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Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas :: Thompson Hunter S.
Страница: 87 из 255Hell, fifty’s dangerous, but seventy five is crazy. They’ll explode!”
I shook my head and kept filling the left front. "I told you," I said, “Sandoz laboratories designed these tires. They're special. I could load them up to a hundred.
"God almighty!" he groaned. "Don't do that here."
"Not today," I replied. "I want to see how they corner with seventy-five."
He chuckled. "You won't even get to the corner, Mister."
"We'll see," I said, moving around to the rear with the air- hose. In truth, I was nervous. The two front ones were tighter than snare drums; they felt like teak wood when I tapped on them with the rod. But what the hell? I thought. If they ex plode, so what? It's not often that a man gets a chance to run terminal experiments on a virgin Cadillac and four brand- new $80 tires. For all I knew, the thing might start cornering like a Lotus Elan. If not, all I had to do was call the VIP agency and have another one delivered… maybe threaten them with a lawsuit because all four tires had exploded on me, while driving in heavy traffic. Demand an Eldorado, next time, with four Michelin Xs. And put it all on the card… charge it to the St Louis Browns.
As it turned out, the Whale behaved very nicely with the altered tire pressures. The ride was a trifle rough; I could feel every pebble on the highway, like being on roller skates in a gravel pit…, but the thing began cornering in a very stylish manner, very much like driving a motorcycle at top speed in a hard rain: one slip and ZANG, over the high side, cartwheel ing across the landscape with your head in your hands.
•••
»
About thirty minutes after our brush with the Okies we pulled into an all-night diner on the Tonopah highway, on the kirts of a mean/scag ghetto called "North Las Vegas." Which is actually outside the city limits of Vegas proper. North Vegas is where you go when you've fucked up once too often on the Strip, and when you're not even welcome in the cut-rate downtown places around Casino Center.
This is Nevada's answer to East St. Louis - a slum and a graveyard, last stop before permanent exile to Ely or Winnemuca. North Vegas is where you go if you're a hooker turning thirty and the syndicate men on the Strip decide you're no longer much good for business out there with the high rollers… or if you're a pimp with bad credit at the Sands… or what they still call, in Vegas, "a hophead." This can mean almost anything from a mean drunk to a junkie, but in terms of commercial acceptability, it means you're finished all the right places.
I shook my head and kept filling the left front. "I told you," I said, “Sandoz laboratories designed these tires. They're special. I could load them up to a hundred.
"God almighty!" he groaned. "Don't do that here."
"Not today," I replied. "I want to see how they corner with seventy-five."
He chuckled. "You won't even get to the corner, Mister."
"We'll see," I said, moving around to the rear with the air- hose. In truth, I was nervous. The two front ones were tighter than snare drums; they felt like teak wood when I tapped on them with the rod. But what the hell? I thought. If they ex plode, so what? It's not often that a man gets a chance to run terminal experiments on a virgin Cadillac and four brand- new $80 tires. For all I knew, the thing might start cornering like a Lotus Elan. If not, all I had to do was call the VIP agency and have another one delivered… maybe threaten them with a lawsuit because all four tires had exploded on me, while driving in heavy traffic. Demand an Eldorado, next time, with four Michelin Xs. And put it all on the card… charge it to the St Louis Browns.
As it turned out, the Whale behaved very nicely with the altered tire pressures. The ride was a trifle rough; I could feel every pebble on the highway, like being on roller skates in a gravel pit…, but the thing began cornering in a very stylish manner, very much like driving a motorcycle at top speed in a hard rain: one slip and ZANG, over the high side, cartwheel ing across the landscape with your head in your hands.
•••
»
About thirty minutes after our brush with the Okies we pulled into an all-night diner on the Tonopah highway, on the kirts of a mean/scag ghetto called "North Las Vegas." Which is actually outside the city limits of Vegas proper. North Vegas is where you go when you've fucked up once too often on the Strip, and when you're not even welcome in the cut-rate downtown places around Casino Center.
This is Nevada's answer to East St. Louis - a slum and a graveyard, last stop before permanent exile to Ely or Winnemuca. North Vegas is where you go if you're a hooker turning thirty and the syndicate men on the Strip decide you're no longer much good for business out there with the high rollers… or if you're a pimp with bad credit at the Sands… or what they still call, in Vegas, "a hophead." This can mean almost anything from a mean drunk to a junkie, but in terms of commercial acceptability, it means you're finished all the right places.