Chapter 1

"Stupid sonofabitch! Where you get off bein' so cheeky!"

"AIN'T CHEEK! I SEEN 'IM!"

"DON'T SASS ME! GODDAMN UNGRATEFUL WHELP! YELL AT ME I'LL TAKE YOUR HIDE OFF!"

Friday night at Ma Conner's boardinghouse. Seven of us at the table and one skulking from chair to chair trying to get a handout without Ma seeing him. Eight, and only five were paying guests. Typical scene, too, and my food was churning already, like it always did by the time I could get away from that dining room.

As if it weren't bad enough to sit down to every meal with my pussy taut from wishing Eric would get under the table with me or something! But, no; that must not have been enough. Always there had to be the yelling and name-calling between Ma and her sister's boy, fifteen-year-old Will Dennis. She'd raised him from the age of nine, after his mother had abandoned him to go whoring in Chicago. Ma was right; he ought to show some respect after all she'd done for him. He didn't. He acted as if he hated her. He let his hair grow until it hung onto his shoulders and talked radical and probably even smoked pot! And he got mad every time she reminded him how much he owed her. So they fought at every meal, him defying her with his snapping, black eyes and crooked teeth and weasel nose and her pushing back the coarse hair that kept falling across her forehead and setting her jaw and shrieking.

It wasn't that I couldn't take it... or Mark, my fourteen- year-old brother, for that matter. It was just I was scared to death Eric would get a bellyful and tell Ma where to stick her goddamn place.

As usual, though, it was suave, dark, snake-like Duane Fowler who got pissed off, while Eric patiently ignored the row and worked his way through his double portion of dessert.

"For Christ's sake! Sounds like an Irish fishing wharf!" Duane growled. "Belt the little snot and be done with it!"

Ma didn't take a lot of shit off her guests and I don't think she really cared right then if Duane did leave. She fixed him with a baleful glare and drew herself up, swelling as if she had an air pump hooked into her boobs. "Who the hell asked you, Duane Fowler? Just because those know-nothin' owners in Kansas City think you got the brains to run the Emporia Bowl doesn't mean you been out of diapers long enough to tell me how to raise a kid!"

Duane snorted. "Maybe being closer to the diapers makes it easier to remember what works."

Ma sniggered behind her hand. "You're even closer to your high school pettin' days. Hear that ain't gettin' you all you're lookin' for down at the alleys."

That hit a nerve. Duane shot a dark glance toward me and made a snarling noise in his throat. Before he could think of a retort Ma's daughter slipped a knife into the open wound. Nancy was a "super-sophisticated," prematurely mature kid, to judge by her opinion of herself, and she kept up on the gossip around Emporia.

"Even with breaks," she added. And then, as if on some totally unrelated subject and with a quick sideways glance at me, "In fact, they say there's some kind of excitement down along the river these days. A real pusher ought to get down there."

I choked and thought about climbing over the table at her. I'd had to fight Duane off ever since he'd come in as manager of the Emporia Bowl. And that, after I'd changed jobs to get out from under that filthy Mr. Goldstein's thumb at the Bijou Theater. For three and a half miserable years, when I was too young to get another job without Mr. Goldstein's recommendation, I'd submitted to all the degrading experiences he could devise. As cashier at the Bowl, I'd thought I had it made. And then Duane had arrived.

But I'd held him off. As stories began circulating from girls who had bought his line, I'd cringed and firmed up my determination to stay out of his clutches. Even when he kept me late with phony recounts at the register and nit-picking stuff about receipts, I'd held out. For the past three weeks he'd been harassing me that way, and I still hadn't let him make any headway.