CHAPTER NINE

Mr. Gavins wasn't in the hall when she left. The only person she saw was three-year-old Billy Strevyk, playing with toy cars on the grubby hallway carpet. The door behind him was open, and through it issued the smell of cooking pot roast and the sounds of one of the afternoon shows, something too raucous to be Dr. Phil but not quite trailer-trash enough to be Springer.

The Strevyks had two of the units and the connecting kitchen. Mr. Strevyk had been laid off from his job on an auto assembly line and now minded the house and kids while his wife worked. Whenever their paths crossed, Allison always saw a sort of hurt befuddlement in his eyes, as if he couldn't understand how his life had come to this.

On the stairs, she passed Mr. Gavins after all. He had his now-empty pillowcase slung over one meaty, hairy shoulder and a box of Tide in his hand. There was no need for conversation; his doctor had advised him to take the stairs instead of the elevator as much as possible, and he was wheezing and sweaty-faced as he trudged up the last few steps with the air of a climber finally reaching the peak of Everest.

Her landlady was in the entryway, pushing a vacuum that wheezed almost as badly as Mr. Gavins.

"I'm telling you, Allison," she said without looking up, as if carrying on an earlier conversation, "I finally appreciate the difference between suck-and-spit, and suck-and-swallow."

If asked, Allison might have expected a woman like Teddi Lace to have a whiskey-roughened voice with a smoker's rasp. Instead, she affected a cooing little-girl voice like the actress Jennifer Tilly, which made the things she said seem even dirtier.

"Uh … yeah," Allison said.

"Swallow, you bitch," Teddi said to the vacuum. It rolled back and forth, picking up bits of paper and cat litter and spraying them out from under its undercarriage.

Ex-stripper, possibly ex-porn-star and ex-prostitute as well, she claimed she'd once had the face and figure of a living Barbie doll. Now, though, the living Barbie doll had put on fifty pounds … most of it in the chest. Each of her boobs was bigger than Allison's entire head, though considerably less firm.

Teddi had a slight pooch of a gut, a slight sag to her rear, and lots of unconvincing brassy-blonde hair in a Farrah Fawcett 'do. She slathered on too much make-up, but to Teddi's credit, she didn't do herself the further disservice of trying to shoehorn herself into clothes designed with much younger and shapelier women in mind. Instead, she was mostly seen in a succession of drawstring sweat pants and men's triple-X extra-tall flannel shirts that still had a job of it bridging the gap of her canyonesque cleavage.

Allison went around the chugging, grinding, laboring vacuum and let herself out onto the street. The sun was low, golden rays slanting like melted butter between the buildings and lending even this part of town a hazy daydream charm.

The two blocks stretched between Prewett at the top of the hill and Pine at the bottom. Prewett was a sleazy main drag, all fast food and bowling alleys and motels. Pine was quieter, tree-lined, residential.

What Allison liked best about her neighborhood was that, in a weird sort of way, it was a small town unto itself. She wouldn't have thought such a thing was really possible in the bustling but anonymous heart of the city. People still knew each other here. They talked to each other … even more, they talked about each other.

It was like living in the middle of a soap opera, where you quickly got to know all the characters and their problems. Allison hadn't been a resident of Dunley Street for two weeks before she'd learned more about the people around her than she'd ever known about the other 'good' families with whom the Montgomerys associated.

She had heard about Teddi Lace's checkered past. She had heard about Martha. She'd heard how Mike, who ran Mike's Pool Hall, had a drinking problem. And how Samuel "Needles" Jefferson from the tattoo parlor had once broken both the arms of a flasher who'd exposed himself to little Gretchen Oberdorfer … and how that had just been the beginning of the luckless pervert's punishment. She knew that Ralph the barber had lost his wife to cancer, and Al the bartender had lost two wives to divorce and was up to his eyeballs in alimony and child support payments.

Some of the secrets of the neighborhood remained secrets, though. She didn't know, nor did anyone else, exactly how Jamie Tremayne had ended up in that wheelchair. Nobody knew whether Kurt, the middle Oberdorfer son, had officially come out to his parents, or if the family was playing a game of willful ignorance and denial.

And then there were the weird kind of secrets. She didn't know what the deal was with Mama Delilah, who some people said was a voodoo queen, and others said was just the requisite crazy old neighborhood cat lady … though she did know that Mama Delilah's one milky cataract-filmed eye made her skin crawl. It was enough to make a person sympathize with that guy from the Poe story, who had chopped up the old man and buried him under the floor … here, you fiends, the beating of his hideous heart.

People said that Nathaniel Caron, who sold crystals and incense and Tarot cards, and charged forty bucks a session as a 'psychic advisor' was really about as psychic as Uncle Bob, and that the only reason he kept a roof over his head was because he bore a striking resemblance to Johnny Depp. A steady clientele of teenage girls and older ladies alike were willing to pay that forty bucks for an excuse to hold his hand and look into those dreamy dark eyes.

