Ladies' Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

mustard gas.
    "For those of you who just walked in, I'd like to wet come you to Fantasia. I'm your emcee, Danny Rifkin. Is anybody here from New Jersey?" About one fourth of the crowd cheered and yelled. "I'll try to make you feel at home." Danny boy started crooning a few bars of
The Godfather
theme and broke off into a call for number eleven.
    "Cathy Wilbur, Cathy Wilbur, a singer, guitarist and composer from… West Virginia!"
    It was the deep-freeze chick with the guitar. I saw La Donna standing by the curtain watching her. Cathy pulled up a stool, hoisted her guitar up to her chest and got tight into it. She had a voice like an Irish saint, beautiful and clear, the guitar sounded nice, but the whole thing was a big yawn.
     
    I'm searching for clar-i-ty
    A crys-tal clear re-al-i-ty uh huh huh, uh huh huh
     
    She was putting everybody to sleep, but nobody heckled because she was so goddamn sober and sincere. Just as it seemed she was finished with the lyrics she broke into a hum. She started humming and dai-da-dai-ing the whole goddamn song over again. By the time she was finished, people were exhausted. She received a nice round of respectful applause, half appreciation, half relief. She smiled for the first time that night, revealing totally rotten hillbilly teeth.
    I started worrying about La Donna: (a) in general and (b) her doing "Feelings." I couldn't tell what kind of songs the crowd would dig. Maybe "Feelings" wasn't "up" enough. Maybe they only liked dirty songs.
    "And now, number twelve, twelve. Mr. Jackie di Paris. Jackie di Paris, a crooner."
    Jackie swaggered upstage like Gorgeous George, his chest bursting out of the floral shirt, half-moons under the arms, his nuts bulging against his thigh. His pants were so tight, the seam of his crotch looked like it was halfway up his ass. He handed the house piano player some sheet music and began adjusting the mike. A Texas dude yelled out something about Lady Clairol. Jackie stopped fucking around with the pole, found the guy in the semidarkness and gave him a look like if the guy was anything more than pigshit
it would have been worth his while to break his face. Jackie kept up the evil
eye a good thirty seconds. Long enough to quiet the whole place. He removed the
mike from its stand and, holding it like a weapon, stepped to the edge of the
stage. He was wearing three-inch white-heeled platforms.
    "I would like to sing a tune written by one of the
great, great
songwriters of today." The joint stayed

quiet. Everybody was intimidated. He sounded nice he was reproaching the place, like he was telling us off. "
Mister
Piano Man,
if
you please." The guy at the piano rolled his eyes, then hit some very familiar notes.
    "Hey!" Jackie snapped. "Dim those lights, hah?" The lights were dimmed, people glanced at each other across tables and shrugged. "Again, please."
    "Fee-lings, nut-tin more dan fee-lings." My gut dropped out my ass. La Donna was screwed. Also, he was fucking horrible. His phrasing made Leo Gorcey sound like Rex Harrison. The mood he conveyed was about as romantic as somebody poking a finger in your chest. He wasn't singing, he wasn't even talking, he was arguing. People started yakking immediately. He lost everybody from word one.
    "Feelings like I nev… Hey! A little quiet, hah? I'm singin', okay with you? Like nev-ver lost… Yeah! I'm talking a
you
! yah cracker bastad!" Jackie stepped to one end of the stage and pointed his mike at the drunk Texan who had made the Lady Clairol crack. The Texan, a six-foot-plus potbellied gray-haired dude in a sitting tie, tried to get to his feet, but his friends, red-faced from laughing, pulled him down. He collapsed in his chair and started laughing too. The whole joint was laughing. Jackie looked as if he could kill the world. He slapped the mike against his thigh, nodding his head in small up-and-down motions as though he had just made a decision and seconded it. "Fuck you," he spat into the mike. "You're all