"Thomas M. Disch - Ringtime" - читать интересную книгу автора (Disch Thomas M)

the crime is particularly nasty. It's odd, but when you know a ring is hot, it
starts to look different. Evil has its own glitter.
On the whole, I am a law-abiding citizen. I understand the reasoning behind
outlawing the merchandising of murder, rape, or any other actionable offense.
Surely it will not do for honest citizens to subsidize the corrupt elements in
crimes they have committed in order to market their transcription. Surely to
traffic in such wares is irresponsible and deserves reprobation and
punishment. Even so, consider how common it was, in the days before
micro-memory transfer, for the public to be offered as "entertainment" lurid
fantasies of criminal behavior. True, in the movies and novels of the pre-now
era, law and order usually wound up winning, but you don't have to be Diogenes
to suppose that the prime fascination of all those criminous heroes, otherwise
known as villains, was the possibility of the audience sharing vicariously in
their wickedness. I'm a guilty wretch, I don't deny it, for buying that ring,
but am I any guiltier than the wretches who flocked to see Little Caesar or
Death Row Studs or How to Dismember a Body? (Or than the readers of this
confession?)
The long and short of it was that I gave in to the temptation I'd come looking
for. Morton, with a merchant's mysterious sixth sense for any pocket's exact
depth, would
not budge from a price of four hundred dollars. The only concession I could
pry out of him was to throw in a couple of blank rings, which came with the
proviso that he be allowed first refusal on anything I recorded.
"And if you think you might do anything, um, undignified or"-he twiddled the
four-hundred-dollar ring thoughtfully-"devious, stay away from mirrors, hear.
You'd be amazed how many guys get busted cause they get careless about that."
"Just call me Dracula."
Morton smiled a pallid smile. "And don't rob any cradles, either. I got
principles."
The deal was sealed, and I left Memory Lane fizzing with a sense of personal
dignity. It had been quite a while since anyone had suggested that I make a
recording. I went up the stairs like they were an escalator, whistling the
theme from The Myth of Progress.
Arriving home cured me of those delusions. Home is where the heart breaks.
Home is what's left when all the collectibles have gone to the auction block.
Home is a plasterboard box fourteen feet long, twelve feet wide, and eight
feet high, the largest of ten spaces sliced up from what had once been a
dentist's office. I still have Dr. Moss's chair, back sprung and vinyl
patched, bolted to the center of the floor. Beside it, where once the drill
was mounted, is a rented Ringmaster, my central and sustaining
self-indulgence. Twenty years ago, when my recording career began to founder,
I had the foresight to sign a long lease for both the office and the
Ringmaster. Now the rent from the space I sublet is all that keeps me afloat
financially.
The Ringmaster is a metered, not a monthly, charge, and since, alas, I so
rarely use it, my bill is less than I'd pay for a phone if I had one. I have a
small stock of rings,
but they are either crude mass-market simulations or my own botched jobs of
later years. The day a picnic didn't pan out and I, undaunted, recorded eight
hours spaced out in a Laundromat. The day I bused upstate to view the autumn