"Christopher Moore - The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore Christopher)

machinery clicked.
"Them cheap-shit boys done expanded. Used to be jus' one flavor."
"Red or white?"
"Whatever sweetest, sweetness."
Mavis slammed a tumbler onto the bar and filled it with yellow liquid
from an icy jug in the well. "That'll be three bucks."
The Black man reached out -- thick sharp nails skating the bar surface,
long fingers waving like tentacles, searching, the hand like a sea creature
caught in a tidal wash -- and missed the glass by four inches.
Mavis pushed the glass into his hand. "You blind?"
"No, it be dark in here."
"Take off your sunglasses, idjit."
"I can't do that ma'am. Shades go with the trade."
"What trade? Don't you try to sell pencils in here. I don't tolerate
beggars."
"I'm a Bluesman, ma'am. I hear ya'll lookin for one."
Mavis looked at the guitar case on the bar, at the Black man in shades,
at the long fingernails of his right hand, the short nails and knobby gray
calluses on the fingertips of his left, and she said, "I should have guessed.
Do you have any experience?"
He laughed, a laugh that started deep down and shook his shoulders on the
way up and chugged out of his throat like a steam engine leaving a tunnel.
"Sweetness, I got me more experience than a busload o' hos. Ain't no dust
settled a day on Catfish Jefferson since God done first dropped him on this
big ol' ball o' dust. That's me, call me Catfish."
 He shook hands like a sissy, Mavis thought, just let her have the tips of
his fingers. She used to do that before she had her arthritic finger joints
replaced. She didn't want any arthritic old Blues singer. "I'm going to need
someone through Christmas. Can you stay that long or would your dust settle?"
"I 'spose I could slow down a bit. Too cold to go back East." He looked
around the bar, trying to take in the dinge and smoke through his dark
glasses, then turned back to her. "Yeah, I might be able to clear my schedule
if" -- and here he grinned and Mavis could see a gold tooth there with a
musical note cut in it -- "if the money is right," he said.
"You'll get room and board and a percentage of the bar. You bring 'em in,
you'll make money."
He considered, scratched his cheek where white stubble sounded like a
toothbrush against sandpaper, and said, "No, sweetness, you bring 'em in. Once
they hear Catfish play, they come back. Now what percentage did you have in
mind?"
Mavis stroked her chin hair, pulled it straight to its full three inches.
"I'll need to hear you play."
Catfish nodded. "I can play." He flipped the latches on his guitar case
and pulled out a gleaming National steel body guitar. From his pocket he
pulled a cutoff bottleneck and with a twist it fell onto the little finger of
his left hand. He played a chord to test tune, pulled the bottleneck from the
fifth to the ninth and danced it there, high and wailing.
Mavis could smell something like mildew, moss maybe, a change in
humidity. She sniffed and looked around. She hadn't been able to smell
anything for fifteen years.