Read Online Cast in Stone by G. M. Ford - Free Book Online Page B

old days I'd have started in the alleys down by
Pioneer Square, kicking appliance boxes, waking drunks under the
Viaduct, passing out promises and dollar bills until I got a line on
one of them. These days, there were only two real choices. If it was
early in the month and they were flush, they were at their favorite
watering hole, the Zoo, playing snooker and bending their elbows. If
not, they were back at the house, playing cribbage and pouring their
own. The only real differences were the price of the liquor and the
distance to bed.
    I
doubled-parked on Eastlake for long enough to poke my head into the
Zoo and ascertain that the Boys were presently not holding down their
deeded stools. I backtracked up Lynn and then turned left onto
Franklin.
    Like
most downtown middle-class neighborhoods, the Eastlake area had found
that the dramatic rise in property values was having a profound
effect on the composition of the area. The widening gyre of yuppies
that spread relentlessly outward was being shadowed by an
equally insistent wave of faceless bistros, bakeries, and fern bars,
which now nipped hard at the old neighborhood's heels like a pack of
wild spaniels.
    Franklin,
between Lynn and Louisa, was a block in transition. What in a less
pretentious era had once been simply called two-family houses had
been gutted and resurrected as trendy condos. Most of the
single-family dwellings showed the typical outward signs of recent
cash infusion: restored gingerbread railings and facings,
colorful stained glass door panels, and pastel two-tone paint jobs,
all designed to recreate a revisionist sense of a nonexistent
past.
    Here
and there the block was dotted with the actual remnants of the past,
standing in mute rebuttal. Unembellished, overgrown, views blocked by
their taller, newer neighbors, they persevered as insistent reminders
of the street's humble origins. What new and old alike shared was an
abysmal lack of parking. A combination of gridlock, astronomical
parking rates, and the gnawing fear that they might never find an
open parking space again had forced most of the residents onto public
transportation, relegating their cars to occasional weekend use. This
left the two curb lanes perpetually packed. What remained in between
was a clogged little capillary barely wide enough for a single
vehicle.
    I
gunned it down the narrow lane, sprinting for the Boys' driveway
about two-thirds of the way down. Since none of the Boys had been
permitted a driver's license in recent decades, parking was not
generally a problem. To my surprise, two cars were parked in the
driveway—a green Explorer and a gunmetal-gray Accord. I slipped the
Fiat against the curb, blocking the driveway.
    Twenty-seven-oh-four
was a psoriatic three-story neocolonial, its white weathered facade
in a constant moult, shedding old paint like unwanted skin. Just
outside the front door, the Speaker's omnipresent sandwich board
leaned crookedly against the wall.
    Today's
missive read "Ozone-Schmozone." I vowed not to ask.
    The
sound of the opening door had no visible effect on the three guys
staring blankly at a black-and-white TV in the front parlor. Each
flicked a glance my way, then unconsciously tightened his embrace on
the bag-shrouded bottle he guarded like a Doberman.
    I
continued down the long central hall toward the kitchen in the back.
I got about halfway down before George looked up from his cards,
forced a focus, and broke out in a wide grin. Slapping his cards on
the table, he rocked to his feet.
    "Leo!"
he shouted.
    I'd
interrupted the evening cribbage marathon among George, Ralph,
Harold, and Nearly Normal Norman. I was, as usual, greeted like a
visiting dignitary. It was hugs and handshakes all around.
    "Whose
cars are those in the driveway?" I asked.
    "They
belong to the kids across the street," said George.
    George
Paris had to be the better part of seventy. A former banker, he'd
drunk himself out of half a dozen jobs, two marriages, and eventually
into the