Michael Malone - Weebly

easy." With a nod at Joe MacDermott, Barnum walked
away. Why, he wondered, didn't MacDermott shut his
wife's mouth? A loud, foul-mouthed slut, talking about
her own sons' sex organs, with her hand right there on
her husband's thigh. Bleached rat's nest coming out of
black roots.
The stocky merchant, dressed for his visit to the
neighborhood bar in his denim sports jacket, open
paisley shirt, and shiny tasseled loafers, jostled his way,
stiffly smiling, back to the counter. Fred Fry, owner of
the Madder tavern erroneously called Fred's Fries, or
Fred's, or Bar and Grill, had died in 1950, and
subsequent owners, striving for the veneer of a timely
prosperity, had updated the diner chrome, plastic, and
linoleum of Fred's era a dozen times since then. The
present owner had removed the overhead lights,
installed fake dark walnut paneling everywhere, and
carpeted everything that wasn't paneled in cheap dark
brown carpeting.
At ten o'clock, Mrs. MacDermott was on the
phone, standing where doors marked "Bucks" and
"Does" on painted cutouts faced each other at the end