.. Whew!
The taxi drove right past his place and that gave Alan a much-needed
distraction, directing the cabbie through the maze of Kensington
Market's one-way streets back around to his front door. He tipped the
cabbie a couple of bucks over his customary ten percent and bummed a
cigarette off him, realizing that Mimi had asked him for a butt but
never returned the pack.
He puffed and shook his head and stared up the street at the distant
lights of College Street, then turned back to his porch.
"Hello, Albert," two voices said in unison, speaking from the shadows on
his porch.
"Jesus," he said, and hit the remote on his keyring that switched on the
porch light. It was his brother Edward, the eldest of the nesting dolls,
the bark of their trinity, coarse and tough and hollow. He was even
fatter than he'd been as a little boy, fat enough that his arms and legs
appeared vestigial and unjointed. He struggled, panting, to his tiny
feet -- feet like undersized exclamation points beneath the tapered Oh
of his body. His face, though doughy, had not gone to undefined
softness. Rather, every feature had acquired its own rolls of fat, rolls
that warred with one another to define his appearance -- nose and
cheekbones and brow and lips all grotesque and inflated and blubbery.
"Eugene," Alan said. "It's been a very long time."
Edward cocked his head.
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