Me Talk Pretty One Day Read Online Free

ashtray. Like my father, Mister Mancini assumed that anyone could learn to play the guitar. He had picked it up during a single summer spent in what he called “Hotlanta G.A.” This, I knew, was the racy name given to Atlanta, Georgia. “Now that,” he said, “Is one classy place if you know where to go.” He grabbed my guitar and began tuning it, holding his head close to the strings. “Yes, siree, kid, the girls down on Peachtree are running wild twenty-four hours a day.”
    He mentioned a woman named Beth, saying, “They threw away the mold and shut down the factory after making that one, you know what I mean?”
    I nodded my head, having no idea what he was talking about.
    “She wasn’t much of a cook, but hey, I guess that’s why God invented TV dinners.” He laughed at his little joke and repeated the line about the frozen dinners, as if he would use it later in a comedy routine. “God made TV dinners, yeah, that’s good.” He told me he’d named his guitar after Beth. “Now I can’t keep my hands off of her!” he said. “Seriously, though, it helps if you give your instrument a name. What do you think you’ll call yours?”
    “Maybe I’ll call it Oliver,” I said. That was the name of my hamster, and I was used to saying it.
    Then again, maybe not.
    “Oliver?” Mister Mancini set my guitar on the floor.
    “Oliver? What the hell kind of name is that? If you’re going to devote yourself to the guitar, you need to name it after a girl, not a guy.”
    “Oh, right,” I said. “Joan. I’ll call it…Joan.”
    “So tell me about this Joan,” he said. “Is she something pretty special?”
    Joan was the name of one of my cousins, but it seemed unwise to share this information. “Oh yeah,” I said, “Joan’s really … great. She’s tall and …” I felt self-conscious using the word tall and struggled to take it back. “She’s small and has brown hair and everything.”
    “Is she stacked?”
    I’d never noticed my cousin’s breasts and had lately realized that I’d never noticed anyone’s breasts, not unless, like our housekeeper’s, they were large enough to appear freakish. “Stacked? Well, sure,” I said. “She’s pretty stacked.” I was afraid he’d ask me for a more detailed description and was relieved when he crossed the room and removed Beth from her case. He told me that a guitar student needed plenty of discipline. Talent was great, but time had taught him that talent was also extremely rare. “I’ve got it,” he said. “But then again, I was born with it. It’s a gift from God, and those of us who have it are very special people.”
    He seemed to know that I was nothing special, just a type, yet another boy whose father had his head in the clouds.
    “Do you have a feel for the guitar? Do you have any idea what this little baby is capable of?” Without waiting for an answer, he climbed up into his chair and began playing “Light My Fire,” adding, “This one is for Joan.”
    “You know that I would be untrue,” he sang. “You know that I would be a liar.” The current hit version of the song was performed by José Feliciano, a blind man whose plaintive voice served the lyrics much better than did Jim Morrison, who sang it in what I considered a bossy and conceited tone of voice. There was José Feliciano, there was Jim Morrison, and then there was Mister Mancini, who played beautifully but sang “Light My Fire” as if he were a Webelo Scout demanding a match. He finished his opening number, nodded his head in acknowledgment of my applause, and moved on, offering up his own unique and unsettling versions of “The Girl from Ipanema” and “Little Green Apples” while I sat trapped in my seat, my false smile stretched so tight that I lost all feeling in the lower half of my face.
    My fingernails had grown a good three inches by the time he struck his final note and called me close to point out a few simple chords. Before I left, he handed me half a