JК
Bag of Bones :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 246 из 425I’m not a sissy about the sometimes whimsical, sometimes hatefulattention of the press, but I’m wary, as I would be around a bad-tempered fur-bearing mammal.
America has turned the people who entertain it into weird high-class whores, and the media jeers at any “celeb” who dares complain about his or her treatment. “Quitcha bitchin!” cry the newspapers and the TV gossip shows (the tone is one of mingled triumph and indignation).
“Didja really think we paid ya the big bucks just to sing a song or swing a Louisville Slugger? Wrong, asshole! We pay so we can be amazed when you do it well—whatever ’it’ happens to be in your particular case—and also because it’s gratifying when you fuck up. The truth is you’re supplies. If you cease to be amusing, we can always kill you and eat you.” They can’t really eat you, of course. They can print pictures of you with your shirt off and say you’re running to fat, they can talk about how much you drink or how many pills you take or snicker about the night you pulled some starlet onto your lap at Spago and tried to stick your tongue in her ear, but they can’t really eat you. So it wasn’t the thought of the Post calling me a crybaby or being a part of Jay Leno’s opening monologue that made me put the phone down; it was the realization that I had no proof. No one had seen us. And, I realized, finding an alibi for himself and his personal assistant would be the easiest thing in the world for Max Devore. There was one other thing, too, the capper: imagining the County Sheriff sending out George Footman, aka daddy, to take my statement on how the mean man had knocked li’l Mikey into the lake. How the three of them would laugh later about that! I called John Storrow instead, wanting him to tell me I was doing the right thing, the only thing that made any sense. Wanting him to remind me that only desperate men were driven to such desperate lengths (I would ignore, at least for the time being, how the two of them had laughed, as if they were having the time of their lives), and that nothing had changed in regard to Ki Devore—her grandfather’s custody case still sucked bogwater.
I got John’s recording machine at home and left a message—just call Mike Noonan, no emergency, but feel free to call late. Then I tried his office, mindful of the scripture according to John Grisham: young lawyers work until they drop. I listened to the firm’s recording machine, then followed instructions and punched sto on my phone keypad, the first three letters of John’s last name. There was a click and he came on the line—another recorded version, unfortunately. “Hi, this is John Storrow.
America has turned the people who entertain it into weird high-class whores, and the media jeers at any “celeb” who dares complain about his or her treatment. “Quitcha bitchin!” cry the newspapers and the TV gossip shows (the tone is one of mingled triumph and indignation).
“Didja really think we paid ya the big bucks just to sing a song or swing a Louisville Slugger? Wrong, asshole! We pay so we can be amazed when you do it well—whatever ’it’ happens to be in your particular case—and also because it’s gratifying when you fuck up. The truth is you’re supplies. If you cease to be amusing, we can always kill you and eat you.” They can’t really eat you, of course. They can print pictures of you with your shirt off and say you’re running to fat, they can talk about how much you drink or how many pills you take or snicker about the night you pulled some starlet onto your lap at Spago and tried to stick your tongue in her ear, but they can’t really eat you. So it wasn’t the thought of the Post calling me a crybaby or being a part of Jay Leno’s opening monologue that made me put the phone down; it was the realization that I had no proof. No one had seen us. And, I realized, finding an alibi for himself and his personal assistant would be the easiest thing in the world for Max Devore. There was one other thing, too, the capper: imagining the County Sheriff sending out George Footman, aka daddy, to take my statement on how the mean man had knocked li’l Mikey into the lake. How the three of them would laugh later about that! I called John Storrow instead, wanting him to tell me I was doing the right thing, the only thing that made any sense. Wanting him to remind me that only desperate men were driven to such desperate lengths (I would ignore, at least for the time being, how the two of them had laughed, as if they were having the time of their lives), and that nothing had changed in regard to Ki Devore—her grandfather’s custody case still sucked bogwater.
I got John’s recording machine at home and left a message—just call Mike Noonan, no emergency, but feel free to call late. Then I tried his office, mindful of the scripture according to John Grisham: young lawyers work until they drop. I listened to the firm’s recording machine, then followed instructions and punched sto on my phone keypad, the first three letters of John’s last name. There was a click and he came on the line—another recorded version, unfortunately. “Hi, this is John Storrow.