"Effinger, George Alec - Maureen Birnbaum 03 - Maureen Birnbaum at the Looming Awfulness" - читать интересную книгу автора (Effinger George Alec)

I heard a sound. It was a sort of whuffle.

"It could be Santa," I thought. I was dubious, because it was ordy September. I
turned toward the windows, and there was Muffy, still in her goddamn gold
brassiere and G-string, still toting all the spoils from her various conquests,
still dragging around Old Betsy, her broadsword. It's not named after me -- I
should be so honored -- but because that's what Davy Crockett called his rifle.

"Yo, where you at, B?" she goes.

See, first she called me Bitsy, and then she called me Bits, which I hated in an
ultimate sort of way, and now it was just B. I wondered what would be next --
just the Buh part, without the Ee.

"Aw, Muffy, "I go, "you practically promised you wouldn't come back here
anymore."

She grinned her warrior-woman grin. "Fortunately, things changed miraculously,
aren't you glad? And don't call me Muffy, okay?"

I took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. "So where did you end up this
time?"

She grinned again. "I'll give you a hint. To quote Groucho Marx in 'A Night at
the Opera, '--boogie, boogie, boogie!"

You see what I mean? I cleverly hid the bag of malted milk balls under the
covers. She wasn't going to get even one. For what it's worth, here's her
stirring account.

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of my mind to
remember things from one day to the next. I have had some startling and
thrilling exploits--many more than you have recorded for the education of my
audience-- yet so often my adventure is made all the more arduous by what I have
come to call "inappropriate forgetfulness."

In the mirror I still appear young, as young as I did when I studied at the
Greenberg School; nevertheless, I sometimes wonder if I have developed an
unusually premature case of Alzheimer's Disease. I get lost in jungles more
easily than I care to admit, I sometimes forget the names of heroic people of
both sexes, and likewise, the villains, and I'm always leaving behind just those
items that would substantiate the oral history of my wonderful journeys, when I
tell them to you, my dear friend, Blitzy Bitsy Spiegelman. Or Spiegelman-Fein.
Or maybe it's just Spiegelman again these days. You've got to let me know which
you want me to use.

I have just returned from an exploit filled with occult evil, wizardry, and
terror beyond imagining. Alas, I -- and one other-- alone remain to tell the
tale, and once more, alas, I have nothing to support my words but a bit of