"Island of the Sequined Love Nun" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore Christopher)

6 Who’s Flying This Life?

At the last minute Mary Jean changed her mind about sending Tucker Case to her cabin in the mountains. “Put him in a motel room outside of town and don’t let him out until I say so.”

In two weeks Tucker had seen only the nurse who came in to change his bandages and the guard. Actually, the guard was a tackle, second-string defense from SMU, six-foot-six, two hundred and seventy pounds of earnest Christian naïveté named Dusty Lemon.

Tucker was lying on the bed watching television. Dusty sat hunched over the wood-grain Formica table reading Scripture.

Tucker said, “Dusty, why don’t you go get us a six-pack and a pizza?”

Dusty didn’t look up. Tuck could see the shine of his scalp through his crew cut. A thick Texas drawl: “No, sir. I don’t drink and Mrs. Jean said that you wasn’t to have no alcohol.”

“It’s not Mrs. Jean, you doofus. It’s Mrs. Dobbins.” After two weeks, Dusty was beginning to get on Tuck’s nerves.

“Just the same,” Dusty said. “I can call for a pizza for you, but no beer.”

Tuck detected a blush though the crew cut. “Dusty?”

“Yes sir.” The tackle looked up from his Bible, waited.

“Get a real name.”

“Yes, sir,” Dusty said, a giant grin bisecting his moon face, “Tuck.”

Tucker wanted to leap off the bed and cuff Dusty with his Bible, but he was a long way from being able to leap anywhere. Instead, he looked at the ceiling for a second (it was highway safety orange, like the walls, the doors, the tile in the bathroom), then propped

himself up on one elbow and considered Dusty’s Bible. “The red type. That

the hot parts?”

“The words of Jesus,” Dusty said, not looking up.

“Really?”

Dusty nodded, looked up. “Would you like me to read to you? When my grandma was in the hospital, she liked me to read Scriptures to her.”

Tucker fell back with an exasperated sigh. He didn’t understand religion. It was like heroin or golf: He knew a lot of people did it, but he didn’t un-derstand why. His father watched sports every Sunday, and his mother had worked in real estate. He grew up thinking that church was something that simply interfered with games and weekend open houses. His first ex-posure to religion, other than the skin mag layouts of the women who had brought down television evangelists, had been his job with Mary Jean. For her it just seemed like good business. Sometimes he would stand in the back of the auditorium and listen to her talk to a thousand women about having God on their sales team, and they would cheer and “Hallelujah!” and he would feel as if he’d been left out of something—something beyond the apparent goofiness of it all. Maybe Dusty had something on him besides a hundred pounds.

“Dusty, why don’t you go out tonight? You haven’t been out in two weeks. I have to be here, but you—you must have a whole line of babes crying to get you back, huh? Big football player like you, huh?”

Dusty blushed again, going deep red from the collar of his practice jersey to the top of his head. He folded his hands and looked at them in his lap. “Well, I’m sorta waitin’ for the right girl to come along. A lot of the girls that go after us football players, you know, they’re kinda loose.”

Tuck raised an eyebrow. “And?”

Dusty squirmed, his chair creaked under the strain. “Well, you know, it’s kinda…”

And suddenly, amid the stammering, Tucker got it. The kid was a virgin. He raised his hand to quiet the boy. “Never mind, Dusty.” The big tackle slumped in his chair, exhausted and embarrassed.

Tuck considered it. He, who understood so much the importance of a healthy sex life, who knew what women needed and how to give it to them, might never be able to do it again, and Dusty Lemon, who probably could produce a woody that women could chin themselves on, wasn’t using it at all. He pondered it. He worked it over

from several angles and came very close to having a religious experience, for who but a vicious and vengeful God would allow such injustice in the world? He thought about it. Poor Tucker. Poor Dusty. Poor, poor Tucker.

He felt a lump forming in his throat. He wanted to say something that would make the kid feel better. “How old are you, Dusty?”

“I’ll be twenty-two next March, sir?”

“Well, that’s not so bad. I mean, you might be a late bloomer, you know. Or gay maybe,” Tuck said cheerfully.

Dusty started to contract into the fetal position. “Sir, I’d rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind,” he whimpered. There was a knock on the door and he uncurled, alert and ready to move. He looked to Tucker for instructions.

“Well, answer it.”

