"Mark Morris - The Chisellers' Reunion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morris Mark)

As the train roared by, just a few feet behind us, Conrad did his usual
thing of moving his lips without sound, pretending he was holding a
conversation. The train sound began to fade and Conrad said, as though it
were the end of a story, "...licked off all the clotted cream."
Nick and I both laughed.
"How's your face?" I asked him.
"Fucking hurts."
"Fucking hurts me too," said Nick.
Below us was a sort of gully choked with weeds and rubbish. Beyond that
the ground sloped back up to the edge of the playing fields. I picked up
one of the smooth white stones and lobbed it into the gully, aiming at a
discarded Tizer bottle. I missed by about three feet, hitting the edge of
a rusting bed-frame.
There was a deep clang and the stone bounced into the air like a white
mouse hitting a trampoline. Conrad snatched up a stone and followed suit.
"Person who manages to smash the bottle gets a blow job," he said.
"From who?" Nick wanted to know, looking at Conrad suspiciously.
"Er...Michelle Pfeiffer. I'll give her a bell when we get back."
As if believing by some miraculous quirk of fate that the prize could
become a genuine one, the three of us snatched up stones and hurled them
frantically at our target. Perhaps because we were all so eager to win,
perhaps simply because we're a bunch of losers, it took a ridiculously
long time to hit the bottle. Stones lay scattered about like petals, in
the midst of which the bottle lay, intact. Nick's aim got steadily worse
the more beer he drunk, and my arm started to ache like a bastard after a
bit. I'm your typical Mr Average - average height, average build, average
looks - but for some reason I've always had incredibly weak arms. I can
never hold anything in the air for very long, and I sprain my wrists quite
easily. However, weak arms or not, I eventually threw a stone that I knew,
the instant it left my hand, was a winner.
The stone hit the bottle dead centre, and we were all treated to the
incredibly satisfying sound of breaking glass.
"Champeo-nee, champeo-nee, oh way-oh-way-oh-way," I chanted. "Nice one,"
said Conrad. "The only thing I forgot to mention, though, is that I wasn't
talking about Michelle Pfeiffer the actress, but Michelle Pfeiffer who
works in the local fish-gutting factory. She's sixty-two, weighs
twenty-three stone, has nostril-stinging B.O. and a face like a Yak's
sphincter."
"Sounds like my kind of girl," I said.
"Oh, and she's only got one eye."
"Gorgeous!"
"And two noses."
"Pass me a Kleenex, I'm drooling."
"Hey, I know her," said Nick. "She once ate our next door neighbour's
Doberman."
And so it went on. We all felt like shit and yet we kept the jokes coming.
This is probably what it was like in the trenches, or the jungles of
Vietnam. A laugh a minute.
It was getting quite dark now. Was it really four hours since we had
arrived? As usual the time had just gone, disappeared, as though great