"Paul Di Filippo - A year in the Linnear City" - читать интересную книгу автора (Di Filippo Paul)

the air. Much too frigid. Perhaps there was some veracity after all to the notion that Riverside buildings
were prone to effects from the Other Shore....

Music might help. Diego dashed a lean bare arm out to snap on the radio on his bedstand. Once its tubes
warmed, brilliant trumpet notes, unmistakably phrased, swelled like a chorus of Fisherwives, and Diego's
heart immediately lifted.

Rumbold Prague was a genius, maybe the only genius Diego personally knew. The black musician, his
phtisic visage perpetually cool behind his onyx-lensed cheaters, dapper in his trademark gabardine
trousers and loose silk shirts, typified for Diego all that art could achieve. Diego's own prose was most
accomplished, he knew, wherever he let it be inspired by and emulate the unpredictable fluencies of
Prague's lyrical compositions.

The cut ended, and the announcer came on. тАЬThat was тАШThe Road Goes Ever On.тАЩ Rumbold Prague,
trumpet. Lydia Kinch, sax. Scripps Skagway, piano. Lucerne Canebrake, bass. Reddy Diggins, drums.
From the Roughwood shellacker, Burning Fountains, catalog number RLP4039. Next up, Percival
Ragland's тАШAeota.тАЩ But first, the ten o'clock news.тАЭ

Diego groaned. Ten o'clock! If he were to cram both a visit to his father and some writing into the hours
between this moment and his dinner date with Volusia Bittern, he had not a second to spare. But a
dilemma presented itself: the order of his actions. Were he to begin writing immediately, he might labor on
in a creative trance, unwitting of the time, and miss any chance to visit Gaddis Patchen. Go first to his
father, and Diego would almost certainly emerge from his boyhood home full of strong emotions that
would taint that day's writing.

After momentary hesitation, Diego let duty to his blood win out. He was a professional writer, after all.
Surely he could put by any distractions to his craft. Did Rumbold Prague let his hypothetically
ill-tempered father sour his embouchure? Not likely!

Diego hopped out of bed, clad only in his skivvies. After a hot shower (at least that utility had survived
the incompetence of Rexall Glyptis) and the application of his favorite cologne, Meyerbeer's No. 7, to his
near-beardless face (curse these boyish looks! thought Diego for the uncounted time), he felt halfway
human again. Dressing in his favored winter outfit of tweed trousers, denim shirt, wool vest and baggy
black jacket, he acknowledged that his stomach might have forgiven last night's excesses enough to
accept a meal. But a quick check of the icebox revealed nothing fit for human consumption, and Diego
resolved to pick up something enroute to his father's. He scuffled into his battered brogues and left his
apartment with a wistful glance at his disordered writing desk.

Tripping lightly down the single flight of stairs to the streetтАФfamiliar banister smooth under his touch,
metal insets on the wooden risers offering firm purchase, old cooking odors historying the habits of his
neighborsтАФDiego found himself alternately rehearsing the next section of his story in progress and trying
to come up with some conversational tactic that might jar his father from his accustomed paranoid rut.

Once on the busy sidewalk, Diego immediately encountered Lyle Gimlett arranging some cold-tolerant
produceтАФpotatoes, turnips, apples and the likeтАФin his outdoor stands to attract whatever trade he
could from the bustling mass of pedestrians. The burly, slope-browed businessmanтАФas always, a five
o'clock shadow lending his face a smudgy lookтАФhailed Diego in a friendly fashion.

тАЬPatchen! In the market for some fresh bananas? The latest Trains have brought some particularly fine
ones. Can't say when we'll see their likes again.тАЭ