Ivory and the Horn Read Online Free PDF

them?”
    Aunt Hilary nods. “And she kept fiddling with something in her pockets that made a rattle-y sort of sound.”
    “That’s Shirley,” I say.
    “So you do know her.”
    “She’s an old friend,”
    Aunt Hilary starts to say something else, but I lose the thread of her conversation because all I’m thinking is, I’m not crazy. Other people can see her. I was being pretty cool whenever Shirley showed up, but I have to admit to worrying that her presence was just the first stage of a nervous breakdown.
    Suddenly I realize that I’m missing everything my landlady’s telling me about Shirley’s visit.
    “I’m sorry,” I tell her. “What did you say?”
    Aunt Hilary smiles. She’s used to my spacing out from time to time.
    “Your friend didn’t stay long,” she says. “She just told Tommy what a handsome young man he was and patted each of the dogs with utter concentration, as though she wanted to remember them, and then she left. I asked her to stay for some lunch, or at least a cup of tea, because she looked so—well, hungry, I suppose. But she just shook her head and said, That’s very kind of you, but I don’t indulge anymore.’”
    Aunt Hilary frowns. “At least I think that’s what she said. It doesn’t really make a lot of sense, when you consider it.”
    “That’s just Shirley,” I tell her.
    I can tell Aunt Hilary wants to talk some more about it, but I turn the conversation to my plan for an outing to the park, inviting her along. She hasn’t got the time, she says— is probably looking forward to a few hours by herself, is what I hear, and I don’t blame her—but she gets right into helping me get a knapsack of goodies organized.
    We have a great day. Nothing’s changed. I’ve still got to deal with my malaise, I’ve still got the ghost of a dead friend hanging around, but for a few hours I manage to put it all aside and it’s like old times again.
    I haven’t seen Tommy this happy since I can’t remember when, and that makes me feel both glad and depressed.
    There’s got to be a better way to live.
     
    7
    I decide it’s time to get some expert advice, so the next day I call in sick at work and head off down to Fitzhenry Park instead.
Everybody who spends most of their time on the streets isn’t necessarily a bum. Newford’s got more than its share of genuinely homeless people—the ones who don’t have any choice: winos, losers, the hopeless and the helpless, runaways, and far too many ordinary people who’ve lost their jobs, their homes, their future through no fault of their own. But it’s also got a whole subculture, if you will, of street musicians, performance artists, sidewalk vendors and the like.
Some are like me: They started out as runaways and then evolved into something like when I was making cash from trash. Others have a room in a boarding house or some old hotel and work the streets because that’s where their inclination lies. There’s not a whole lot of ways to make a living playing fiddle tunes or telling fortunes in other outlets, and the overhead is very affordable.
Fitzhenry Park is where a lot of that kind of action lies. It’s close to the Combat Zone, so you get a fair amount of hookers and even less-reputable types drifting down when they’re, let’s say, off-shift. But it’s also close to the Barrio, so the seedy element is balanced out with mothers walking in pairs and pushing strollers, old women gossiping in tight clusters, old men playing dominoes and checkers on the benches. Plus you get the lunch crowds from the downtown core which faces the west side of the park.
The other hot spot is down by the Pier, on the lakefront, but that’s geared more to the tourists, and the cops are tight-assed about permits and the like. If you’re going to get arrested for busking or hawking goods from a sidewalk cart or just plain panhandling, that’s the place it’ll happen.
The kind of person I was looking for now would work the park crowds