The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove

me fightin you," Catfish said. "We got time."
    "We do?"
    "Sho', but you gonna have to pay my way now. You done chased the Blues off me and Ifeels like they ain't never comin back. I'm out a job."
    Estelle looked down to see Catfish grinning in the soft orange light and grinned herself. Then she realized that they hadn't lit any candles, and she didn't have any orange lights. Somewhere in the tussle between the kitchen and the bedroom, amid the tossing of clothes and groping of flesh, they had turned the lights out. The orange glow was coming through the window at the foot of the bed.
    Estelle sat up. "The town is on fire."
    "It is in here," Catfish said.
    She pulled the sheets up to cover herself. "We need to do something."
    "I got an idea a somethin we can do." He moved his spidery fingers and her attention was taken away from the window.
    "Already?"
    "Seem soon to me too, girl, but I'm old and this could be my last one."
    "That's a cheery thought."
    "I'm a Bluesman."
    "Yes, you are," she said. Then she rolled over on him and stayed there, off and on, until dawn. nine When Mikey "the Collector" Plotznik wheeled into town and saw that the Texaco station had blown up, leaving a charred circle two hundred yards wide around it, he knew that it was going to be a great day. It was a shame about the burger stand going up too, and he'd miss their spicy fries, but hey, you don't often get to see the toasting of a major landmark like the Texaco. The fire was all out now, but several firemen were still sifting through the wreckage. The Collector waved to them as he wheeled by.
    They waved back, somewhat reticently, for the Collector's reputation preceded him and made them nervous.
    Today would be the day, Mikey thought. The Texaco was an omen, the star in the sky over his lifelong dream. Today he'd catch Molly Michon naked, and when he did (and brought back the proof), his reputation would grow to mythic proportions. He patted the disposable camera he carried in the front pouch of his hooded sweatshirt. Oh yes, he'd have evidence to back up his story. They would believe him – and bow to him.
    At this point in his life, the Collector was more interested in explosions than in naked women. He was only ten, and it would be a couple of years before his interests moved to girls. Freud never identified a stage of development known as "pyrotechnic fascination," but that was only because there wasn't an abundant supply of disposable lighters in nineteenth-centuryVienna. Ten-year-old boys blow shit up. It's what they do. But today a strange new feeling had come over Mikey, a feeling he couldn't put a word to, but if he could, the word would have been "horny." As he Rollerbladed through town, tossing the Los Angeles Times into the shrubs and gutters of businesses alongCypress Street, he felta tightness in his shorts that until now he had associated with having to take a raging pee in the morning. Today it signified a need to see the Crazy Lady in a state of undress.
    Paperboys are the carriers of preadolescent myth. On every paper route, there is a haunted house, a kid-eating dog, an old woman who tips with twenties, and a woman who answers the door in the nude.
    Mikey had never actually seen any of these things, but that never stopped him from spinning wild stories for his buddies at school. Today he would getproof, he could feel it in his loins.
    He skated down the driveway into theFly Rod Trailer Court, chucked a paper into the rose bushes in front of Mr. Nunez's trailer,then made a beeline for the Crazy Lady's house. He could see a blue glow coming through her windows, a TV. She was home and awake. Yes!
    He pulled up a couple of doors down and noticed that a new trailer had moved in next to the Crazy Lady.A new customer? Why not give it a try? The Crazy Lady didn't receive the paper, so his pretense for knocking on her door was to get her to subscribe. He could practice on these new people. As he skated up to the front door of the new trailer, lights came on in the two front windows. Yes! Someone was home. Strange curtains – they looked like cat's eyes.
    Though a part in the curtains, Molly watched the kid come down the road into the trailer park. She liked kids, but she didn't like this kid. At least once a week he knocked on her door and tried to get her to subscribe to the paper, and once a week she told him to go away and never come back. Sometimes he would bring one of his little buddies along. She could hear them skulking