They also said that the little house Nate ran his business out of, which huddled between the Dunley Apartments and Red Bowl Teriyaki, had been the site of a murder back in the 1920's and that the ghost of a young woman still turned up in mirrors, window glass, and any other reflective surface.

Allison crossed the intersection on a diagonal, waving to the only car currently moving. The driver, Tina Wendmeyer from the video store up by the 7-Eleven, tooted her horn and raised a hand in return.

Once across the street, she was in the Dog Haus zone, awash in the aromatic goodness that surrounded the corner shop where the Oberdorfers had been fattening up the locals for twenty years. Her mouth watered as helplessly as that of any of Pavlov's test subjects. Hot dogs, bratwursts, salami, pepperoni, corn dogs … if it was meat in a tube shape, it was on the menu at the Dog Haus, either served hot and ready to go, or available from the deli counter.

When she had first moved here, Allison had discovered that she could easily eat two meals a day at the Dog Haus. A grilled bratwurst on a bun, served with a heaping side of Mrs. Oberdorfer's German potato salad – tender paper-thin slices of potato melting in sour cream, bacon and cheese – was sheer heaven. She had also discovered, shortly thereafter, that she didn't dare eat two meals a day there if she wanted to stay trim. Not after putting on four pounds in two weeks.

These days, she allowed herself a trip to the Dog Haus a couple of times a month, usually every other Saturday or on a special occasion.

Two doors up, past the Close Shave, was Sherwood Second-Hand. It was set back from the sidewalk, under a portico roof with a perpetual pigeon problem. Trash cans and squat, columnular ashtrays of pebbled concrete flanked the entrance.

Signs on the glass doors promised 50% Off All Red Tags, 20% Off Seniors Every Day, Early Bird Special – Buy One Get One Free All Clothing Items Before Ten A.M., and Donations Gladly Accepted.

"Sherwood Second-Hand," she said, reaching for the door. "Robbing the rich to give to the poor since 1992."

Inside, the store was spacious and well-lit by florescent fixtures. The floor was tan-flecked-with-green linoleum, the ceiling off-white. To her immediate left was a large wooden bin for donations, which was a third of the way full of bagged clothes and cardboard boxes of toys and dishes despite the posted hours. To her right, a row of changing room stalls and a rack full of rejected try-ons.

A year ago, Uncle Bob had hired teenage Jake Oberdorfer to paint murals on the interior walls. "Putting the punk's graffiti talent to good use," he had explained, grinning his patented Uncle Bob grin. As a result, the walls were almost entirely covered with images from the Robin Hood legends. Robin and Little John duking it out with quarterstaves. Friar Tuck. Maid Marian. Will Scarlet. Prince John.

Except that Allison thought that somewhere along the line, either Uncle Bob or Jake had gotten Robin Hood mixed up with William Tell and Legolas from the Lord of the Rings movies. She certainly didn't remember reading about Robin Hood shooting apples off of anybody's head, or riding a shield down the steps of Nottingham Castle in a smooth skater-move that even Scoot wouldn't be nervy enough to try.

Lyle Kane, a not-too-bright but amiable enough guy a few years older than Allison, was at one of the registers, selling a stack of puzzles to Winnie from the craft store. He bobbed his head in greeting as Allison came in. Winnie smiled cheerily and waved.

A few other people browsed the aisles. Allison saw the Beekers from one of the apartments downstairs from hers arguing over a headboard, and Caroline Dressler digging through a tray of flatware in hopes of finding a matching set.

In the toy section, Needles' girlfriend Tisha was telling their four-year-old son Isaac that he could choose one stuffed animal from the bin or one baggie of action figures – old He-Man toys, with a couple of Happy Meal prizes mixed in.

Seeing Allison, Tisha raised her voice. "You need your nails done, girl!" she said, shaking back long bronze-dyed beaded cornrows. She had gorgeous mocha skin that she refused to let Needles touch with his tattoo inks, and the kind of figure that Teddi Lace might have envied even back in the day.

"What's wrong with my nails?" Allison held out her hands and looked at them.

"They're short, they're uneven, they're bare and they're boring," Tisha said.

"Besides that."

"Besides that? Besides that, you've got a cuticle nightmare going on. Give me one hour, and you won't believe the difference."

"I bet I wouldn't," Allison said, though of course a manicure with the fancy, jazzy polishes that Tisha liked was out of the question. She couldn't very well make her transformation into Scoot with shaped, buffed, sparkling-gold nails and perfect cuticles, now, could she?

"Mama, I have this one, it little, and the hero-men?" Isaac asked, holding up a small floppy stuffed tiger and the action figures.

Tisha gazed down at him and blew out a fond sigh, and Allison had the feeling that Isaac was going to get what he wanted. Mama Delilah, the maybe-voodoo-queen, was Tisha's great-grandma. If the bloodline did possess any powers of persuasion, they'd resurfaced in the youngest generation.

