Moody Food Read Online Free Page A

brain.
    Like drinking velvet out of a glass.
    Like hearing God hum.
    Thomas finishes up with a recent Bob Dylan tune, “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” a mile-a-minute bluesy thing with slightly surreal sputtered lyrics that no one in this dark, smelly bar would have ever thought they’d be nodding their heads along to even if you had sworn to them on their momma’s tattered black Bible they would be twenty-five minutes before. And then a gentlemanly, “Thank you, everyone, for listening, and good-night,” and Thomas slinks across the beer-puddled floor back to his table by the washrooms.
    Before he can refill his glass from what’s left of his warm pitcher of beer, darkness at the edge of his table in the form of three very large men in overalls and scuffed, steel-toed workboots. The Trimar he’d gobbled down an hour before he’d arrived at the club is really starting to kick in now, and Thomas wonders whether he’s seeing triple. Animal tranquilizers, after all, have been known to do so such things.
    The one Thomas thinks is in the middle leans his baseball mitt–sized hands (car grease under every nail) on the edge of the table and slowly zooms his hairy face in close.
    â€œMe and my buddies here, we were gonna take you out back and kick your ass,” he says. “But you sing real nice so we wanna buy you a beer instead.”
    A white reptile-skinned cowboy boot scrapes a chair away from the table.

    â€œOnly if you boys will do me the honour,” Thomas says, making room so his three new friends can sit right down.

3.
    â€œI MEAN, I’M UP there trying to be cool about it, but it’s my show, right? You’ve seen my set a hundred times, Bill, you know I always take requests and try to encourage everybody to get involved. But this guy just wouldn’t stop. I mean, at the end of every song he’s, like, ‘Merle Haggard! Wanda Jackson! Jimmie Rodgers!’”
    I’d had to miss Christine’s Tuesday night gig at the Riverboat because of inventory at Making Waves—believe me, taking inventory at a bookstore that rarely ever sells a book is no eight-hour day—and we’d made plans to rendezvous at my place after the show. Christine was striding up and down the length of my tiny room.
    â€œAnd then, just when I thought I’d caught a break after he got up and split after the first set and I’m just starting back up again, just getting into ‘I Ain’t Marching Any More,’ the front door bursts open and here he comes again. But this time he’s not alone, this time he’s got three of those go-go dancing bimbos from the Mynah Bird with him. And of course he somehow manages to get them all settled in at the same table he had before, right in front.”
    â€œ Three of them?” I said.
    The Mynah Bird was a certified Yorkville hippie hangout, but with a strip club exterior for the entire street to see, the club’s owner one day deciding that what he really needed to separate his place from all the others jockeying for our coffee money along the avenue were several bikini-clad dancing girls shaking and shimmying in a second-storey glass booth out front.
    Christine stopped her pacing.
    â€œFeeling like you really missed out on something, Bill? Maybe if you had been there tonight you could have taken one of them off Mr. Shitkicker’s hands.”

    â€œNo, no, I’m only saying I’m surprised that—”
    Christine resumed her pacing.
    â€œSo then it starts all over,” she said. “‘Lovely, lovely, why that’s just lovely, but how about a little Miss Patsy Cline now, darlin’? I just know you could do the old girl justice.’”
    â€œHey, this guy,” I said, “is he tall and about our age, maybe a little older? Brown hair, white cowboy boots? Like the guy I told you about I met at the bank?”
    Christine didn’t hear a word I