Grief Street

it up.”
    “But there’s a squatter in there.”
    “Well, there’s Mr. Monaghan.”
    “And God only knows what else is in there!”
    “But that’s why they call it earnest money, dear. It’s conditional on the experts checking it out—to make sure it’s basically sound. If it’s not, we get the money back. So we’re not buying anything blind. See?”
    “Wait a minute... How did you come by this deal, Ruby?”
    “I consulted the expert in anything having to do with the Kitchen.”
    “Who’s that?”
    “He knows all, he sees all. Best of all, he’s just across the street.”
    “Eddie the Ear?”
    “Who else?”
    “You’re right. I never would have thought—”
    “This time I thought for the both of us.”
    “So what does Eddie say about the house?”
    “That it’s part of some old neighborhood estate doing nothing but taking up space in a lawyer’s file cabinet.”
    “Eddie knows who this lawyer is?”
    “He’s amazing, that Eddie. He knows about the family who owned the property, too. Well, not a real family. Just one old gangster, and his tenants. This landlord was a loan shark, Eddie says. Rosie something.”
    “Arnold... Rosie Rosenbaum?”
    “Yes, that’s the name.”
    “What do you know?”
    “What a house! Annie Meath lived there, and a gangster called Rosie.”
    “If the walls could talk.”
    We talked, about our house. Our house. We talked of things nobody but the two of us would care to hear: furniture and wallpaper and rugs for the parlor, and maybe a piano someday; the bedrooms upstairs, and the baby’s room; the fireplace—one in the parlor, also one upstairs if we were lucky—and how we could store wood in the basement; a backyard to be cleaned and cultivated, and planted with roses and marigolds and sunflowers.
    Also we talked about my dog. How I would finally buy my good big mutt at the pound; how I would come home, and the dog and I would make fools of ourselves on the floor, and Ruby and the baby would laugh.
    And after all that talk, it was natural that Ruby and I made love. Among other things, it made us feel safe.

    “What’s happening, I don’t know anymore... This is all somehow getting away from us.”
    “Yeah, like we’re all slipping under his control.”
    “I don’t mind saying—I, for one, am fucking spooked.”
    “Oh, what are you talking about?”
    “You know how he’s always going on—”
    “That evil shtick? The guy’s wacked, so what?”
    “He’s using us, that’s what.”
    “Where the hell is he anyways?”
    “He’s coming.”
    “Jesus—raping a nun! It’s too much.”
    “You saying he did it?”
    “Hey, I don’t know any more than you. All I’m saying is, it’s the kind of bad crime draws so much attention it throws light on all the unrelated stuff.”
    “Such as us!”
    “Keep your panties dry, pussy.”
    “Everybody shut up and get a fucking grip! Look—what happened to the nun, it’s got nothing to do with any of us.”
    “Tell it to the judge.”
    “No man here had any part of it. We’re all mustered up, and carded in for that tour. So what’s to worry?”
    “Hockaday ain’t a pushover, that’s to worry. Sure, we’re all accounted for when the nun got it. But how about when Hockaday starts nosing around and somebody tells him they seen us other times, you know?”
    “Nobody seen us.”
    “So what if they did? It doesn’t mean anybody here’s a rapist.”
    “That’s not the fucking point, Einstein.”
    “What is?”
    “Getting together like we been doing. That’s bad enough.”
    “Hockaday can’t make it out a conspiracy. Neither can any lawyer I ever heard of. Nobody’s saying nothing about anybody else, all right? So let’s all shut the fuck up about it—right now!”
    “One question. What about the guy who ain’t here when he’s supposed to be here?”
    “Yeah, for all we know he could be ratting us out while we’re sitting here on our asses.”
    “It’d be just like him.”
    “Sure it would. And what’s he got to lose? He never did the deeds. He rats us, the DA ain’t going to come at him for when he got around to doing the right thing. You better believe he knows how the system works. He’s smarter than he lets on, you know?”
    “And he’s fucking deeply weird. How’d that power thing °f his go last time?”
    “Power beyond the dominion of heaven and earth!”
    “Like that, yeah. Weird shit.”
    “All right—you ladies about all through with