"Sounds like you've got some negotiating to do," Allison said. "See you, Tish."

"Don't you forget about those nails," came Tisha's parting shot as Allison continued toward the back of the store. "I hate to have a hex put on you just to get you in my door."

Swinging metal doors opened into the thrift store's back room, which was the great land of Not-Yet. It was a hodgepodge of donated items not yet sorted and priced, broken items not yet hauled off to the dump, and holiday decorations not yet in season. A short hallway led to the staff room, where Betty Tullia was in the process of taking off her smock.

"Allison, thank goodness, I thought you might not remember," Betty said.

Her purse was open on the bench in front of the dented steel row of lockers, and Allison took an automatic peek inside. Grandma-clutter. Half-eaten rolls of Life Savers, crochet hooks, a coupon-saver with frolicking puppies on the cover, a disposable camera.

"But here I am," Allison said. She opened her own locker.

The staff room was a windowless space that also included a card table, chairs, a coffee maker, a microwave, a small fridge, the old-fashioned time clock that no one ever used, a water cooler and a single swaybacked couch with burnt orange cushions. The walls were hung with posters gleaned from Hank Cotterman's travel agency showing exotic locales like the glaciers in Alaska, Ireland's misty fields, sunny Mexico, the African savanna and that Disneyland castle in Bavaria.

The smocks were really aprons, but Uncle Bob never called them that. Maybe because Lyle Kane and Donny Fielding would balk at wearing anything called an apron. They were a bright shamrock-color, probably intended to be the famed Lincoln green of the Merry Men, with a gold bow and white arrow stitched above the lettering. Deep pockets in the front, suitable for holding a heavy stapler, pens, a bunch of the little cardboard tags used for pricing clothes and bagged toys, and a roll of stickers used for pricing other things.

"Thank you so much for doing this," Betty said. She patted her purse. "I'll take pictures. Penny is such a darling. And I'm not just saying that because she's my granddaughter. She'll be the star of the show."

"Hope so. Is Bob in the office?"

"Listening to that music of his," confirmed Betty. "'Bye, Allie."

"Bye." She pinned on her nametag – Hi! My Name is Allison! – and shut her locker.

The short hall continued on to a bathroom, and at the end of it, a flight of stairs climbed to Uncle Bob's office door. Allison could hear Elvis doing "Heartbreak Hotel," the song filled with the scratches, pops and hisses that only came from a record player.

She tapped, heard The King turned down. "C'min!" Uncle Bob said.

Allison did so. The office was even smaller than the staff room, with a tinted window so Bob could survey his domain without being seen except as a smoky shadow behind the glass.

There was not much in the way of a family resemblance between Allison's mother and uncle. Marian Sherwood Montgomery was a small graceful china doll of a woman, with a soft cloud of auburn curls and limpid, expressive sapphire eyes. Her brother Bob was tall and stocky and red-faced, with a comb-over fringe of grey all that remained of a flaming red head of hair. His eyes were a light cornflower blue, twinkling behind spectacles. Put him in a fake white beard and a red suit, and hey, presto! Santa Claus. He did it, too, every year, though no longer at his sister's family's house.

He had a monstrosity of a desk, the flesh-colored paint peeling off gunmetal steel, the top of it hidden beneath piles of papers. His chair was a wooden slat-backed swivel on wheels, which he had rocked back to the point where it was about to tip over, his feet up on a stack of milk crates, one foot bopping in time to the beat.

What had possessed her grandparents, who seemed so normal in all other ways, to name their children Robin and Marian was beyond Allison. Her only guess was that Granny Helen, who had always been hopelessly enamored of Sean Connery, had been inspired by the movie in which Connery played an aging Robin Hood.

"Allie-girl," Uncle Bob hailed.

In here, the walls were not covered with travel agency posters or fanciful murals, but concert posters and album covers. The shelves were full of records, organized in a system that made sense to no living being but Bob himself, and the pride of place in the room was given to a table where the record player sat.

"You know," Allison said, smiling, "you can get a better sound from a CD."

"Heretic." He made as if to swat her, but she was well out of reach and they both knew it.

"Smaller, too," she said. "Better storage. Because, you know, one of the operative words in CD is compact."

"Silvery Frisbees," he said. "Saucerian slipped disks. Vinyl, Allison Danielle. As God intended."

And yet, once you dug a little below the surface, there were some similarities between brother and sister. This deep and abiding love of music, for instance. True, in Marian's case it was all classical stuff and opera, while Bob's true loves spanned the big band era right up through disco, but neither could be happy without music in their lives.

"As God intended? God listens to records?"

"If He does, you can bet it's on vinyl."

Instead of going on to tease him about MP-3 players and digital playlists, she heard herself ask, "Uncle Bob, do you know anything about guns?"

**