"Фредерик Браун. Night of the Jabberwock (англ) " - читать интересную книгу автора

I sighed. "Do anything you want." I knew Pete would fix it up somehow
if I didn't get down. He'd drag something from a back page and plug the back
page with filler items or a subscription ad. It was going to be lousy
because we had one sub ad in already and too damn much filler; you know,
those little items that tell you the number of board feet in a sequoia and
the current rate of mullet manufacture in the Euphrates valley. All right in
small doses, but when you run the stuff by the column
Pete said he'd better go, and this time he did. I watched him go,
envying him a little. Pete Corey is a good printer and I pay him just about
what I make myself. We put in about the same number of hours, but I'm the
one who has to worry whenever there's any worrying to be done, which is most
of the time.
Smiley's other customers left, just after Pete, and I didn't want to
sit alone at the table, so I took my bottle over to the bar.
"Smiley," I said, "do you want to buy a paper?"
"Huh?" Then he laughed. "You're kidding me, Doc. It isn't off the press
till tomorrow noon, is it?"
"It isn't," I told him. "But it'll be well worth waiting for this week.
Watch for it, Smiley. But that isn't what I meant."
"Huh? Oh, you mean do I want to buy the paper. I don't think so, Doc. I
don't think I'd be very good at running a paper. I can't spell very good,
for one thing. But look, you were telling me the other night Clyde Andrews
wanted to buy it from you. Whyn't you sell it to him, if you want to sell
it?"
"Who the devil said I wanted to sell it?" I asked him. "I just asked if
you wanted to buy it."
Smiley looked baffled.
"Doc," he said, "I never know whether you're serious or not. Seriously,
do you really want to sell out?"
I'd been wondering that. I said slowly, "I don't know, Smiley. Right
now, I'd be damn tempted. I think I hate to quit mostly because before I do
I'd like to get out one good issue. Just one good issue out of twenty-three
years."
"If you sold it, what'd you do?"
"I guess, Smiley, I'd spend the rest of my life not editing a
newspaper."
Smiley decided I was being funny again, and laughed.
The door opened and Al Grainger came in. I waved the bottle at him and
he came down the bar to where I was standing, and Smiley got another glass
and a chaser of water; Al always needs a chaser.
Al Grainger is just a young squirt twenty-two or -three but he's one
of the few chess players in town and one of the even fewer people who
understand my enthusiasm for Lewis Carroll. Besides that, he's by way of
being a Mystery Man in Carmel City. Not that you have to be very mysterious
to achieve that distinction.
He said, "Hi, Doc. When are we going to have another game of chess?"
"No time like the present, Al. Here and now?"
Smiley kept chessmen on hand for screwy customers like Al Grainger and
Carl Trenholm and myself. He'd bring them out, always handling them as
though he expected them to explode in his hands, whenever we asked for them.