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

Beat.

Empty stage.

Beat.
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Beat.

The MC staggered onto the stage from the wings, looking backward over his shoulder with a rather
goofy dazed expression, grabbed onto the old-fashioned standing mike as if for support.

тАЬUh, ah, ladies and gentleman, ah, I've been informed that Jack Dunphy can't be with us tonight, he,
uh...."

тАЬFell into the reactor pool and turned back into a two hundred pound frog!"

A loud off-stage voice, penetrating and raspy: a bit like Jimmy Durante, a bit like Popeye, a bit like a
circular saw hitting sheet-metal.

The MC looked back at the audience with a sickly dumb-ass grin; given the previous level of acting
ability and comic timing he had displayed, Jimmy was pretty sure this was not an act of which he had
expected to be part. What gives?

тАЬBut, uh, he's arranged for a replacement, the fabulous, the world-famous, the one and only, uh, ahтАФ"

тАЬRalf!тАЭ barks the off-stage voice.Really barks it. тАЬRalf! Ralf! Ar-A-El-Ef, just like it's spelled, Monkey
Boy!"

тАЬThe amazing, uh, Ralf...."

The MC exited rather hurriedly stage right, as the man behind the voice bustled on from stage left.

He was maybe five-foot seven, built like a slightly overweight miniature gorilla, legs a bit too short for the
body, arms a bit too long. He had a towering head of thick curly black hair looked like it was combed
with an eggbeater, blazed with silver here and there, like he once stuck his dork in a light-socket.

Might have been just before he stepped on stage, by the look of him. He had dumbo ears that Jimmy
would've almost bet were prehensile, and big brilliant blue eyes rolling like slot machine tumblers that just
didn't seem to go with his grayish and unhealthy-looking Mediterranean complexion. Bulbous beaky nose
that almost seemed redone by a plastic surgeon for comic effect, and a huge thick-lipped mouth in
constant motion.

тАЬPeace and Love, people to the power,тАЭ he rasped, making a V-sign with his pudgy right hand.

He was wearing blue jeans, some kind of eye-killing tie-dyed satin peasant blouse, Reeboks with the
laces untied, and a brass peace sign on a leather thong approximately the diameter of a small Domino's