"Newman, Kim - The Pierce-Arrow Stalled, And..." - читать интересную книгу автора (Newman Kim)

The Pierce-Arrow Stalled, and ...
a short story by Kim Newman

...rolled a dozen yards, then settled into dusty ruts. North of San Luis
Obispo, the coast road was primitive, many sections still unpaved. As the
wheel wrenched in his hands, Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle felt the engine under
the sleek hood choke and die. Long as a truck, the Pierce-Arrow was
newly-delivered, a $25,000 custom-built toy with full bar and solid silver
accessories. 'Of course the car's four times the size of anyone else's,'
he'd explained, 'I'm four times as big as the average guy.'
The jolt woke up Lowell Sherman. In jauntily rude tones, the actor said,
'These special jobs are less reliable than factory models. All the
attention to fripperies means essentials, like wheels and engines, get
neglected.'
The motor strangled again. 'She won't turn over,' he complained.
Fischbach, the other passenger, slumped gloomily against thousand-dollar
upholstery. The director, a last-minute addition to the expedition, had
been fidgety ever since they left Los Angeles.
'There are no coyotes out here, are there?' Fischbach asked.
For a minute, they just sat. After four hours, the leather seats were hot
and greasy as fresh-fried bacon. Roscoe felt a layer of gritty sweat
between his bulk and his clothes; fat was his fortune, but it literally
weighed him down. He tried again, turning the key with deliberate
smoothness. The engine didn't even choke.
They were many miles from the nearest town. Here, where the desert met the
sea, there was nothing. They hadn't seen another automobile for nearly an
hour.
He opened his door and squeezed out. His belly hung like an anvil from his
spine, pulling him towards the dirt as he bent over the hood. Fishbach and
Sherman stood around. The metal catch seared his fat fingers. As the hood
sprang up, bad-tasting smoke belched. If this were one of his features,
his face would be blacked like a minstrel's.
'Looks like we won't be making the party in San Francisco,' said Sherman.
Roscoe had to agree.
Fischbach muttered, as if he'd known the trip would end in disaster.

By 1921, Hollywood was generally conceded to be Sodom and Gomorrah
re-erected among orange groves. Now America was dry, the attention of
the professionally moral was drawn to the last bastion of sin, motion
pictures. There was confusion in pulpit and editorial as to whether the
vociferously condemned immorality was found on the screen in the heated
embraces of Rudolph Valentino and Agnes Ayres in The Sheik, or at wild
parties hosted by the stars, where passions were reputed to be even more
heated. The true cause of censorious ire was indeed the off-screen
activities of young men and women who, thanks to a new-made art, were
the idols of youth. But, short of reviving the ducking-stool and public
stocks, little could be done to regulate the behaviour of private
citizens in private pools and palaces. Thus the voice of anger was
raised against the movies themselves; sermon and column inch insisted
Hollywood must clean up its act. However sixty million Americans liked