"R. A. Lafferty - Stories 5" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lafferty R A)

talked to the pigeons. They, at least, had manners.
"The bloom is off the plum now," he would tell those red-footed peckers,
"and the roses of life have become a little ratty for me. But I will not run
out of coin. I have the promise that I will not. I got that promise as part of
a dubious transaction, but the promise has held up now for more years and
decades than you would believe. And I will not die till I am death-weary of
taking coin out of my pocketbook: I have that promise also. How would I ever
be weary of drawing coins out of my pocketbook?
"This began a long time ago, you see, when the pigeons were no bigger
than the jenny-wrens are now. They had just started to mint the American
twenty-dollar gold piece, and I had them in full and never-ending flow. I tell
you that a man can make an impression if he has enough gold pieces. Ah, the
ladies who were my friends! Lola Montez, Squirrel Alice, Marie Laveau, Sarah
Bernhardt, Empress Elizabeth of Austria. And the high ladies were attracted to
me for myself as well as for my money. I was the golden cock of the golden
walk.
"You ask what happened to those golden days?" Matthew said to the
pigeons, who hadn't asked anything except maybe, "How about springing for
another box of Cracker Jacks?"
"Oh, the golden days are still with me, though technically they are the
copper days now. I was promised eight bright eons of ever-flowing money, and
the eight of the eons could last (along with my life) as long as I wished it
to last.
"And, when the first eon of flowing money slipped into the second, it
didn't diminish my fortune much. It was still an unending stream of gold. Now
they were five-dollar gold pieces instead of twenty-dollar gold pieces, but
when there is no limit to the number of them, what difference does that make?
I would take one out of my pocketbook, and immediately there would be another
one in it waiting to be taken."

"I suppose I really had the most fun when I was known as the Silver
Dollar Kid," Matthew Quoin told them. He was talking to squirrels rather than
pigeons now, and it was a different day. But one day was very much like
another.
"I never cared overly for money. I just don't want to run out of it. And
I have the promise that my pocketbook will always have one more coin in it. I
liked that sound of silver dollars on a counter, and I'd ring them down as
fast as one a second when I wished to make all impression. And they rang like
bells. I was in my pleasant maturity then, and life was good to me. I was the
guy they all noticed. They called me 'Show Boat' and 'the Silver Dollar
Sport.' I always tipped a dollar for everything. That was when money was worth
ten times what it is now and a dollar was really something. What, squirrels,
another sack of peanuts, you say? Sure I can afford it! The girl at the kiosk
will be a little impatient with me because it takes the so long to get enough
coins out, but we don't care about that, do we?"

The fact was that Mitiliew Quoin, though he still commanded a shining
and unending stream of money, had a poor and shabby look about him in these
days of the eighth coin. As part of an old and dubious transaction, he had the
promise that he could live as long as he wished, but that didn't prevent him