Blues for Zoey by Robert Paul Weston Read Free Book Online Page B

notes are in French.”
    â€œKinda makes it a collector’s item.” The music geek handed it back—slowly, like he wasn’t happy to part with it. Suddenly, he eyed me like an inquisitor. “You got a fa vorite song?”
    I said the only title I remembered. “‘Colt’s-Tooth Blues’?”
    The music geek approved. “ Stellar . It’s like he made up his own genre. It’s fucked up, but it’s good.”
    I nodded. Everybody was ogling the CD—and me, too. I didn’t want to say anything to spoil it.
    Even Devon had shifted his earlier verdict. “Sounds like it might be decent. Think maybe I need to hear this.”
    â€œCool,” I said. “I’ll go put it on.”

1 9
    Freudian Slap by Shai n Cope , 1 981 (trackli s t)
Colt ’ s- T ooth Blues
Boat Riders and Mules Skinners
F r eudian Slap, Part 1
The r e ’ s A Girl On Murton St r eet(She T ook the Ring But W on ’ t W ear It)
Punching the Gu f f
Make A Man On His Merits
Brickya r d Jimmy (Kicks the Can)
Splice the Mainbrace
50,000 Sha r es of Consolidated Copper
M r . Finneran ’ s Mutt
F r eudian Slap, Part 2
Get Me Home

20
    How to Make a Roomful of
People Shut Up and Stare at You Like
You Just Morphed in to a Manatee
    In the living room, there was no sign of Christina Muñoz. I n my fertile-slash-horny imagination, I hoped her absence meant she was out back, where Topher’s patio included a massi ve swimming pool. My imagination also took the liberty of putting Christina in a red bikini. (It’s the details that make all the difference.)
    A bunch of people were sitting on the floor, lounging on cushions and rolled-up blankets. The stereo was embedded in the wall. A little tray poked out of it, propping up a pink iPod stickered with fake diamonds.
    A guy with an eyebrow ring lounged on the floor below it. “You mind if I change this?” I asked him.
    â€œGo ahead, s’not like I’m the DJ.”
    I put in the CD and switched the music. Nobody seemed to care.
    I don’t know what I was expecting to hear. The music Dave Mizra usually brought over was fast and upbeat, but this was different. This was a dirge, something you might hear at a funeral. It started with a piano, playing a sad, slow melody in a profoundly minor key. Here and there, the piano was complemented by a few plucks on something with strings, a cello maybe.
    â€œThis?” said the guy with the eyebrow ring. “This is what you wanted to put on?”
    I nodded weakly and the music changed. It blossomed and swelled. It was still a funeral mar ch, but it had gone from the burial of somebody old and decrepit to the death of an acrobat or a clown. Maybe the death of a whole circus. It was the same sad melody, only with trumpets and drums and a wheeze of accordions. That was when everyone in the room shut u p. But it wasn’t because of the music. No, everyone was staring at me like I was a fr eak because of the voice .
    Imagine a set of vocal cords pickled in whiskey for twenty years, then smoked over coals for another ten. Got that? Good. N ow scrub what’s left with sandpaper. That’s Shain Cope. Imagine that voice— singing .
    He heard there’ s rain in Paris
Gotta wonder if she’s there
She always looked her prettiest
With drizzle in her hair
The sky’s got nothing in it
Just the flapping of the crows
The sun’s as bright as —
    â€œWhat the hell?!”
    Guess who it was, swearing at me from the patio doors. (A hint: she wasn’t wearing a red bikini.) I hit the Stop button on the stereo and the room went horribly and embarrassingly silent. Meanwhile, Christina Muñoz was striding across the room and—even sans bikini—she looked hot . And, yes, I know they teach us that boys-slash-men aren’t supposed to objectify women ’s bodies, and that makeup is a tool of oppression, and that high heels murder your calves, but when