"Paul Di Filippo - Weeping Walls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Di Filippo Paul)

"All mourners wearing an official wristband may now step forward." Dewlapped Gove
Wittlestoop, suited in enough expensive charcoal wool fabric to clothe a dozen orph
despite the hot September sunlight beating down, backed away from the microphone
lowered his fat rump onto a creaking folding chair barely up to sustaining its load. Nex
the governor on the hastily erected platform sat Lisa Dutch, knees clamped together,
primly crossed at the ankles in what Jake PashaтАФlingering now obediently close byтАФo
referred to as "the boardroom virgin" pose.
Lisa patted the governor's hand. Maintaining her frozen official expression of sob
condoling vicarious grief, she murmured, "Did you get the latest envelope okay?"
Similarly covert, Wittlestoop replied, "It's already in the bank." "Good. Because I see
be facing some new challenges, and I don't want to have to worry about protecting my a
my own backyard."
"Nothing to fear. Weeping Walls has been awfully good to this state, and the state
respond in kind."
"Since when did you and the state become synonymous?" "I believe it was at the start o
fifth term. By the way, I admired your anecdote today about the relatives you lost in
Oklahoma City bombing and how that inspired you years later to found your company.
You had the crowd in tears. Tell me confidentiallyтАФany of that horseshit true?"
"Only the part about me having relatives."
Notes of dirgelike classical music sprinkled the air. Among the groundlings, a wavery
had formed: those members of the sniffling audience with the requisite wristbands had arr
themselves in an orderly fashion across the post office parking lot where the memorial ser
for the recently slain was being held. The head of the line terminated at a row of large b
plastic bins much like oversize composters. Beside the bins stood several employees
Weeping Walls, looking in their black habiliments like postmodern undertakers, save fo
bright red WW logo stitched in Gothic cursive on their coats.
Now the first mourner was silently and gently urged by a solicitous yet controlling Wee
Walls employee to make her choice of sympathy-token. The mourner, a red-eyed wid
selected a bouquet of daisies from one of a score of water buckets held on a waist-high
stand. The Weeping Walls usher now led the woman expeditiously toward the wall itself.
Erected only hours ago, the fresh planks of the official Weeping Wall, branded subtly
the WW logo, still emanated a piney freshness. At regular intervals staples secured dang
plastic ties similar to a policeman's instant handcuffs or an electrician's cable-bundling str
The usher brought the first woman and her bouquet to the leftmost, uppermost tie, and he
her secure the flowers with a racheting plastic zip. Then he led the sobbing woman awa
efficiently as an Oscar-ceremonies handler, rejoining his fellow workers to process ano
person.
Once the mechanized ritual was under way, it proceeded as smoothly as a robotic Japa
assembly line. From the bins mourners plucked various tokens of their public grief: p
teddy bears, miniature sports gear emblazoned with the logos of all the major franch
religious icons from a dozen faiths, sentimental greeting cards inscribed with such all-pur
designations as "Beloved Son" and "Dearest Daughter." One by one, the bereaved frie
neighbors and relativesтАФanyone, really, who had paid the appropriate fee to Weeping W
(family discounts available)тАФplaced their stereotyped fetishes on the official wall
returned to their seats.
Under the cheerful sun, Lisa watched the whole affair with traces of pride and
struggling to break through her artificial funereal demeanor like blackbirds out of a pie. T
her attention was snagged by an anomalous audience member: some nerdy guy scribbling n
with a stylus on his PDA.