had her cookies too.
"You are some storyteller," Estelle said.
A spidery black hand crawled up her thigh and parked an index finger moistly on her pleasure button - just settled there - and she shuddered. "I didn't finish," Catfish said.
"You didn't? Then what was all that 'Hallelujah, Lord, I'm comin home!' followed by the barking?"
"I didn't finish the story," Catfish said, his enunciation remarkably clear, considering he didn't miss a lick.
Harmonica player, Estelle thought. She said, "I'm sorry, I don't know what came over me."
And she didn't. One minute they were sipping spiked tea and the next there was an explosion and she had her mouth locked over his, moaning into him like a saxophonist playing passion.
"You didn't see me fightin you," Catfish said. "We got time."
"We do?"
"Sho', but you gonna have to pay my way now. You done chased the Blues off me and I feels like they ain't never comin back. I'm out a job."
Estelle looked down to see Catfish grinning in the soft orange light and grinned herself. Then she realized that they hadn't lit any candles, and she didn't have any orange lights. Somewhere in the tussle between the kitchen and the bedroom, amid the tossing of clothes and groping of flesh, they had turned the lights out. The orange glow was coming through the window at the foot of the bed.
Estelle sat up. "The town is on fire."
"It is in here," Catfish said.
She pulled the sheets up to cover herself. "We need to do something."
"I got an idea a somethin we can do." He moved his spidery fingers and her attention was taken away from the window.
"Already?"
"Seem soon to me too, girl, but I'm old and this could be my last one."
"That's a cheery thought."
"I'm a Bluesman."
"Yes, you are," she said. Then she rolled over on him and stayed there, off and on, until dawn.
Chapter 9~10
Nine
When Mikey "the Collector" Plotznik wheeled into town and saw that the Texaco station had blown up, leaving a charred circle two hundred yards wide around it, he knew that it was going to be a great day. It was a shame about the burger stand going up too, and he'd miss their spicy fries, but hey, you don't often get to see the toasting of a major landmark like the Texaco. The fire was all out now, but several firemen were still sifting through the wreck-age. The Collector waved to them as he wheeled by. They waved back, somewhat reticently, for the Collector's reputation preceded him and made them nervous.
Today would be the day, Mikey thought. The Texaco was an omen, the star in the sky over his lifelong dream. Today he'd catch Molly Michon naked, and when he did (and brought back the proof), his reputation would grow to mythic proportions. He patted the disposable camera he carried in the front pouch of his hooded sweatshirt. Oh yes, he'd have evidence to back up his story. They would believe him - and bow to him.
At this point in his life, the Collector was more interested in explosions than in naked women. He was only ten, and it would be a couple of years before his interests moved to girls. Freud never identified a stage of devel-opment known as "pyrotechnic fascination," but that was only because there wasn't an abundant supply of disposable lighters in nineteenth-cen-tury Vienna. Ten-year-old boys blow shit up. It's what they do. But today a strange new feeling had come over Mikey, a feeling he couldn't put a word to, but if he could, the word would have been "horny." As he Rollerbladed through town, tossing the Los Angeles Times into the shrubs and gutters of businesses along Cypress Street, he felt a tightness in his shorts that until now he had associated with having to take a raging pee in the morning. Today it signified a need to see the Crazy Lady in a state of undress.
Paperboys are the carriers of preadolescent myth. On every paper route, there is a haunted house, a kid-eating dog, an old woman who tips with twenties, and a woman who answers the door in the nude. Mikey had never actually seen any of these things, but that never stopped him from spinning wild stories for his buddies at school. Today he would get proof, he could feel it in his loins.
He skated down the driveway into the Fly Rod Trailer Court, chucked a paper into the rose bushes in front of Mr. Nunez's trailer, then made a beeline for