Four Kinds of Rain Read Online Free PDF Page A

seemed to be doing pretty well, even published a couple of magazine pieces in
GQ,
and there was talk of a book contract for his “working-class” novel. But somehow the book never got finished. And when Bob remembered the little he’d read of it, he figured that maybe it was a good thing. The characters, one of whom was obviously based on Bob, were all idealized caricatures of working stiffs. Noble workers against evil bosses. The old social realism of the lamest and most obvious kind. Yes, Bob decided as he checked his amp, it
was
probably a good thing that Dave didn’t publish it. The critics would have raked him over the coals. This way he could still harbor the fantasy that he was too sensitive for the cruel world of commercial book publishing.
    “Hey Bobby,” Dave said, talking into the mike, his glasses glaring from the house lights on the stage. “This level good for you?”
    “Great, Dave. Now if you could only fucking sing.”
    Dave laughed and did a little Elvis imitation through the mike.
    “Hey, hey, hey, I’m all shook up.”
    He shook his belly, which was starting to hang over his thick leather belt. Bob looked up and saw Lou Anne Johnson coming out of the kitchen with a cup of chili in her hand. She looked up at Dave, who smiled nervously at her and suddenly burst into his own little rockabilly song.
    “Hey hey, there’s a girl Lou Anne. She’s so good looking she could kill a man. Lou, Lou, Lou, Lou Anne, I need you, baby, doncha unnerstan’!
”
    Lou Anne’s mouth dropped open as Dave finished up with a little pelvis swivel, and dropped creakily to one knee.
    “Whoa, check him out,” Curtis said, bringing a beer from the bar.
    Bob laughed as Lou Anne put her chili down on a table, then ran up onstage and gave Dave a hug.
    “My own local Elvis,” she said.
    “Damn,” Dave said. “If I had known I was gonna get this kind of reaction I woulda started singing a year ago.”
    Bob laughed and waved at him. Oh man, he loved the old Lodge, had since the day he first started hanging out here. It was one of the true benefits of not moving out to the burbs. Out there, there weren’t any hangouts. Everybody was home playing computer games. But here at the Lodge, in good old downtown Baltimore, you had characters. People like the Finnegan Brothers, two bikers who supplied the hood with grass, speed, and coke. (Not that Bob used the stuff himself anymore. He was terrified of a heart attack.) They were scary dudes, even just sitting around half-wasted like they were now. He looked at them sprawled in their back corner seats, dressed in their leathers. They were creepy, yeah, but he needed those kinds of creeps. Besides, they were loyal to the guys in the hood. Once when some dudes from Belair Road had come around the Lodge to mess people up, the Finnegan Brothers had beaten them senseless and driven them back to their own neighborhood. He felt a kind of bond with them, the kind that he would never have experienced out in posh Roland Park. And there were wild artists like Tommy Morello, the steel sculptor, who was showing in New York, as well as Baltimore. And Gabe DeStefano, the poet who only wrote poems about boats in Chesapeake Bay. Sure the poems were bad, but he loved the kid—and his crazy idea that Baltimore was sacred—just the same. The Lodge was his spiritual home, he thought, and if he couldn’t play here anymore, man, he just didn’t know….
    As Bob took a long sip of Jack Daniel’s and tried to banish the evil thoughts from his mind, the front door opened and a very wet woman came hustling in out of the rain.
    Bob looked up, and felt something happening in his chest. Jesus, she was something … she had thick blonde hair and the most beautiful, sensual lips. And her skin … he hadn’t seen anything like it before. It was soft and white, and her nostrils flared a little, and her eyes … Christ, he’d never seen eyes like those. They were small, almond-shaped, and green. They seemed