Mr. X

    'That stupid fuckin' Joy.' He heaved himself off his chair and went around the partition. I heard him check the lock on the alley door. The Camels came out of his pocket. He took out a cigarette and examined it for flaws. After he got the cigarette going, he tilted back in his chair and looked at me some more.

 • 34

 • 'This is what you came here to talk about?'

    “It's one of the things I came here to talk about.'

     He ran a pudgy hand over his face. “I don't even know that much to begin with.'

    'You know more than I do. And everyone else refuses to say anything at all.'

    'Star didn't want you to know about this business.'

    'What business is that?'

    'What passed down through your family, starting with Omar and Sylvan. You heard about Omar and Sylvan?'

    'Oh, yes,' I said. 'Particularly from Joy.'

    Joy's frail voice told me,My grandfathers, they were the surviving remnants of pagan gods and could have ruled over earthly Dominions but cared for nothing but wealth and pleasure. To build that house on New Providence Road, Sylvan had the ancestral house in England taken apart stone by stone and brick by brick, and he shipped all those stones and bricks across the sea and put them back together again exactly the way they were in the old days. He might as well have flushed his money down the toilet. My daddy was the same way. C'est dommage.

    'She could of had the decency to keep her mouth shut.'

    'Because my mother didn't want me in on the family secret. Whatever it is.'

    Toby took another slug of whiskey and pressed the glass against the silver fur spilling out of his shirt. 'Your mother wanted to protect you. I'd say she did a pretty good job.'

    I stared at him without speaking.

    Toby raised his left hand and held it palm up, so the smoke curled around his fingers. The gesture said: it's no biggie. 'You were normal. There was stuff you were better off not knowing.'

    “I was normal.'

    'When Joy was a baby, I guess, if she didn't get fed on time, shit went flying all over the place, windows broke. . . . Where with you, all that happened was, you had those fits. Which ain't that unusual for a person. Hey, does that still happen?'

    Recognitions, thoughts of a kind, began to take shape in my mind.

    “I always hoped you were gonna grow out of that.'

    'Toby, you just said, 'All that happened was you had those fits.' '

    'You did! Right there on your third birthday.'

    'But everybody thought somethingelse might happen to me. You were waiting to see if I was going to make things fly around the room.'

    His face sagged into a trapped, gloomy frown.

    'We're talking about what passed down through the Dunstans. When it got to me, it looked ordinary enough to look normal.'

    'You never should of went to college,' he said. 'You listen too good.'

    'How much did Howard pass down to Queenie?'

    'My wife had a lot of Dunstan in her, I'll say that much.' He pulled at his whiskey and smiled to himself. 'Sometimes she'd rise up a couple feet off the bed and hang there. Sound asleep. Take the covers with her. Damndest thing you ever saw in your life. And sheknew things.' A memory made him laugh. 'The first year we were married, two different pairs of idiots walked into the shop to score some easy money. They were thinking, old lady like that, show her a gun, she'll give it up fast. What you call a basic error in judgment.

    Toby chuckled. 'Second they come in, Queenie hauls the shotgun up from behind the counter. Scares the shit out of the little bastards. 'Lady,' they say, 'you're making a mistake, put down the gun before something bad happens.' Queenie says, 'If you don't get your asses out the door before I count three, you bet something bad is gonna happen, only you won't know about it.' Never had any more problems with stickups.'

    'Good for her,' I said.

    'Queenie had talent to burn. She wasn't queen of the magpies only because of her fast hands.'

    'Ah,' I said.

    Toby showed his discolored teeth. 'Say you're in the kitchen, talking about this and that, and Queenie's next to the table. You go to the fridge, get some ice. When you look back, she fell through a trap door. You go out of the kitchen and yell, 'Queenie?' The bedroom door opens up, and out she comes, holding a feather duster. 'What the hell?' you say. She says, 'There's a spiderweb over the kitchen window and, for your information, we keep the duster in the bedroom closet.’ You get in the mood for a new TV set and figure you shouldn't have to pay for it, a thing like that is one hell of an advantage.'

    'The girls inherited their father's talents.'

    Toby refilled both glasses. 'Queenie most of all, then Joy and Nettie. But May got her share.” His eyes drifted over the collage of naked women. 'When May was about thirteen, she was going down Wagon Road—that's Cordwainer Avenue now—in Howard's rumble seat. What Queenie told me, May saw two girls pointing at her from another car. You know, laughing at her. I always had the feeling it took more than that, because Howard's family couldn't go anywhere without attracting notice. Once I asked May straight out, but she went into her vague act. Anyhow,whatever the hell she saw made her so mad she put on a fireworks display. Smashed windshields all up and down Wagon Road, blew out tires. Snapped the telephone lines. Everything went crazy.'

    Joy's papery voice rustled in my ear:

    And my sister May created havoc on Wagon Road by setting off thunderations, even though to hear my daddy talk she was hardly a Dunstan at all, which was a nasty, untrue insult to my sister.

    Because when we were young women, a gentleman came along who showed a liking for May. Unfortunately, the gentleman did not like her in the proper way and attempted to force her to his will. Rape is what that man had in mind. May took care of that fellow through what the French would call force majeure. She came home in great agitation and told me, Joy, my young gentleman attempted to take advantage of me. I was so frightened, I found in me the power to rise up and demolish my young gentleman. After I demolished him, my young gentleman was only a stinky little green puddle I cannot bear to remember.

    I don't know how you can be more Dunstan than that.

    'There was some business about a boy who tried to rape her,' I said.

    'Good old Joy,' Toby said. 'Leave no rock without first you roll it over.'

    I asked if he knew anything about Star's father.

    'Queenie said Star's father was a jazz drummer, but she didn't tell me his name. That's where Star's musical ability came from, she said. I had the idea he might have been sort of like a Dunstan himself, the drummer. Truth is, I always thought Ethel Bridges, the New Orleans woman who married Sylvan after Omar got killed, was another one like that.' He grinned at me. 'Didn't you get pretty good on the guitar, up there in Naperville?'

    Star had boasted about my guitar playing to Toby.

    “I tried,' I said.

    'A couple of times, customers came in with big band photographs, like Duke Ellington or Benny Goodman, where the musicians signed their names. I used to look at the drummers in those pictures and think, if you're the one, you had a daughter you never knew about, but you would have been proud of her.'

    'That's lovely,' I said, struck by his tenderness. “I guess people have the wrong idea about pawnbrokers.'

    'You know what we are? Protection for people who need protection. Or we used to be, before the banks started handing out credit cards right and left.'

    I felt the clarity of a long-overdue understanding. 'Oh, boy.' My skin was tingling. “I justgot it. My mother had me put into foster care to protect me from her family.'