Dusty lumbered to the door and pulled it open a crack. “Yes?”

“I’m here to see Tucker Case. It’s okay, I work for Mary Jean.” Tuck recognized Jake Skye’s voice.

“Just a second.” Dusty turned and looked to Tucker, confused.

“Who knows we’re here, Dusty?”

“Just us and Mrs. Jean.”

“Then why don’t you let him in?”

“Yes, sir.” He opened the door and Jake Skye strode through carrying a grocery bag and a pizza box.

“Greetings.” He threw the pizza on the bed. “Pepperoni and mushroom.” He glanced at Dusty and paused, taking a moment to look the tackle up and down. “How’d you get this job? Eat your family?”

“No, sir,” Dusty said.

Jake patted the tackle’s mammoth shoulder. “Good to be careful, I guess. Momma always said, ‘Beware of geeks bearing gifts.’ Who are you?”

“Jake Skye,” Tuck said, “meet Dusty Lemon. Dusty, Jake Skye, Mary Jean’s jet mechanic. Be nice to Dusty, Jake, He’s a virgin.”

Dusty shot a vicious glare at Tuck and extended a boxing glove size mitt. Jake shook his hand. “Virgin, huh?”

Jake dropped his hand. “Not including farm animals, though, right?”

Dusty winced and moved to close the door. “You-all can’t stay long. Mr. Case isn’t supposed to see no one.”

Jake put the grocery bag down on the table, pulled out a fourinch-thick bundle of mail, and tossed it on the bed next to Tucker. “Your

fan mail.”

Tucker picked it up. “It’s all been opened.”

“I was bored,” Jake said, opening the pizza box and extracting a slice. “A lot of death threats, a few marriage proposals, a couple really interesting ones had both. Oh, and an airline ticket to someplace I’ve never heard of with a check for expenses.”

“From Mary Jean?”

“Nope. Some missionary doctor in the Pacific. He wants you to fly for him. Medical supplies or something. Came FedEx yesterday. Almost took the job myself, seeing as I still have my pilot’s license and you don’t, but then, I can get a job here.”

Tucker shuffled through the stack of mail until he found the check and the airline ticket. He unfolded the attached letter.

Jake held the pizza box out to the bodyguard. “Dopey, you want some pizza?”

“Dusty,” Dusty corrected.

“Whatever.” To Tuck: “He wants you to leave ASAP.”

“He can’t go anywhere,” said Dusty.

Jake retracted the box. “I can see that, Dingy. He’s still wired for sound.” Jake gestured toward the catheter that snaked out of Tucker’s pajama bottoms. “How long before you can travel?”

Tucker was studying the letter. It certainly seemed legitimate. The doctor was on a remote island north of New Guinea, and he needed someone to fly jet loads of medical supplies to the natives. He specifically mentioned that “he was not concerned” about Tucker’s lack of a pilot’s license. The “need was dire” and the need was for an experienced jet pilot who could fly a Lear 45.

“Well,” Jake said, “when can you roll?”

“Doctor says not for a week or so,” Tucker said. “I don’t get it. This guy is offering more money than I make for Mary Jean. Why me?”

Jake pulled a Lone Star from the grocery bag and twisted off the cap. Tuck zeroed in on the beer. Dusty snatched it out of Jake’s hand.

“The question is,” Jake said, glaring at Dusty, “what the fuck is a missionary doctor in Bongo Bongo land doing with a Lear 45?”

“God’s work?” Dusty said innocently.

Jake snatched back his beer. “Oh blow me, Huey.”

“Dusty,” Dusty corrected.

Tucker said, “I’m not sure this is a good idea. Maybe I should stay here and see how things pan out with the FAA. This guy wants me right away. I need more time.”

“Like more time will make a difference. Damn, Tucker, you don’t have to sink eyeball deep in shit to know it’s a good idea to pull yourself out. Sometimes you have to make a decision.”

Tucker looked at the letter again. “But I…”

Before Tucker could finish his protest, Jake brought the Lone Star in a screaming arc across Dusty Lemon’s temple. The bodyguard fell like a dead tree and did a dead-cat bounce on the orange carpet.

“Jesus!” Tucker said. “What the fuck was that?”

“A decision,” Jake said. He looked up from the fallen tackle and took a pull on the foaming Lone Star. “Sometimes this high-tech world calls for low-tech solutions. Let’s go.”