Make Me Work Read Free Page B

show today, because it was still raining and she was still dreaming, and because if raccoons did talk they’d sound like the amazing wah-wah guitar Hendrix played on this tune.
    Lay back and dream on a rainy day . Jimi made her feel so much better that she went on to his version of “Red House,” a blues she dedicated to herself because her raccoon- and flea-infested house was red. By the time the great man shook his strings through the first chorus, she had figured out what to do: an all-day blues marathon. Her condition called for the heavy medicine. I’m a one-woman blues revival, she thought, and ran to the record library again.
    â€œHow about some B. B. King, everybody?” she said when she was back in her d.j. chair, and the Master riffed on Lucille, his famous guitar. “Now let’s hear from the other King,” she told radioland, “and I do mean Albert,” and Mr. Blues Power ripped into one, followed by Buddy and Freddie and Muddy and Memphis. She did a whole half hour of the Wolf, and calls came in on the listener line. They were liking this out there. She’d struck a nerve with these blues. It must have been the weather, not to mention the economy these days. Vermont was more depressed than Lisa was. Last month, the station had run a news piece on the numbers of people eating road kill to get through the winter.
    Maybe she could get someone to eat Sparky, she thought, answering the flashing phone. No, she didn’t want Sparky on a spit. She just wanted him out of her house.
    The man on the phone was all worked up and couldn’t speak English very well. “This is best radio I hear since I come to this country!” he exclaimed.
    â€œGlad you like it,” said Lisa.
    â€œI love blues!” he said.
    â€œGreat. What’s your name?”
    â€œTommy T.!”
    â€œTommy T. That’s your name?”
    â€œYes! I grow up with this blues!”
    He sounded Eastern European—Czech or Polish or something like that. “And where was that, Tommy? Where you grew up. Gdansk?”
    He was silent for a second inside her phones. “You have excellent ear,” he said. “My home is near Gdansk.”
    Lisa laughed. “I was kidding, Tommy. It was a joke, you know? Lech Walesa? Solidarity? Gdansk shipyards?”
    â€œYes!” he said. “Why is Gdansk joke?”
    â€œIt’s not. I meant that Gdansk is the only thing people like me know about your country, so I mentioned it.”
    â€œOh.”
    â€œWould you like to request a song, Tommy?”
    â€œI know how your car is breaking!”
    â€œâ€˜I Know How Your Heart Is Breaking.’ Sounds familiar. Who did it?”
    â€œNo! You! Your car!”
    â€œMy heart is breaking. As a matter of fact, it is, Tommy. But just how did you happen to know that?”
    â€œThe man on radio tell about it. Before.”
    A man on the radio told him my heart was breaking, thought Lisa. One way you knew you’d plunged to the deep, hidden crux of reality was that the strange people started calling you up. It happened to Lisa periodically—clusters of crazies ringing her phone.
    â€œTommy, have you ever noticed how other people’s license plates contain secret messages meant for you alone?” He fell silent. Lisa recalled that she was strange now herself, and shouldn’t be casting stones. She had a James Cotton song going with twenty seconds left to run and there was nothing else cued up. “I have to put you on hold,” she said, and hit the button for Rodney’s booth. “Rod, talk to this guy for me, will you? I can’t figure him out.”
    She flipped through some discs. The station had a brand-new CD copy of “Layla,” by Derek and the Dominos—an immortal creation that contained, as she remembered it, an astounding version of “Have You Ever Loved a Woman.” It was a song about a man in love with his best