The Frumious Bandersnatch полностью

There was nothing suspicious about the twenty-seven footer moving slowly toward the Hamilton Bridge, except that she was cruising along with just her running lights on. No lights in the cabin or anywhere else on the boat. Well, that wasn’t too unusual, McIntosh supposed, but even so, in these difficult times he didn’t want to be blamed later on if some crazy bastard ran a boat full of explosives into one of the bridge’s pylons. So he hit a switch on the dash, and a red light began blinking and rotating on the prow of the launch, and he signaled to Officer Betty Knowles to throw a light onto the smaller boat ahead.

Aboard the Rinker, Avery Hanes whispered, “Let me handle this.”

Well, hell, he was the smart one.

“WHY DO I have to be black?” Jonah was asking her.

Tamar didn’t know what to answer the poor man.

Because the good Lord intended you to be that way?

She hated deep philosophical questions.

Like when a reporter from Billboard magazine asked her what she thought of Mick Jagger, and she’d had to admit she didn’t know who Mick Jagger was. When the reporter explained that he was a seminal rock singer, she didn’t mention that she didn’t know what “seminal” meant. Instead, she told them she didn’t consider herself a rock singer, and besides she was very young. So, of course they asked what kind of singer she considered herself to be, and she’d had to admit she thought of her kind of music as mainstream pop. But a question like Jonah’s absolutely floored her. She’d never suspected till this very moment that he was so deep.

What she was hoping was that nobody would be disappointed because she and Jonah wouldn’t be duplicating all the bells and whistles on the video, but of course how could they do that on a little boat in the middle of the river? Tonight, she’d be lip-synching, which was okay because everyone in the crowd was very hip, she guessed, and surely nobody expected her to really perform the entire video, did they? Shit, it had cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to shoot the thing with all the special effects and everything, so how could anyone expect a duplication of all that on this dinky little boat here, even though Barney kept calling it a “launch.” She certainly hoped nobody had such wild expectations in mind, which was a good title for a song and maybe for her next album, “Wild Expectations.” She certainly hoped they would appreciate her just lip-synching while she dry-humped Jonah.

Jonah was as gay as a bowl of daisies.

This was okay because he only came across that way when you were talking to him. Lisping and all, and sort of limp-wristed, a total caricature of a fag.

“Why do I have to be black?”

And a little limp flick of the wrist.

Cause you unfortunate, amigo, Tamar should have said.

Jonah hadn’t done any talking on the video, and he certainly wouldn’t be doing any talking tonight, either. Even Tamar herself wouldn’t be talking until after the record played and they danced to it. Then she’d do the interview with Channel Four, and whatever other interviews she had to do with all the press people out there, and then they’d call it a night and hope for the best.

The video had premiered last night on all four music channels during their prime-time debut spots—

“I meant why does the beast have to be black?” Jonah asked.

Another philosophical question.

He was sharing the main stateroom as a dressing room with her, but that was okay because he was gay, and she didn’t mind if he saw her naked boobs. She was half-naked in the costume, anyway, which she guessed was the whole point of the video, to expose herself as much as possible without getting arrested. She had to admit that she somewhat enjoyed all that screaming and yelling whenever she made a personal appearance, part of which she knew was for her voice—she really felt she did have a very good mainstream pop style and a very good vibrato besides—but part of which was for the way she shook her considerable booty, muchachos.

“So?” Jonah asked.

One hand on his hip.

Pouting little look on his face.

He was perhaps six-feet-two-inches tall, with a dancer’s firm abs, and strong biceps and forearms from lifting girls considerably heftier than Tamar, thighs like oaks, an altogether wonderful specimen of a man, but oh what a waste! He had good fine facial features, too, a pity they’d been covered by all those masks he had to wear on the video, and would be covered by masks tonight as well—not the same masks, of course. They’d used maybe ten or twelve different masks during the shoot, so that it looked like the Bandersnatch was changing form each time he—or it, more precisely—violated her or tried to violate her, rape or attempted rape as the case may have been, who knew? All these videos were supposed to be somewhat mysterious and murky, like adolescence itself, thank God that was behind her.