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PART ONE

GRIEF RELEASE

1

A piece of advice: If you ever follow sohborhood, don’t wear pink

The first day Angie and I picked up the little round guy on our tail, he wore a pink shirt under a gray suit and a black topcoat The suit was double-breasted, Italian, and too nice for my part of town by several hundred dollars The topcoat was cashhborhood could afford cashmere, I suppose, but usually they spend so much on the duct tape that keeps their tail pipes attached to their ’82 Chevys, that they don’t havebut that trip to Aruba

The second day, the little round guy replaced the pink shirt with a more subdued white, lost the cashmere and the Italian suit, but still stuck out like Michael Jackson in a day care center by wearing a hat Nobody in hborhoods that I knoears anything on their head but a baseball cap or the occasional tweed Scally And our friend, the Weeble, as we’d coet , but a bowler just the same

“He could be an alien,” Angie said

I looked out theof the Avenue Coffee Shop The Weeble’s head jerked and then he bent to fiddle with his shoelaces

“An alien,” I said “From where exactly? France?”

She frowned atwith onionsat it “No, stupid From the future Didn’t you ever see that old Star Trek where Kirk and Spock ended up on earth in the thirties and were hopelessly out of step?”

“I hate Star Trek”

“But you’re familiar with the concept”

I nodded, then yawned The Weeble studied a telephone pole as if he’d never seen one before Maybe Angie was right

“How can you not like Star Trek?” Angie said

“Easy I watch it, it annoys me, I turn it off”

“Even Next Generation?”

“What’s that?” I said

“When you were born,” she said, “I bet your father held you up to your ave birth to a beautiful crabby old man’”

“What’s your point?” I said

The third day, we decided to have a little fun When we got up in the ie went north and I went south

And the Weeble followed her

But Lurch followed me

I’d never seen Lurch before, and it’s possible I never would have if the Weeble hadn’t given me reason to look for him

Before we left the house, I’d dug through a box of sulasses I use when the weather’s nice enough to ride lasses had a small mirror attached to the left side of the fra up and out so that you could see behind you Not quite as cool as the equipave Bond, but it would do, and I didn’t have to flirt with Ms Moneypenny to get it

An eye in the back of my head, and I bet I was the first kid on my block to have one, too

I saw Lurch when I stopped abruptly at the entrance of Patty’s Pantry forcup of coffee I stared at the door as if it held athe uy who looked like a mortician on the other side of the avenue by Pat Jay’s Pharmacy He stood with his ar the back of my head openly Furroere cut like rivers in his sunken cheeks, and a ’s peak began halfway up his forehead

In Patty’s, I swung the ainst the frame and ordered my coffee

“You go blind all a sudden, Patrick?”