“Ethel! It’s me! I’m at the Capri-Whitestone.”
No one stayed at the Capri-Whitestone for pleasure. The motel was the city’s most notorious site for drugs, prostitution, and public intoxication. With Hilary Cotton it could be any of the three. Or maybe all of them at once.
“What now?” Ethel asked.
“I can’t say
If newspaper headlines could scream, this screech would be heard on my home planet.
Cash Reward for Bronx Kids Who Attempted to Kill Squirrel.
What monsters would reward someone for attacking helpless creatures? Earth-Humans, apparently. No surprise. Their cruelty is known throughout the universe.
I was here to stop it. I had to act
Transfiguration Church’s Pasta Night was the same every year: an all-you-can-eat Italian buffet, two hundred parishioners cramming the American Legion Hall, old folks doing “YMCA,” and the 50-50 raffle.
My sister Cecily and I always spent every minute in the bar.
Not for the booze.
After all the crap life’s dealt me, I’d developed a motto. When life gives you lemons… steal everything else.
In this city you can shoplift up to one thousand dollars and it’s just a misdemeanor.
You can also steal a heck of a lot more if you’re good at it, and by “good”
“You’re making enough noise to wake the dead,” Dad said from over my shoulder as I upended every bit of stainless-steel-ware in the kitchen drawer, trying to find my giant soup spoon.
“Well, you’d know,” I quipped, “considering you’ve been dead three years.” Then I turned to ask, “What brings you back this time?”
The people here have always thought me peculiar.
Me and my family. A tyrannical, penny-pinching father. A harsh stepmother. And, of course, cold, forbidding spinster sisters.
It’s the rumors about me that make me laugh the hardest. To the people of this fair city, I’m also a kleptomaniac who’s stolen from her own family.
I was only seven when Aunt Toni tried to find her own fountain of youth, so some of the technical details are a little fuzzy. For instance, I can’t remember the name of the anti-aging cream Helena Rubenstein made, but I know that this once-great cosmetics company sold it for big bucks since it was reputed to restore your skin to that of a newborn babe.
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Gramps never did like paying taxes. But that didn’t mean he should abolish the IRS.
“Never have I used the word ‘abolish,’” he protested to Grandma, as he’d done every April for each of the thirteen years I’d lived with them. “But what’s wrong with invisible-izing myself?”
He meant really invisible-izing, as in, all records of his existence…
“Our band of brothers must be the right age,” I told the three men gathered around me in the quiet darkness of my house—dark save for the single candle. We dared not light the lamp on the table between us, nor any lamp at all. “But then, you already know the truth of this.”
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You wouldn’t forget the date of your dad’s death any more than you’d forget your own.
January 3, 1962. The worst day of my life. And only two months later, we’re going to Disneyland.
“Swell way to mourn,” I muttered.
Mom flinched like I’d punched her in the gut, but it was my kid sister Susie…
I admit I screamed the words: “If there ever was a time to speak up when the minister says that bit about why this couple shouldn’t be joined together in holy matrimony, it was to tell him you’d turn into a rat on our honeymoon!”
“I thought that was just for the people
When I was a kid, teleworking and remote learning didn’t exist. If the snow fell hard and fierce, we got a snow day. Meaning, no work for the grown-ups, no school for the kids. Heavenly bliss! That’s why, in 1983, I caused one of the biggest blizzards in New York City history.
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