Whale Season

Whale Season Read Online Free PDF

Book: Whale Season Read Online Free PDF
Author: N. M. Kelby
Tags: Fiction
sick. Then died. And she was stuck. The Dream Café was suddenly hers. The roof leaked. The septic system needed to be replaced. The property taxes hadn’t been paid in three years. And Cal was a very colicky baby.
    The night after Joe’s funeral, Dagmar sat in The Café and tried to come up with a plan—something other than arson. It was Friday and the place was nearly empty except for a foursome of giggling tourists. Dagmar was downwind of them. The air was thick with the scent of coconut oil. They were more or less her age and dressed in a style that is often described in the fashion magazines as “Tropical”: expensive, impractical, and carefully designed to scream, “Hey, I’m from Michigan.” The men wore pastel cotton sweaters casually tied over the shoulders of their “authentic” Hawaiian print shirts. Collars up, of course. The women had spray-on tans and Lilly Pulitzer sleeveless shifts, just like the ones their mothers wore in the sixties. Slightly corseted. Discreetly zipped up the side. Lemon meringue yellow with tangerine daisies. Bermuda blue with pink flamingos. Tiny bows at the jewel neckline.
    They were slumming. Loudly asking if The Café had any champagne without a screw top. Any hollandaise sauce for the french fries? But when the dancers came on stage the foursome grew quiet. Each one bought a lap dance, even the women.
    Suddenly, Dagmar understood that sex had a new market share—baby boomers—and a business plan was born.
    Now, in the gift shop, vibrators of all sizes are sold shrink-wrapped alongside movies on DVD. Edible panties come in double mocha latte. Body paints in Range Rover green. Uncle Joe would never know the place. Dagmar even tried to get a Starbucks franchise for the lobby, but no luck.
    The Café does offer food however, just as it did when Uncle Joe was still alive. It’s just like Grandma used to make—except there are naked girls and you don’t have to say grace. And the pies are called tarts. And the fish is always sushi grade. And the cheese grits are creatively known as polenta. Instead of Uncle Joe in the kitchen, there are graduates from The School of Culinary Arts in Atlanta. They create reductions with sorghum, mangos, and Chardonnay. Offer goat cheese and guava in phyllo triangles “to start.”
    The music is the same, though. Five days a week, the blues, the heartbeat of the South, is offered during Happy Hour, courtesy of the Blind Brothers’ Blues Band. The band is made up of five elderly black gentlemen. Old school. They are neither blind, nor brothers. Jimmy Ray, the band’s front man, has a special place in Dagmar’s heart. Always has. Always will. That’s why the band is still around, still plays that midnight rough blues.
    Jimmy Ray had open-heart surgery a couple of years back. He needs to get to sleep by 9 P.M. Doctor’s orders. That’s why he and the rest of the fellows play only during Happy Hour now. Dagmar picks him up every night and takes him home, too. She is careful of his dignity. He is an elegant man. Caramel-skinned, handsome, and soft-spoken. Part of the aristocracy of the blues, he claims to have been born on Beale Street, right on the sidewalk. Says his mama went into labor singing for loose change.
    It’s easy to believe. Jimmy Ray embraces the blues as a birthright with an unsurpassed regal air. Pin-striped suits. Manicured hands. His blue-black hair, now gone silver, is always set in the perfect marcel waves. His skin has that acid old man smell, and he shakes a little, but he still knows how to play the blues and riffs about the life he had, and misses, all smoke and whiskey and big-lipped women reckless as Saturday night. He growls like thunder. Gives you chills.
    Forty years ago, when Uncle Joe first hired Jimmy Ray and his band, The Café was well known not only for its dancers, but also for its after-hours club, a “Black and Tan,”
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