"Barker, Clive - The Great and Secret Show v1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Barker Clive)

At such times, when the fiction he was aroused byЧ which was not quite a fiction, because hard was hard, and could not be fakedЧWilliam felt he understood Palomo Grove better. Something lived behind the life of the town, directing its daily processes with such selflessness no one but he knew it was there. And even he would forget. Months would go by, and he'd go about his business, which was real estate, forgetting the hidden hand. Then, like in the porno, he'd glimpse something. Maybe a look in the eye of one of the older residents, or a crack in the street, or water running down the Hill from an oversprinkled lawn. Any of these were enough to make him remember the lake, and the League, and know that all the town seemed to be was a fiction (not quite a fiction, because flesh was flesh and could not be faked), and he was one of the performers in its strange story.
That story had proceeded without a drama to equal that of the League in the years since the sealing of the caves. Marked town though it was, the Grove prospered, and Witt with it. As Los Angeles grew in size and affluence towns out in the Simi Valley, the Grove among them, became dormitories for the metropolis. The price of the town's real estate rose steeply in the late seventies, just about the time when William entered the business. It rose again, particularly in Windbluff, when several minor stars elected to take houses on the Hill, conferring on the locale a chic it had hitherto lacked. The biggest of the houses, a palatial residence with a panoramic view of the town, and the valley beyond, was bought by the comedian Buddy Vance, who at the time had the highest-rated TV show on any of the networks. A little lower down the hill the cowboy actor Raymond Cobb demolished a house and built on the spot his own sprawling ranch, complete with a pool in the shape of a sheriff's badge. Between Vance's house and Cobb's lay a house entirely concealed by trees occupied by the silent star Helena Davis, who in her day had been the most gossiped-about actress in Hollywood. Now in her late seventies she was a complete recluse, which only fuelled rumors in the Grove whenever a young man appeared in townЧalways six foot, always blondЧand declared himself a friend of Miss Davis. Their presence earned the house its nickname: Iniquity's Den.
There were other imports from Los Angeles. A Health Club opened up in the Mall, and was quickly oversubscribed. The craze for Szechuan restaurants brought two such establishments, both sufficiently patronized to survive the competition. Style stores flourished, offering Deco, American Naive and simple kitsch. The demand for space was so heavy the Mall gained a second floor. Businesses which the Grove would never have supported in its early days were now indispensable. The pool supply store, the nail sculpture and tanning service, the karate school.
Once in a while, sitting waiting for a pedicure, or in the pet shop while the kids chose between three kinds of chinchilla, a newcomer might mention a rumor they'd heard about the town. Hadn't something happened here, way back when? If there was a long-standing Grover in the vicinity the conversation would very quickly be steered into less controversial territory. Although a generation had grown up in the intervening years there was still a sense among the natives, as they liked to call themselves, that the League of Virgins was better forgotten.
There were some in the town, however, who would never be able to forget. William was one, of course. The others he still followed as they went about their lives. Joyce McGuire, a quiet, intensely religious woman who had brought up Tommy-Ray and Jo-Beth without the benefit of a husband. Her folks had moved to Florida some years back, leaving the house to their daughter and grandchildren. She was now virtually unseen beyond its walls. Hotchkiss, who had lost his wife to a lawyer from San Diego seventeen years her senior, and seemed never quite to have recovered from her desertion. The Farrell family, who had moved out of town to Thousand Oaks, only to find that their reputations had followed them. They'd eventually relocated to Louisiana, taking Arleen with them. She had never fully recovered. It wasЧWilliam had heardЧa good week if she strung more than ten words together. Jocelyn Farrell, her younger sister, had married and come back to live in Blue Spruce. He saw her on occasion, when she came to visit friends in town. The families were still very much part of the Grove's history; yet though William was on nodding acquaintance with them allЧthe McGuires, Jim Hotchkiss, even Jocelyn FarrellЧthere was never a word exchanged between them.
There didn't need to be. They all knew what they knew.
And knowing, lived in expectation.

