"Christopher Moore - Island of the Sequined Love Nun" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore Christopher)

He tried to focus on a way to escape before the native returned, but his mind
kept diving into a sea of regrets and second guesses, looking for the exact
place where the world had turned on him and put him in the cannibal tree.
Like most of the big missteps he had taken in his life, it had started in
a bar.
The Seattle Airport Holiday Inn lounge was all hunter green, brass rails,
and oak veneer. Remove the bar and it looked like Macy's men's department. It
was one in the morning and the bartender, a stout, middle-aged Hispanic woman,
was polishing glasses and waiting for her last three customers to leave so she
could go home. At the end of a bar a young woman in a short skirt and too much
makeup sat alone. Tucker Case sat next to a businessman several stools down.
"Lemmings," the businessman said.
"Lemmings?" asked Tucker.
They were drunk. The businessman was heavy, in his late fifties, and wore
a charcoal gray suit. Broken veins glowed on his nose and cheeks.
"Most people are lemmings," the businessman continued. "That's why they
fail. They behave like suicidal rodents."
"But you're a higher level of rodent?" Tucker Case said with a smart-ass
grin. He was thirty, just under six foot, with neatly trimmed blond hair and
blue eyes. He wore navy slacks, sneakers, and a white shirt with blue-and-gold
epaulets. His captain's hat sat on the bar next to a gin and tonic. He was
more interested in the girl at the end of the bar than in the businessman's
conversation, but he didn't know how to move without being obvious.
"No, but I've kept my lemming behavior limited to my personal
relationships. Three wives." The businessman waved a swizzle stick under
Tucker's nose. "Success in America doesn't require any special talent or any
kind of extra effort. You just have to be consistent and not fuck up. That's
how most people fail. They can't stand the pressure of getting what they want,
so when they see that they are getting close, they engineer some sort of
fuckup to undermine their success."
The lemming litany was making Tucker uncomfortable. He'd been on a roll
for the last four years, going from bartending to flying corporate jets. He
said, "Maybe some people just don't know what they want. Maybe they only look
like lemmings."
"Everyone knows what they want. You know what you want, don't you?"
"Sure, I know," Tucker said. What he wanted right now was to get out of
this conversation and get to know the girl at the end of the bar before
closing time. She'd been staring at him for five minutes.
"What?" The businessman wanted an answer. He waited.
"I just want to keep doing what I'm doing. I'm happy."
The businessman shook his head. "I'm sorry, son, but I don't buy it.
You're going over the cliff with the rest or the lemmings."
"You should be a motivational speaker," Tuck said, his attention drawn by
the girl, who was getting up, putting money on the bar, picking up her
cigarettes, and putting them into her purse.
She said, "I know what I want."
The businessman fumed and gave his best avuncular horndog smile. "And
what's that, sweetheart?"
She walked up to Tucker and pressed her breasts against his shoulder. She
had brown hair that fell in curls to her shoulders, blue eyes, and a nose that