Chicago Stories: West of Western Read Online Free PDF Page B

thought. Cops love video evidence.
    Back upstairs, she was charged for action and her kitchen (refrigerator, espresso machine and hotplate) begged for attention. Boxes and bags littered the floor, and her furniture (unassembled bed rescued from her mother's back room and two iffy director's chairs) formed a pile at the head of the stairs. First she dragged bed parts and mattress back to the back room for assembly. No more sleeping on the floor. Bolt parts together, mattress on bed, pillows, sheets, duvet. Bedroom, check.
    At the kitchen end of the loft, she screwed legs on a salvaged door to make a kitchen table for her espresso machine and hot plate, then unfolded director's chairs, found plates, stainless flatware, salt and pepper. Kitchen and dining room, check.
    With the pile of furnishings depleted, admiring the shining floors and newly tuck-pointed bricks, she found herself suddenly overwhelmed by a longing for things she had never desired before. A set of All-Clad pans hanging from a rack, she had never had a whole set of pans that matched. Clever little tools with racks to hang them from. A Swiffer for the floors, and a lambs-wool duster. Oriental carpets. Egyptian cotton sheets and thick towels and matching bathmat. Once set free, her newly-discovered needs multiplied like politicians in November. A fat down duvet, feather pillows . . . her eyes sparkled. Real furniture, not too much. Maybe a leather couch, with pillows, a real dining table and chairs, a rug or two . . . . No one had warned the tomboy ex-Marine about Nesting Instinct and House Lust.
    Half-way down the stairs to the garage reality struck. Shit. Not much left in her checking account, less in savings. Huh. Maybe just a few things now, more when she got paid Friday? Conservative with her money until now, she hesitated, then shook her head and ran down the rest of the stairs. This was about home. Her Visa wasn't quite tapped out, and she needed the video cameras anyway. There was always American Express. Linens and Things on Clybourne? Renovation Hardware, that was the place. Then maybe a quick run out to Ikea?
    Returning home with her Visa account maxed out, her Amex card worn thin, and the Jeep stuffed like Imelda Marcos’ shoe closet, Seraphy spied a familiar car at the curb and slowed. Boxes piled in front of her door, and her brother was sitting in his car? Damn. She wasn't ready for company. With the neighborhood iffy, she'd intended to have her place complete before she let any of her family see it. What the hell? More boxes? Summoning a smile, she waved at Tony through the windshield and pulled around into the garage.
    “My first visitor. How do you like my place?” she asked when she had come through the garage and opened the front door. After the bricks and the garage door, she needed her family’s support. She grabbed her twin and wrapped all five foot seven, one hundred forty pounds of him in him in a hug.
    “Lemme go, Fee, I can't breathe.” He brushed past her, started for the iron stairs, and turned on the first step. “You got a death wish or something, living over here? Drug-O-Mat on the corner, Witches of Endor across the street? You're not that poor! The place creeps me out! I waited for you in the car. With the doors locked.”
    “Come off it.” He might as well have slapped her face. She closed the door carefully and took a breath before she turned back to face him, now waiting on the stairs. “I bet nobody even talked to you, much less threatened you while you were waiting outside,” she said, putting as much scorn as she could in her voice. “Jesus, and you think you're going to live in New York?” Thank God he hadn't seen the garage door.
    “Didn't have to, I got eyes. You don't know anything about New York.” Tony turned back to the stairs.
    “What's in the boxes?” she asked his back.
    “Your crap from the back closet. Mom said they'd been there since you enlisted, back when Jesus was a Boy Scout.” He stopped