Blues for Zoey Read Online Free PDF Page A

works,” I said.
    â€œBut you could teach me to play on it. I asked Mom again this week, but she said she can’t remember how to do it. She says something’s wrong in her head.”
    â€œMaybe.”
    When I came around the bend, I expected to hear the girl’s music, but I didn’t. The sidewalk in front of Dave Mizra’s place was empty. The girl, whoev er she was, had vanished.

14
    Fire & Ice
    The next morning, Mom was still in the hospital. I had the early shift at work, so Nomi came down to the laundromat with me. She brought pillows and a blanket and curled up on one of the benches near the counter. By the time I ’d put out the pressed clothes for morning pickup, she was snoozing soundly. About a minute after I had flipped the OPEN sign, Dave Mizra came jogging ac ross the street. Dave lived directly above his je welry store, Mizra’s Fire & Ice. Like half the other businesses on the block, the name was a pun.
    Fire = gold.
    Ice = diamonds.
    Ha ha .
    Yes, it’s lame, but it’s hard to talk when you work at a laundromat called the Sit ’n’ Spin.
    â€œKaz-o-matic 3000! Good morning, good morning!” he shouted at me.
    I put my finger to my lips and pointed to Nomi.
    â€œAh, sorry.”
    Kaz-o-matic 3000 was the nickname Dave Mizra had given me. It was a mash-up of the name on my driver’s license ( Kazuo , which in Japanese means “harmonious man” and which I almost never reveal to anyone) and the fact that every washer at the S it ’n’ Spin was stencilled with the name Lav-o-Matic 3000 .
    He had given himself a nickname too. His real name was Dodi, but he went by Da ve because, as he explained once, in English Dodi sounds too much like a child’s toy. Like Lego .
    â€œI am afraid I have only shirts for you today,” he said, laying a pile on the counter.
    â€œPremium Service for Delicates?” I asked.
    â€œOf course! A lways Premium.”
    â€œJust these?” I asked.
    â€œYes,” he said, suddenly more solemn than usual. “This is all.”
    I was surprised. Dave Mizra was kn own around Evandale for having extravagant taste. He drove a fancy car (an old Mercedes); he wore swanky clothes; he spent tons of money on hair pomade.
    It was his clothes, however, that stood out the most. Dave Mizra strutted around the neighborhood in suits that ranged f rom shark-blue gangster pinstripes to colorful patchworks of hippie suede, complete with tassels swishing from the arms. This was the reason I knew him so well: his entire wardrobe was dry clean only. So it struck me as odd to see him come in with so small a bundle of clothes.
    â€œIs everything okay?”
    He glanced out into the street. “Oh, yes-yes. Everything is perfect.”
    Dave Mizra is the only person who thinks Evandale is a paradise. He never told me why he left Algeria, but my impression is that it had something to do with a civil war they had in that country back in the nineties.
    â€œI left, and because I speak French,” he once told me, “I moved to Paris. Over there, the immigration people said I must become a welder. Either that or dri ve a taxi. A welder! Yes, I work with metal, but I am an artist! So I come here, instead. And I followed my dreams.” Whenever he mentioned his dreams, he always pointed ac ross the street.
    It was debatable whether or not Dave Mizra was an artist. He designed a few pieces of his own jewelry, sure, but he also had a massive placard out in front of Fire & Ice that read: WE BUY YOUR GOLD!!! It wasn’t the sort of thing that made you think of Picass o.
    The only thing missing from Dave Mizr a’s paradise was his wife, who was still back in Algeria. A few years ago, they had met here and gotten married, but even though they were hitched, ther e was some problem with the immigration papers and on their way back from a visit home she was stopped at the border. That was almost two years ago. Dave