"Let's All Kill Constance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bradbury Ray Douglas)

CHAPTER TWELVE

we drove up near Queen Califia's Psychic Research Lodge, dead center of Bunker Hill. Crumley gave it a sour eye. Then I nodded to one side and he saw what to him was a lovely sight: CALLAHAN AND ORTEGA FUNERAL PARLOR.

That raised his spirits. "It's like a homecoming," he admitted.

Our jalopy stopped. I got out.

"You coming in?" I said.

Crumley sat staring out the windshield, hands on the steering wheel, as if we were still moving. "How come," he said, "everything seems downhill with us?"

"You coming in? I need you."

"Outta the way."

He was halfway up the steep concrete steps and then the cracked cement walk before he stopped, surveyed the big white dilapidated bird cage of a house, and said, "Looks like the half bakery where they bake your misfortune cookies."

We continued up the walk. On the way we met a cat, a white goat, and a peacock. The peacock flirted its thousand eyes, watching us pass. We made it to the front door. When I knocked, an unseasonable blizzard of paint snowflakes rained on my shoes.

"If that's what holds this joint up, it won't be long," observed Crumley.

I rapped on the door with my knuckles. Inside I heard what sounded like a massive portable safe being trundled across a hardwood floor. Something heavy was shoved up against the other side of the door.

I raised my hand again, but a high sparrow voice inside cried, "Go away!"

"I just want-"

“Go away!”

"Five minutes," I said. "Four, two, one, for God's sake. I need your help."

"No," the voice shrilled, "I need yours."

My mind spun like a Rolodex. I heard the mummy. I echoed him.

"You ever wonder where the name California came from?" I said.

Silence. The high voice lowered to almost a whisper. "Damn."

Three sets of locks rattled.

"Nobody knows that about California. Nobody."

The door opened a few inches.

"Okay, give," the voice said.

A hand like a great plump starfish thrust out.

"Put it there!"

I put my hand in hers.

"Turn it over."

I turned it, palm up.

Her hand seized it.

"Calmness."

Her hand massaged mine; her thumb circumnavigated the lines on my palm.

"Can't be," she whispered.

More quiet motions as she thumbed the pads under my fingers.

"Is," she sighed.

And then, "You remember being born!"

"How did you know that?"

"You must be the seventh son of a seventh son!"

"No," I said, "just me, no brothers."

"My God." Her hand jumped in mine. "You're going to live forever!"

"No one does."

" You will. Not your body. But what you do. What do you do?"

"I thought my life was in your hands."

She let out a breathless laugh.

"Jesus. An actor? No. Shakespeare's bastard son."

"He had no sons."

"Melville, then. Herman Melville's by-blow."

"Wish it were true."

"Is."

I heard the great weight behind the door roll back on creaking wheels. The portal drifted wide.

I saw an immense woman in an immense crimson velvet queen's robe receding on roller wheels in a metal throne across the hardwood floor to the far side of the room. She stopped by a table on which rested not one, but four crystal balls, coruscant with light from a green-and-amber Tiffany lamp. Queen Califia, astrologer, palmist, phrenologist, past and futurist, sank inside three hundred mountainous pounds of too-too-solid flesh, her stare flashing X rays. A vast iron safe hulked in the shadows.

"I don't bite."

I stepped in. Crumley followed.

"But leave the door open," she added.

I heard the peacock scream in the yard and dared to hold out my other hand.

Queen Califia reared back as if burned.

"You know Greene, the novelist?" she gasped. "Graham Greene?"

I nodded.

"Wrote about a priest who lost faith. Then witnessed a miracle he himself had caused. The shock at his renewed faith almost killed him."

"So?"

"So." She stared at my hand as if it were disconnected from my arm. "Lord."

"Is it happening to you?" I said. "What happened to that priest?"

"Oh, God!"

"Did you lose your faith, your power to heal?"

"Yes," she murmured.

"And now, just now, it all came back?"

"Dammit! Yes!"

I crushed my hand to my chest to blind it.

"How'd you guess that?" I said.

"No guess. Scares the hell out of me."

She saw the wedding invitation and the newspaper in my outstretched hand.

"You've been up to see him," she said.

"You looked. That's cheating."

That brought a half smile and then a snort. "People ricochet off him and end up here."

