He handed it to the
age-hunched matron of the shop, who dropped it on her scale and dusted
her hands on her black dress. Kurt handed her a two-dollar coin and took
the bag back. "I'm just touchy, okay? My last girlfriend split because
she couldn't get past it. No matter how much I showered, I was never
clean enough for her."
"Sorry," Alan said again.
"I heard something weird about that blue house on the corner," Kurt
said. "One of my kids told me this morning, he saw something last night
when he was in the park."
Alan pulled up short, nearly colliding with a trio of cute university
girls in wife-beaters pushing bundle-buggies full of newspaper-wrapped
fish and bags of soft, steaming bagels. They stepped around him, lugging
their groceries over the curb and back onto the sidewalk, not breaking
from their discussion.
"What was it?"
Kurt gave him a sideways look. "It's weird, okay? The kid who saw it is
never all that reliable, and he likes to embellish."
"Okay," Alan said. The crowd was pushing around them now, trying to get
past. The dry-goods lady sucked her teeth in annoyance.
"So this kid, he was smoking a joint in the park last night, really
late, after the clubs shut down. He was alone, and he saw what he
thought was a dog dragging a garbage bag down the steps of your house."
"Yes?"
"So he went over to take a look, and he saw that it was too big to be a
garbage bag, and the dog, it looked sick, it moved wrong.
Pages:
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114