The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove - By Christopher Moore Page 0,36

big fish head and jus laugh at me. I say I lose the best friend I ever had, he better give me my goddamn money. But he laugh and tell me go away. So I hit him.

Took that old fish head to court with me, but it don't make no difference. That judge give me six months in jail - hittin a white man and all. He tell the bailiff, "Take Catfish away."

They call me Catfish since. I don't tell the story no more, but the name still there. Had the Blues on me ever since, but they ain't no makin amends. By the time I get out, Ida May die of grief, and I ain't got a friend alive. Been on the road since.

That thing on the beach, make that sound, she lookin for me.

Catfish

"It's a male," Estelle said. She didn't know what else to say.

"How you know?"

"I know." She took his hand. "I'm sorry about your friend."

"I just wanted him to get the Blues on him so we can make us a record."

They sat there at the table for a while, holding hands.

Catfish let his coffee go cold in the cup. Estelle ran the story around in her head, both relieved and fearful that the shadows in her paintings now had a shape. Somehow, as fantastic as it was, Catfish's story seemed familiar.

She said, "Catfish, did you ever read The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway?"

"He that boy write about bullfights and fishing? I met him once, down Florida way. Why?'

"You met him?"

"Yeah, that sumbitch didn't believe that story neither. Said he like to fish, but he don't believe me. Why you ask?"

"Never mind," Estelle said. "If this thing eats people, don't you think we should report it?"

"I been tellin folks about that monster for some fifty years, ain't no one believed me yet. Said I was the biggest liar ever come outta the Delta. I'd have me a big house and a stack of records if not for that. You call the law and tell them 'bout this, they gonna call you the crazy woman of Pine Cove."

"We already have one of those."

"Well, ain't no one gonna get eat but me, and if I lose this gig 'cause they thinkin I'm crazy, I have to be movin on then. You understand?"

Estelle took Catfish's cup from the table and placed it in the sink. "You'd better get ready to go play."

Twelve

Molly

To distract herself from the dragon next door, Molly had put on her sweats and started to clean her trailer. She got as far as filling three black trash bags with junk food jetsam and was getting ready to vacuum up the collec-tion of sow bug corpses that dotted her carpet when she made the mistake of Windexing the television. Outland Steel: Kendra's Revenge was playing on the VCR and when the droplets of Windex hit the screen, they magnified the phosphorescent dots, making the picture look like an impressionist painting: Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Le Grande Warrior Babe perhaps.

Molly froze the frame on the gratuitous shower scene. (There was always a shower scene in the first five minutes of her films, despite the fact that Kendra lived on a planet almost completely devoid of water. To address this problem, one young director had gotten the bright idea of using "anti-radioactive foam" in the shower scene and Molly had spent five hours with whipped Ivory Snow suds being blown on to her by an offscreen Shop-Vac. She ended up playing the rest of the film in a Bedouin burnoose to cover the rash that developed all over her body.)

"Art film," Molly said, sitting on the floor in front of the TV, dowsing it with Windex for the fiftieth time. "I could have been a model in Paris in those days."

"Not a chance," said the narrator. He was still around. "Too skinny. They liked fat chicks back then."

"I'm not talking to you."

"You've used half a bottle of Windex for this little trip to Paris."

"Seems like cheap travel to me," Molly said. Even so, she got up and took two glasses from the top of the TV. She was taking them to the kitchen when the doorbell rang.

She opened the door with the rims of the glasses pinched in one hand. Outside, two women in dresses and heels and lots of hair spray were standing on her steps. They were both in their early thirties, blonde, and wore stiff smiles of either insincerity or drug