"Terry Dowling - Clownette" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dowling Terry)

Clownette

By Terry Dowling
I've always had a love-hate relationship with Macklin's. When the place is full, when there are
conventions or tour groups booked in, then relatives, friends, and discount regulars like me get offered
the Clownette. There's no other choice.

Not that it's a bad room. There are darker, far worse rooms at Macklin's, many with brick-wall views.
The Clownette opens onto a back lane, true, but it's on the top floor and there's sky and light. That's the
upside. That's by day. At nightтАФwell, it changes.

And this time, for maybe the eighteenth, nineteenth time in six years, it was a full house and the Clownette
or nothing.

No big deal, never a big deal. But there's always ten, twenty seconds or so when it almost matters a lot. I
could trek over to Wright's or the Walden; they have budget plans as well, not that that's any kind of
issue with my Hopeton's expense account. But, taking the good with the bad, there's something about the
Clownette. Once those ten, twenty seconds are done, you see it as clear as day. You get the sky and the
lightтАФat least until nightfall. You get to check out the latest additions to the d├йcor. You get to see the
face, the "Motley," the Macklin Hotel's very own Shroud of Turin right there in the wall.

Dry-staining as art. A platter-sized discoloration that spoils the room, does so crucially for some. And it
does look like a clown in a sketchy, man-in-the-moon fashion, with blotchy there-but-never-quite-there
features. Paint it over as often as you like, the Motley creeps back, pushing through bit by bit, first as the
barest hint of shadow, then as a chain of dusky fractals linking up. And once they connect: hey presto!
Peekaboo! Bozo in the wall!

I took the news about the hotel being full with passable grace, expecting one of Gordon's usual quips.
"Off to see the Wizard again, I'm afraid, Mr. J." Or "Tell me again, Mr. J., how you always wanted to
join a circus as a kid!" Or, perfectly po-faced, as if taking the straight part in our long-standing,
front-desk, double act: "So he misses you, Mr. J. You see the kid, he says, you send him right up."

Six years of staying at Macklin's, and to GordonтАФand the Motley, to hear Gordon tell itтАФI'm still the
kid!

None of that today. Maybe there were things on his mind. Maybe he'd had bad news. He just gave me a
warm-up smile straight out of Hospitality 101 and handed me a new-style magnetic key.

"Made some changes since your last visit, Mr. Jackson," he said.

There it was again, the Mr. Jackson! I'd thought it had been a natural enough slip when he'd said it the
first time, some automatic holdover from dealing with too many new guests at once.

Thrown by how correct he was being, I was an extra second or two answering. "Don't tell me it's gone!"
"No, sir. I meant the key. The wall's been painted again since your last visit, but you know how it is."

Sir? Mr. Jackson; now sir!

"Wouldn't be the same without it, Gordon," I said to keep the patter going, trying for a handle on what
was amiss here. These Gordon glitches overshadowed getting the Clownette, stopped me switching