The Last Annual Slugfest Read Online Free PDF

attention to the light, but now I noticed the hot bright lights necessary for filming. Glancing back into the room, I spotted a hand-held television camera, but I couldn’t see the logo on it. Still, getting attention from any television station, no matter how small, was quite an accomplishment, one Edwina didn’t seem to be taking advantage of.
    But Bert Lucci certainly was. Thrust into the limelight, he blossomed as an emcee. “Let’s hear it for the Grand Promenade,” he called out.
    Curry Cunningham got up and stood back. “Ladies first.” He motioned Angelina and Edwina forward. Taking Father Calloway by the arm, he said, “Clergy second.”
    “Fools rush in, eh?” the priest retorted as he headed toward the display table.
    Mr. Bobbs was still in his chair. Mimicking a head waiter, Curry pulled the chair back, assisted him up, and gave the chair a shove back in place.
    On the food table, each dish sat on its tray by the front edge, ready for its creator to pick up the tray and carry it the few steps to the left and offer it to the seated judges.
    “Take a good look, judges,” Bert said. “Breathe in the aroma of garlic, and tomato sauce, and sautéed mollusk. Look for the best, the most slug-filled portions.” He clapped his hands slowly, starting the audience off on the rhythmic accompaniment to the halting pace of the judges as he led them around the front of the table, stopping them in front of each dish, so that each judge stood before a dish, then moved a step and paused by the next dish. The funereal pace of this enforced march was popular with the audience, which added foot stomping to the clapping. Clearly, it was not with Mr. Bobbs. Bert had to grab his arm to keep him from sailing past the last two dishes and back to his seat. And even when he did make it there, he nearly knocked over his chair in his haste to get in it.
    When the rest of the judges were back in their seats, and the audience quiet, Bert picked up the first tray, of what appeared to be shrimp cocktails in long-stemmed crystal, and held it out for the audience to see. “Looks pretty tasty, doesn’t it? And that’s just from a distance. If you were up here where these judges just were, or where I am now, you’d be able to see those scrumptious little feelers on each head. Leila Katz”—he beckoned her onto the stage—“tells me she boiled the slugs, cleaned them, and put them in her special spicy slug sauce. Leila, here, you can serve the judges, so you can enjoy every one of their eager expressions. They’ve had time to look forward to this dish now.”
    To the background of laughter, Leila Katz took the tray and held it before each of the five, as they took a cocktail.
    “One bite,” Bert Lucci directed. “Just enough to pass judgment. All together now. Get those tasty little fellows on your spoons, judges. Wait. No cutting! You can handle a whole one, right, folks?”
    The audience applauded.
    The three middle judges held their filled spoons up. Curry Cunningham glanced at his and rolled his eyes. Father Calloway took a deep breath. But Angelina Rudd now looked no more apprehensive than if it was indeed a shrimp awaiting her. I recalled she was a fisherman’s daughter. She had probably eaten plenty more questionable things than this when playing around the docks. Edwina Henderson raised her spoon and held it steady, eyeing it with the expression from American Gothic. But it was Mr. Bobbs who garnered everyone’s attention. His hand shook as he lifted the laden spoon. Swallowing hard, he stared at it as if face-to-face with an infinity of Missed Meters.
    “All right, judges,” Bert Lucci announced. “Down the hatch!”
    Four spoons entered four mouths set in four faces filled with stoicism or disgust. The fifth spoon—Mr. Bobbs’s—remained unmoved.
    “Pretty tasty, eh, folks?”
    Mr. Bobbs lifted the spoon up in front of his mouth.
    “Oh, look here, one of our judges is savoring the moment. Well, we’ve got