II
The young man was virtually monochrome, his shoulder-length hair, which curled at his neck, black, his eyes as dark behind his round spectacles, his skin too white to be that of a Californian. His teeth were whiter still, though he seldom smiled. Didn't do much speaking either, come to that. In company, he stammered.
Even the Pontiac convertible he parked in the Mall was white, though its bodywork had been rusted by snow and salt from a dozen Chicago winters. It had got him across country, but there'd been a few close calls along the way. The time was coming when he was going to have to take it out into a field and shoot it. Meanwhile, if anyone needed evidence of a stranger in Palomo Grove they only had to cast their eye along the row of automobiles.
Or indeed, over him. He felt hopelessly out of place in his corduroys and his shabby jacketЧ(too long in the arms, too tight across the chest, like every jacket he'd ever bought).
This was a town where they measured your worth by the name on your sneakers. He didn't wear sneakers; he wore black leather high-tops that he'd use day in, day out until they fell apart, whereupon he'd buy an identical pair. Out of place or not, he was here for a good reason, and the sooner he got started the better he'd start feeling.
First, he needed directions. He selected a Frozen Yoghurt store as the emptiest along the row, and sauntered in. The welcome that met him from the other side of the counter was so warm he almost thought he'd been recognized.
"Hi! How can I help you?"
"I'm...new," he said. Dumb remark, he thought. "What I mean is, is there any place...any place I can buy a map?"
"You mean of California?"
"No. Palomo Grove," he said, keeping the sentences short. That way he stammered less.
The grin on the far side of the counter broadened.
"Don't need a map," it said. "The town's not that big."
"OK. How about a hotel?"
"Sure. Easy. There's one real close. Or else there's a new place, up in Stillbrook Village."
"Which is the cheapest?"
"The Terrace. It's just two minutes' drive, round the back of the Mall."
"Sounds perfect."
The smile he got in return said: everything's perfect here. He could almost believe it too. The polished cars shone in the lot; the signs pointing him round to the back of the shopping center gleamed; the motel facadeЧwith another signЧ Welcome to Palomo Grove, The Prosperous HavenЧwas as brightly painted as a Saturday morning cartoon. He was glad, when he'd secured a room, to pull down the blind against the daylight, and lurk a little.
The last stretch of the drive had left him weary, so he decided to perk his system up with some exercises and a shower. The machine, as he referred to his body, had been in a driver's seat too long; it needed a working over. He warmed up with ten minutes of shadow sparrings, a combination of kicks and punches, followed by a favorite cocktail of specialized kicks: axe, jump crescent, spinning hook and jump spinning back kicks. As usual, what warmed up his muscles heated his mind. By the time he got to his leg-lifts and sirups he was ready to take on half of Palomo Grove to get an answer to the question he'd come here asking.
Which was: who is Howard Katz? Me wasn't a good enough answer any more. Me was just the machine. He needed more information than that.
It was Wendy who'd asked the question, in that long night of debate which had ended in her leaving him.
"I like you, Howie," she'd said. "But I can't love you. And you know why? Because I don't know you."
"You know what I am?" Howie had replied. "A man with a hole in his middle."
"That's a weird way to put it."
"It's a weird way to feel."
Weird, but true. Where others had some sense of themselves as peopleЧambition, opinion, religionЧhe just had this pitiful unfixedness. Those who liked himЧWendy, Ritchie, LemЧwere patient with him. They waited through his stumblings and stammerings to hear what he had to say, and seemed to find some value in his comments. (You're my holy fool, Lem had once told Howie; a remark which Howie was still pondering.) But to the rest of the world he was Katz the klutz. They didn't bait him openlyЧhe was too fit to be taken on hand to hand, even by heavyweightsЧbut he knew what they said behind his back, and it always amounted to the same thing: Katz had a piece missing.
That Wendy had finally given up on him was too much to bear. Too hurt to show his face he'd brooded on the conversation for the best part of a week. Suddenly, the solution came clear. If there was anyplace on earth he'd understand the how and why of himself it was surely the town where he'd been born.
He raised the blind and looked out at the light. It was pearly; the air sweet-smelling. He couldn't imagine why his mother would ever have left this pretty place for the bitter winter winds and smothering summers of Chicago. Now that she was dead (suddenly, in her sleep) he would have to solve that mystery for himself; and perhaps, in its solving, fill the hole that haunted the machine.

Just as she reached the front room, Momma called down from her room, her timing as faultless as ever.
"Jo-Beth? Are you there? Jo-Beth?"
Always the same falling note in the voice, that seemed to warn: be loving to me now because I may not be here tomorrow. Perhaps not even the next hour.
"Honey, are you still there?"
"You know I am, Momma."
"Can I have a word?"
"I'm late for work."
"Just a minute. Please. What's a minute?"
"I'm coming. Don't get upset. I'm coming."
Jo-Beth started upstairs. How many times a day did she cover this route? Her life was being counted out in stairs climbed and descended, climbed and descended.
"What is it, Momma?"
Joyce McGuire lay in her usual position: on the sofa beside the open window, a pillow beneath her head. She didn't look sick; but most of the time she was. The specialists came, and looked, and charged their fees, and left again shrugging. Nothing wrong physically, they said. Sound heart, sound lungs, sound spine. It's between her ears she's not so well. But that was news Momma didn't want to hear. Momma had once known a girl who'd gone mad, and been hospitalized, and never come out again. That made her more afraid of madness than of anything. She wouldn't have the word spoken in the house.
"Will you have the Pastor call me?" Joyce said. "Maybe he'll come over tonight."