"Not often enough, I think. May I sit?" I said. "I'll fall if I don't."

She nodded at a chair a few feet away, a safe distance. I fell into it.

Crumley, ignored, looked peevish.

"You were saying?" I said. "People don't visit old Rattigan often. No one knows he's alive on Mount Lowe. But someone went there and yelled at him today."

"She yelled?" The great mountain almost melted in remembrance, "I wouldn't let her in."

"Her?"

"It's always a mistake"-Queen Califia cast a glance toward the crystal balls-"to guess futures and, damn fool, tell them. I give hints, not facts. I won't tell people what stocks to buy, what flesh to borrow. Diets, yes, I sell vitamins, Chinese herbs, but not longevity."

"You just did."

"You're different." She leaned. The rollers under her massive chair squealed.

"The future lies ahead of you. I've never seen a future so clear. But you are in terrible danger. I see all the time that you have to live, but someone could destroy it. Be careful!"

She paused for a long moment, closed her eyes, and then said, "You her friend? You know who I mean."

I said, "Yes-and no."

"Everyone says that. She's black and white and wild all over.”

"Who are we talking about?"

"We don't need names. I wouldn't let her in. An hour ago." I looked at Crumley. "We're catching up, getting close." "Don't," said Califia. "The way she yelled I thought she might have a knife. Til never forgive you!' she screamed. 'You gave us the wrong road maps, down instead of up, lost instead of found. May you roast in hell!' Then I heard her drive away. I won't sleep at all tonight."

"Did she say-this sounds crazy-where she was going?" "Not crazy at all," said Califia. "I would think that since she went first to that old fool on Mount Lowe who she dropped after one bad night, then me who put her up to it, well, next, why not the poor sap who performed the ceremony? She wants to get us all together, to push us off a cliff!"

"She wouldn't do that."

"How would you know? How many women you had in your life?"

At last I said, sheepishly, "One."

Queen Califia mopped her face with a handkerchief big enough to cover half her bosom, regained her composure, and slowly advanced on me, propelling herself on glider wheels with dainty pushes of her incredibly small shoes. I could not take my eyes off how tiny her feet were compared with the vast territory above, and the great lunar face that loomed on that expanse. I saw the ghost of Constance drowned beneath that flesh. Queen Califia shut her eyes.

"She's using you. You love her?"

"Carefully."

"Keep your clothes on and your motor running. She ask you to get her with child?"

"Not in so many words."

"No words, just bastard stillborns. She whelped monsters down the whole L.A. basin, lousy Hollywood Boulevard, dead-end Main. Burn her bed, scatter the ashes, call a priest."

"Which priest, where?"

"I'll put you in touch. Now…" She paused, refusing to spit out the name. "Our friend. She's always missing. One of her dodges, to make men panic. One hour with her does it. They riot in the streets. You know the game Uncle Wig-gily? Well, Uncle Wiggily says jump back ten hops, head for the Hen House, quit!"

"But she needs me!"

"No. She dines on spoilage. Blessed are the wicked who relish wickedness. Your bones will knead her bread. If she were here, I'd run her down with my chair. God, she made Rome's ruins. Hell," she added. "Let me see your palm again." Her massive chair creaked. Her wall of flesh threatened.

"You going to take back what you saw in my hand?"

"No. I just say what I see in an open palm. You will have another life beyond this! Tear up that newspaper. Burn the wedding invitation. Leave town. Tell her to die. But tell her cross-country by phone. Now, out!"

"Where do I go from here?"

"God forgive me." She shut her eyes and whispered, "Check that wedding invitation."

I raised the invite and stared.

"Seamus Brian Joseph Rattigan, St. Vibiana's Cathedral, celebrant."

"Go tell 'im his sister is in two kinds of hell, and to send holy water. Scram! I got lots to do."

"Like what?"

"Throw up," she said.

I clutched Father Seamus Brian Joseph Rattigan in my sweaty palm, backed off, and bumped into Crumley.

"Who are you?. " said Califia, finally noticing my shadow.

"I thought you knew," Crumley said.

We went out and shut the door.

The whole house shifted with her weight.

"Warn her," Califia cried. "Tell her, don't come back."

I looked at Crumley. "She didn't tell your future!"

"Thank the Lord," said Crumley, "for small blessings."