82 Desire

with the name of God knew what devil-rock band on it, and a shaved head—evidently a friend of Kenny’s.
    Sheila turned to her in horror, as if she’d been caught shoplifting. “Aunt Skip!”
    The boy turned, too, and grinned. “Hi, Auntie.”
    She liked being called “Auntie”; they never did it unless something was up. “Kenny Ritter,” she said.
    “You recognized me.”
    She was fighting for words, any words. She had heard him say they were cool around here, and cool she must try to be. Because she’d be the only one.
    Whoever had thought up the term “ear-to-ear” must have at some point come into contact with a fourteen-year-old bald kid. Kenny’s small white face was nearly split in two by metal-banded teeth, teeth that alone would have wrecked the image had not Kenny’s whole persona got to that first. Instead of his usual ankh, he wore a jaunty rhinestone in his ear, which glinted merrily in the light as if it were going to a party, instead of the domestic free-for-all that was about to follow.
    He was a skinny kid, slight and sweet-faced. He looked ridiculous in the outfit, even with hair. Bald, he looked preposterous. Grinning, he looked like a newborn with braces. But he was evidently so damn pleased with himself, the last thing Skip could bear to do was burst his balloon. Anyhow, there’d be plenty of time for that.
    She finally said, “Quite the fashion statement, sir,” and leaned down to pet Angel, who’d been trying, without success, to get her attention.
    His grin got wider, as he noticed she didn’t start shouting or anything. “You like it?”
    The question she’d been dreading. She settled on, “I’m trying to decide.”
    “At least you don’t hate it. Do you?”
    “Well… I kind of have to think this through.”
    The grin finally faded. “You don’t like it.”
    Napoleon began barking again, and Angel’s tail started to wag. The gate clanged and footsteps sounded on the walkway. They all waited for someone else to fill the void. Steve’s voice came round the corner. “Hey, there. I must be in heaven. It’s the Archangel Angel. Hey, Angel. Hey, girl.” He was still looking down at the dog as he came into the courtyard. When his head came up, he did a double take. “Whoa. Everybody’s here.”
    And then, Kenny’s cueball finally registering, he said, “Heyyyy. Mr. Clean,” and moved forward to give the boy a manly scalp brushing.
    Kenny grabbed both of Steve’s forearms. “No fair. No noogies. No fair.”
    “Noogie! Hey, you want a noogie, I’ll give you a noogie.”
    Skip breathed a sigh of relief. Roughhousing was good—it postponed things.
    Sheila took advantage of the moment to close in on Skip. She wasn’t exactly older than her sixteen and a half years, but she was certainly at the height of her teenage powers. Though they weren’t related by blood, in some ways, she and Skip were built alike. Skip was six feet tall, Sheila was five-ten; Skip had a tendency to overweight, Sheila to overripeness. But despite her height, Skip had never been spectacular in the boob department, while Sheila sported a pair of Aqua-Lungs.
    The girl’s hair and eyes were dark, but her skin was a veritable sunrise of color, tawny and pink and glowing. Her mouth was huge. And unlike many girls her age, she seemed perfectly aware of the power of her sexuality. She was also, by nature, more aggressive than otherwise, while Kenny tended toward passivity—or at least an uncommon, and to Skip, quite winning, gentleness.
    If Kenny wasn’t awed enough by Sheila in the way any younger boy would be by an older, taller, more sexually advanced sister, he should have been terrified by the way she pushed the older-sibling routine. She said to Skip, “Have you ever seen anything so utterly stupid and childish in your whole life?”
    Skip thought, It’s remarks like this that put the challenge in being a near-parent. “Fashion’s fickle,” she said.
    “That’s not fashion, that’s retarded.”
    Skip said, “Where’s Uncle Jimmy?” hoping against hope that he’d flown off to see the pyramids.
    “He and Layne went to Langenstein’s. They’re shopping together now.” Sheila rolled her eyes.
    “What’s wrong with that?”
    “And then they cook together. Pretty soon they’re going to be wearing matching ruffly aprons.”
    Skip bristled. Jimmy Dee had gone through nine or ten different kinds of hell for these kids, inherited when his sister died a few years ago. Kenny