Black House

“What’s this shit?” Pete asks.

Rebecca gives him a brilliant, dangerous smile. Even to a relatively dull fellow like Pete, the message of that smile is clear: you’re on the edge of the gator pool, buddy; how many more steps do you want to take?

“Light,” she says. “L-I-G-H-T. Hangs up there, on that hook. H-O-O-K. It’s something the deejay insists on. Says it gets him in the mood. M-O-O—”

“What happened to Weenie Erickson?” Pete grumbles. “There was none of this shit with Weenie. He played the goddamn records for two hours, had a few out of his hip flask, then shut it down.”

“He moved,” Rebecca says indifferently. “Racine, I think.”

“Well—” Pete is looking up, studying the beam with its intertwined fluffs of red and white crepe. “I don’t see no hook, Miz Vilas.”

“Christ on a bicycle,” she says, and mounts the stepladder. “Here. Are you blind?”

Pete, most definitely not blind, has rarely been so grateful for his sighted state. From his position below her, he’s got a clear view of her thighs, the red lace froth of her panties, and the twin curves of her buttocks, now nicely tensed as she stands on the fifth step of the ladder.

She looks down at him, sees the stunned look on his face, notes the direction of his sight line. Her expression softens a bit. As her dear mither so wisely observed, some men are just fools for a flash of panty.

“Pete. Earth to Pete.”

“Uh?” He looks up at her, mouth agape, a dot of spittle on his lower lip.

“There is no hook of any kind on my underwear, I’m sure of that as of few things in life. But if you will direct your gaze upward . . . to my hand instead of my ass . . .”

He looks up, face still dazed, and sees one red-tipped nail (Rebecca is a through-and-through vision in strawberry red today, no doubt about it) tapping a hook that just gleams out of the crepe, like a fisherman’s hook gleaming murderously out of a gaudy lure.

“Hook,” she says. “Attach gel to light, attach light to hook. Light becomes warm pink spotlight, as per deejay’s explicit instructions. You get-um message, Kemo sabe?”

“Uh . . . yeah . . .”

“Then, if I may coin a phrase, will you please get it up?”

She comes down the ladder, deciding Pete Wexler has gotten the biggest free show he can reasonably expect for one lousy chore. And Pete, who has already achieved one erection, pulls Symphonic Stan’s pink pinspot out of its box and prepares to achieve another. As he mounts the stepladder, his crotch rises past Rebecca’s face. She notes the bulge there and gnaws the inside of one cheek to suppress a smile. Men are fools, all right. Lovable fools, some of them, but fools, all the same. It’s just that some fools can afford rings and trips and midnight suppers at Milwaukee nightspots, and some fools cannot.

With some fools, the best you can get them to do is put up a lousy light.

“Wait up, you guys!” Ty Marshall calls. “Ebbie! Ronnie! T.J.! Wait up!”

Over his shoulder, Ebbie Wexler (who really does look like Nancy’s not-too-bright boyfriend, Sluggo) calls back: “Catch us, slowpoke!”

“Yeah!” Ronnie Metzger yells. “Catch us, po-sloke!” Ronnie, a kid with a lot of hours in the speech-therapy room ahead of him, looks back over his own shoulder, almost crashes his bike into a parking meter, and just manages to swerve around it. Then they are fleeing, the three of them filling the sidewalk with their bikes (God help the pedestrian headed the other way), their racing shadows fleeing beside them.

Tyler considers a final catch-up dash, then decides his legs are just too tired. His mother and father say that he will catch up in time, that he’s just small for his age, but brother, Ty has his doubts. And he has had increasing doubts about Ebbie, Ronnie, and T.J., too. Are they really worth keeping up with? (If Judy Marshall knew of these doubts, she would stand and applaud—she has wondered for the last two years when her bright and thoughtful son will finally tire of hanging out with such a bunch of losers . . . what she calls “low-raters.”)

“Suck an elf,” Ty says disconsolately—he has picked up this harmless vulgarity from Sci-Fi Channel reruns of a miniseries called The 10th Kingdom—and dismounts his bike. There’s no real reason to speed after them, anyway; he knows where he’ll find them, in the parking lot of the 7-Eleven, drinking Slurpees and trading Magic cards. This is another problem Tyler is having with his friends. These days he’d much rather trade baseball cards. Ebbie, Ronnie, and T.J. could care less about the Cardinals, the Indians, the Red Sox, and the Brew Crew. Ebbie has gone so far as to say that baseball is gay, a comment Ty considers stupid (almost pitiable) rather than outrageous.

He walks his bike slowly up the sidewalk, catching his breath. Here is the intersection of Chase and Queen streets. Ebbie calls Queen Street Queer Street. Of course. No surprise there. And isn’t that a big part of the problem? Tyler is a boy who likes surprises; Ebbie Wexler is a boy who doesn’t. Which makes their opposite reactions to the music pouring out of the pickup a little earlier that morning perfectly predictable.

Tyler pauses at the corner, looking down Queen Street. There are shaggy hedges on both sides. Above those on the right rise a number of interconnected red roofs. The old folks’ home. Beside the main gate, some sort of sign has been placed. Curious, Tyler remounts his bike and rides slowly down the sidewalk for a look. The longest branches of the hedge beside him whisper against the handlebar of his bike.

The sign turns out to be a great big strawberry. TODAY IS STRAWBERRY FEST !!! is written below it. What, Ty Marshall wonders, is a Strawberry Fest? A party, something strictly for old folks? It’s a question, but not a very interesting one. After mulling it over for a few seconds, he turns his bike and prepares to ride back down to Chase Street.

Charles Burnside enters the men’s room at the head of the Daisy corridor, still grinning and clutching Butch’s pet rock. To his right is a line of sinks with a mirror over each one—they are the sort of metal mirrors one finds in the toilets of lower-class bars and saloons. In one of these, Burny sees his own grinning reflection. In another, the one closest the window, he sees a small boy in a Milwaukee Brewers T-shirt. The boy is standing astride his bike, just outside the gate, reading the Strawberry Fest! sign.

Burny begins to drool. There is nothing discreet about it, either. Burny drools like a wolf in a fairy tale, white