Читать книгу The Terrible Twos - Ishmael Reed - Страница 19

It was cold and frosty. They were dining in a restaurant which was lit up like an interrogation room.

Joe Baby was dressed, flamboyantly. He was wearing snake-skinned red cowboy boots, a mink coat, and a mink-brimmed hat. His partner, Big Meat, was got up the same way. He was Joe Baby’s shadow. They lived together. They sat across from a short man who weighed three hundred pounds. He’d just polished off some white “country fresh” eggs, five slices of Virginia ham, nine pieces of whole wheat toast, and three cups of orange juice, and he was waiting for a New York steak. Joe Baby was coughing. He pulled out a white handkerchief and sneezed some phlegm into it. Big Meat took out his pills and counted three for Joe Baby, who gulped them down.

“Don’t you ever stop eating?” Joe Baby asked Snow Man.

Joe Baby touched the rim of his glasses.

“Thin people are the ones who die in an emergency,” the Snow Man said. “They don’t have any reserve,” he said, after chewing on some ham. “Suppose a famine occurs. I have enough energy to see me through. You guys wouldn’t last a week.” Snow Man had arctic blue eyes. Under his overcoat he wore a conservative suit and striped bow tie.

“Hey, man. I don’t think that be too cool. Joe Baby just got out of the hospital.”

“Don’t tangle with him, Meat. He’ll blow your brains out and think nothing of it. That is if he can’t bump you against the ceiling like a pancake. I saw him sit on a dude. It was like a steamroller rolling over on somebody.” Joe Baby began to cough in such spasms that patrons at other tables turned around and stared.

“Do we deal or not,” Snow Man said.

“Too steep.”

“Ten thou is not steep, my friend,” the Snow Man said, staring blankly at Joe Baby, who was sitting across from him. “You’re asking me to drop a Bishop.”

“Give him the money, Meat.” The black man sitting next to Joe Baby had enough grease in his hair to fry a catfish. Some of the grease spotted the collar of his camel-haired coat and his white silk scarf. He took out a white box tied with a red ribbon and slid it towards the Snow Man.

“I’ll bring you his head in a box,” Snow Man said. “Gift wrapped.”

“You’d better,” Joe Baby said. Big Meat smiled. He took out his comb and styled his hair. The two left Snow Man in the restaurant. Outside, they climbed into an old black Cadillac Seville limousine and drove off.

Snow Man looked down at the newspaper as he took in mouthful after mouthful. There had been huge headlines for weeks. The Soviet Union was putting down rebellions in Estonia, Latvia, and the Ukraine. The rebellions that had begun in Riga had spread. Its ally, the United States, was having its share of bad luck too. Things had come to a head between the United States and an African power of unpredictable motives. The government claimed that the President was in constant consultation with his aides. At the end of the week, the Secretary of Defense was found dead, a possible suicide.

On the editorial page, there was a letter to the editor. It was one of many letters which had been coming in for five years, complaining about a decision handed down in a California court awarding exclusive rights to Santa Claus to Oswald Zumwalt’s North Pole Development Corporation.