calmly, like everything was just fine now. He flipped off the lights. Glowing red stuff. On the counter, close to where he stood, there was a brass business-card holder cast in the shape of a whooping crane, glowing dull red. He took a second to study it, just to make sure there wasn't some red light source from outside refracting around the room and making him uneasy for no reason. He stepped into the dark shop, took a closer look, got an angle on the brass cranes. Nope, the brass was definitely pulsing red. He turned and ran back up the steps as fast as he could.
He nearly ran over Jane, who stood in the kitchen, rocking Sophie gently in her arms, talking baby talk under her breath.
"What?" Jane said. "I know you have some big cushions down in the shop somewhere."
"I can't," Charlie said. "I'm on drugs." He backed against the refrigerator, like he was holding it hostage.
"I'll go get them. Here, hold the baby."
"I can't, I'm on drugs. I'm hallucinating."
Jane cradled the baby in the crook of her right arm and put a free arm around her younger brother. "Charlie, you are on antidepressants and antianxiety drugs, not acid. Look around this apartment, there's not a person here that's not on something." Charlie looked through the kitchen pass-through: women in black, most of them middle-aged or older, shaking their heads, men looking stoic, standing around the perimeter of the living room, each holding a stout tumbler of liquor and staring into space.
"See, they're all fucked up."
"What about Mom?" Charlie nodded to their mother, who stood out among the other gray-haired women in black because she was draped in silver Navaho jewelry and was so darkly tanned that she appeared to be melting into her old-fashioned when she took a sip.
"Especially Mom," Jane said. "I'll go look for something to sit shivah on. I don't know why you can't just use the couches. Now take your daughter."
"I can't. I can't be trusted with her."
"Take her, bitch!" Jane barked in Charlie's ear - sort of a whisper bark. It had long ago been determined who was the Alpha Male between them and it was not Charlie. She handed off the baby and cut to the stairs.
"Jane," Charlie called after her. "Look around before you turn on the lights. See if you see anything weird, okay?"
"Right. Weird."
She left him standing there in the kitchen, studying his daughter, thinking that her head might be a little oblong, but despite that, she looked a little like Rachel. "Your mommy loved Aunt Jane," he said. "They used to gang up on me in Risk - and Monopoly - and arguments - and cooking." He slid down the fridge door, sat splayed-legged on the floor, and buried his face in Sophie's blanket.
In the dark, Jane barked her shin on a wooden box full of old telephones. "Well, this is just stupid," she said to herself, and flipped on the lights. Nothing weird. Then, because Charlie was many things, but one of them was not crazy, she turned off the lights again, just to be sure that she hadn't missed something. "Right. Weird."
There was nothing weird about the store except that she was standing there in the dark rubbing her shin. But then, right before she turned on the light again, she saw someone peering in the front window, making a cup around his eyes to see through the reflection of the streetlights. A homeless guy or drunken tourist, she thought. She moved through the dark shop, between columns of comic books stacked on the floor, to a spot behind a rack of jackets where she could get a clear view of the window, which was filled with cheap cameras, vases, belt buckles, and all manner of objects that Charlie had judged worthy of interest, but obviously not worthy of a smash-and-grab.
The guy looked tall, and not homeless, nicely dressed, but all in a single light color, she thought it might be yellow, but it was hard to tell under the streetlights. Could be light green.
"We're closed," Jane said, loud enough to be heard through the glass.
The man outside peered around the shop, but couldn't spot her. He stepped back from the window and she could see that he was, indeed, tall. Very tall. The streetlight caught the line of his cheek as he turned. He was also very thin and very black.
"I was looking for the owner," the tall man said. "I have something I