"Norman Spinrad - He Walked Among Us" - читать интересную книгу автора (Spinrad Norman)

for the state of his own life like unto having Sigmund Freud chuckling in his beardтАФthe forty-three year
old one-time visionary with the expanded waistline zipping up over Mulholland towards his boysтАЩ night
out with the ghosts of his youth in his equally superannuated red Italian dick on wheels.

But as he crossed Mulholland, though, destiny sent him a sign.

Up from the Valley side came another old red Alfa of approximately the same vintage. The top was also
down, and in the car was your prototypical California beauty, long honey-blond hair blowinтАЩ in the wind,
could have been all of twenty-five.

She honked her horn.

Dexter honked back.

Her smile was radiant.

Dexter waved, and then she was gone.

But not before he remembered that it was old stogie-chomping Siggy himself, who, when tweaked by
some smartass as to the obvious symbolic nature of the cylindrical object perpetually stuck in his yawp,
had proclaimed: тАЬOn the other hand, sometimes a cigar is a cigar."
****

тАЬKapplemeyer's?тАЭ said the Bimbo. тАЬNot evenGrossinger's ? For the tenth time, Jimmy, what the hell are
we doing in theCatskills in November?"

тАЬScouting talent, kid,тАЭ Texas Jimmy Balaban told her, as he turned the rented Buick off the highway at
the splintery old wooden sign and up the drive that might have been last paved when George Burns was
still playing straightman to Gracie.

тАЬHere?тАЭ said the Bimbo, whose name was Sabrina.

тАЬMatter of instinct, babes,тАЭ Texas Jimmy muttered, successfully swerving the car around one of the more
major potholes. тАЬThe nose knows."

What was he supposed to tell her, that since Kapplemeyer's Country Club Resort Hotel was the kind of
dump that Texas Jimmy Balaban ordinarily wouldn't be caught dead in, he had reason to hope that
Marsha's soft-boiled divorce dick wouldn't think to look for the live item here either?

You're getting too old for this shit, Jimmy, he told himself as he pulled up in front of the hotel.

Yeah, sure, that's what he had been telling himself at moments like these for about twenty-five years.
You're getting to old to get married again, you're getting too old to get cleaned out again in the divorce
courts, you're getting too old to chase young pussy, you're getting too old to dodge house dicks and
keyhole peepers. Right. Learned my lesson. Never again.

Indeed, Texas Jimmy had had no intention at all, well hardly any, of chasing after any nookie on this trip