Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse - Gischler Victor (читать книги полностью .txt) 📗
“I don’t doubt it.”
“What gets me about these clothes is that some of them are only pretty,” she said. “Not made to keep you warm or dry. Just to be pretty. Can you believe they’d make clothes just for that? I guess they used to all the time.”
Anne had always wanted the most impractical clothing and loathed Mortimer for pointing that out. “Every girl should have at least one dress just to be pretty.”
Mortimer didn’t know if he quite believed that, but it was the right thing to say. A smile flickered across Sheila’s face, and for an instant the hardness fell away and she wasn’t a teenage whore and killer. She was just a young girl looking at pretty dresses in a shop window.
They realized they’d lost Bill. It was bound to happen, so many things to catch the eye and turn the head. Soon Sheila was off looking into another store window. Without vehicular traffic, the middle of the avenue had become a sort of town square. A man played a banjo while a small monkey performed acrobatic feats. Mortimer was glad the monkey hadn’t been eaten. How many escaped zoo animals roamed the countryside? A few yards down, another performer juggled flaming batons. Someone else dealt three-card monty. He smelled cotton candy and some kind of meat on a stick.
He realized he didn’t have any money but hoped he could get the same credit here he’d gotten at the Joey’s in Cleveland. He really wanted to sleep indoors tonight. It would be a great gift to Bill and Sheila to buy them both a big dinner, a few bottles of wine. Hell, maybe he’d even get Sheila a new dress for the occasion. Mortimer admitted to himself he was thinking about everything except why he’d come all this way in the first place.
Somewhere at the top of Lookout Mountain his wife, Anne, waited.
Now that he was here, the idea of marching up to her and saying, “ Hi, honey, it’s me, your husband. Long time no see,” seemed ludicrous. A juvenile part of him did relish the surprised look he hoped to see on her face, but mostly he didn’t know how she would react, and that made him nervous.
But Mortimer owed her something. He couldn’t articulate what that might be, not exactly, but he needed to see her, and he honestly believed she’d want to see him. Sure she would. They were married after all.
He was stalling. Was it possible Mortimer no longer wanted-or needed-to see Anne? He’d come down the mountain alone. It might only be natural for him to seek out his wife. To connect again with the world via the only person he could think of who might want to see him. But Mortimer wasn’t alone anymore. He counted Bill as a friend. Sheila…well, he didn’t know what to think of Sheila and her “apology.” She was more than an acquaintance but not quite anything else, yet Mortimer still felt he wanted to call Sheila friend. Even if she was a scary, ferocious demon child.
So what did he want from Anne? What did he think she might want from him? He stood in the town square, eyes going unfocused as he thought hard about it, jugglers and monkeys and cardsharps plying their trades around him. He blotted them out. Something was coming to him, some significant thought coalescing from all the loose ends knocking around in his head.
Sheila emerged from the crowd to stand next to him, tentatively touched his arm. “Are you okay?”
“Shhhhh. Don’t talk,” Mortimer said. “I’m having an epiphany.”
He had come all this way, fueled by the misguided notion that he still loved Anne, that he needed to find her again, win her back somehow. What he really wanted was to stem his abject loneliness, the hollow ache that had clawed and gnawed his gut for nine years, until finally he had to fill that burning hole with…something. His desperate mind grabbed for something familiar and had latched on to the memory of Anne. Mortimer had not wanted to march into the gray unknown of a shattered world without a destination, without hope of the familiar, so he’d fabricated the myth of Anne and their possible reunion.
But Mortimer found that he wasn’t alone. He had Bill and Sheila and a Joey Armageddon’s Platinum card. He was doing all right. He was reinventing himself in a new context. This different, surprising, shocking world might disgust him, confound him, bruise and terrify him, but so far it had not knocked him down, not so badly that he couldn’t find his feet again. Mortimer Tate could stand up. He did not need his ex-wife.
He thought maybe that he loved her still but wasn’t in love with her. Is that what women meant when they said that bullshit? Yes, Mortimer understood now. His mind had broadened to understand this simple truth. All it took was the end of the world.
He blinked himself out of his daydream, clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Okay, figured that out. Now let’s go get something to eat.”
XXX
They found Bill and headed for St. Elmo Station and the Incline Railway. The trolley car’s tracks climbed the steep slope of Lookout Mountain, terminating at Point Park, the Civil War historical site at the top. From the side, the trolley looked peculiar, slanted at a severe angle, but since it traveled up such a steep slope, it meant the passengers could sit in level comfort. The trolley was packed, 80 percent of the passengers male. There was an electric vibe in the trolley car, a spark of eager expectation as they headed to Joey Armageddon’s at the summit.
In some places, the grade was more than 70 percent, and as a kid, Mortimer remembered hearing that the Incline held the world record for steepest railway. He also remembered spectacular views toward the top of the mountain, but night had fallen now and all he could see were flickering pinpricks of light along the mountain and in the valley, scattered campfires and lanterns. He leaned out one of the windows, looked up ahead toward the end of the line.
Shimmering colored light crowned the top of Lookout Mountain, orange and yellow and a crazy purple shot through with searchlight stabs into the heavens. As they inched closer, the music grew louder, some sort of symphonic cymbal-crashing music. If the combined effect had been designed to heighten anticipation, it was working beautifully. Mortimer couldn’t wait to get to the top.
Mortimer no longer felt he was on a quest. The desperate urgency had drained from him. He still wanted to see Anne, still felt some sort of closure would be beneficial, but he had no expectations. What will be, will be. The future was his to shape. Perhaps he would find a house nearby, set up shop. The thought of further travel wearied him. No, he would not think beyond tonight.
He was a Platinum member.
Let the good times roll.
The top of Lookout Mountain hummed and buzzed and bustled with activity. Large stereo speakers hanging in the trees boomed the classical music, which Mortimer now recognized as the theme from Star Wars. More armed but ever-friendly guards in clean black suits watched over the crowd. The passengers spilled out of the trolley car into the throng. The crowd headed for a set of gates that took them on a circular path to the front entrance. Mortimer, Bill and Sheila fell into the slowly moving mass of people. It reminded Mortimer of the few times he’d been to a Tennessee Titans game, the expectant crowds drifting en masse through the turnstiles into the stadium.
Above them, music filled the sky, spotlights danced among the trees; it was the circus and the Super Bowl and a Hollywood premiere all rolled into one. Mortimer was simultaneously awed and giddy.
After five minutes of edging forward in the line, Mortimer saw a small gate in a white wooden fence off to the side. A discreet sign in small lettering read VIP ENTRANCE. He reached in his pocket, came out with the pink Platinum membership card. He grabbed Sheila by the hand, met Bill’s eye. “Come on!” He fast-walked toward the gate, pulling Sheila behind him.
