"Jack Womack - A Kiss A Wink" - читать интересную книгу автора (Womack Jack)

JACK WOMACK

A KISS, A WINK, A GRASSY KNOLL

The assassination of John F. Kennedy touched ageneration--and spawned a wealth
of conspiracy theories

Edgar met Natalie when they worked together reprocessing the Zapruder film for
use in a music video. He enhanced the images and she edited them anew into an
unending loop. They were entwined within their own conspiracy before the job
was done.

Not long after, he invited me to his Twenty-fourth Street apartment for dinner,
to meet Natalie as well. With trepidation I agreed. Since high school I'd
watched him perform his rituals with the blind regularity of a tribe which
offered up its virgins without remembering why. A woman showed interest in him,
he'd thrust his head into the maw of love; yet, if his feelings were
reciprocated, the couple soon found themselves unable to develop their tryst
into more than a brief corresponding of mutual obsessions; for as the woman's
lessened, his grew, and after so long she would pass again ghostlike into the
night.

"It's different this time," he avowed. As ever I chose to believe, the romantic
in my soul leading me astray.

After dinner we sat in his living room, talking. Each minute spent in Edgar's
cigarette cloud surely stole a more distant minute from my life, but he was
always memorable company. Our conversation flowed as freely as the wine Natalie
poured for herself; she was attractive, intelligent, and cheerfully
argumentative. Edgar clasped her hands in his and constantly stroked her
wrists, as if forever needing to be taking her pulse. "Look at what we've done,"
he said, getting up and inserting their tape into one of his machines that I
might judge the fruit of their womb. His television was wall-size; in its blurs
I could guess at every shadow. "The group hasn't had any luck getting airplay,"
he said. "Not even in clubs."

"For reasons of taste, perhaps?" I asked.

Natalie nodded and drew in his smoke as he exhaled. "Exactly. At the band's
request the director blue-screened space babes on top of our loop. You can see
everything in those garter belts they're wearing."

"And the images bleed at the edges," he added. "The lines overlap. Ours is the
pure, if less artistic, version."

Natalie kissed him. When she did they seemed to forget that their surrounding
world contained anyone, or anything, other than themselves. Coeval in age, at
that point they coexisted in mind as well. Natalie was genuinely different;
something about her forewarned me that she was as careless as Edgar in allowing
her lines to bleed into another's. Perhaps that was what each had sought, after