emptiness— "were different."

"People change. She couldn't make up her mind to one life or how to live it. So she stood in front of the mirror and wiped off her lipstick and painted another mouth, and washed off her eyebrows and painted better ones, or widened her eyes and raised her hairline and tilted her hat like a lampshade or took it off and threw it, or took off her dress and stood here starkers."

"Starkers." Henry smiled. "Now you got it."

"Hush," I said.

"That's work," Henry continued. "Scribbling those mirrors, looking to see how she changed."

"Didn't happen overnight. Once a year, maybe two years, and she'd show up with a smaller mouth or a thinner shape and liked what she saw and went away to become that person for half a year or just one summer. How's that, Henry?"

Henry moved his lips, whispering, "Constance.

"Sure," he murmured, "she never smelled the same way twice." Henry shuffled, touching the mirrors until he reached the open manhole. "I'm near, right?"

"One more step would do it, Henry."

We looked down at the round hole in the cement. From below came sounds of winds blowing in from San Fernando, Glendale, and who knows where else-Far Rock-away? The light rain runoff was sliding below, a mere trickle, hardly enough to cool your ankles.

"Dead end," said Henry. "Nothing upstairs, nothing down. Clues to somebody gone. But where?"

As if in answer, a most ungodly cry came from the dark hole in the cold floor. We all jumped.

"Jesus!" Fritz cried.

"Christ!" I yelled.

"Lord!" said Henry. "That can't be Molly, Dolly, Holly, can it?"

I repeated that rosary in silence.

Fritz read my lips and cursed.

The cry came again, farther away, being carried downstream. Tears exploded from my eyes. I jumped forward to sway over the manhole. Fritz grabbed my elbow.

"Did you hear?" I cried.

"Nothing!" said Fritz.

"That scream!"

"That's just the water," Fritz said.

"Fritz!" "You calling me a liar?"

"Fritz!"

"The way you say Fritz, I lie. No lie. You don't really want to, hell, go down there! Godammit!"

"Let me go!"

"If your wife was here, she'd push you in, dummkopf!"

I stared at the open manhole. Far away there was another cry. Fritz cursed.

"You come with me," I said.

"No, no."

"You afraid?"

"Afraid?" Fritz plucked the monocle from his eye. It was like pulling the spigot on his blood. His suntan paled. His eye watered. "Afraid? Of a damn dark stupid underground cave, Fritz Wong?"

"Sorry," I said.

"Don't be sorry for the greatest UFA director in cinema history." He planted his fiery monocle back in its groove.

"Well, what now?" he demanded. "I find a phone and call Crumley to drag you out of this black hole? You goddamn teenage death-wisher!"

"I'm no teenager."

"No? Then why do I see crouched by that damn hole an Olympic chump high-diving into a tide half an inch deep? Go on, break your neck, drown in garbage!"

"Tell Crumley to drive into the storm drain and meet me halfway from the sea. If he sees Constance, grab her. If he finds me, grab even quicker."

Fritz shut one eye to target me with fire from the other, contempt under glass.

"You will take direction from an Academy Award-winning director?"

"What?"

"Drop quick. When you hit, don't stop. Whatever's down there can't grab you if you run! If you see her, tell her to try to catch up. 'Stood?"

" 'Stood!"

"Now die like a dog. Or…"he added, scowling, "live like a stoop who got the hell through."

"Meet you at the ocean?"

"I won't be there!"

"Oh yes you will!"

He lurched toward the basement door, and Henry.

"You want to follow that idiot?" he roared.

"No."

"You afraid of the dark?" "I am the dark!" said Henry. They were gone.

Cursing Germanic curses, I climbed down into mists, fogs, and rains of night.