A customer signals for another beer, and Annie gets it.
Dale goes on: “And at the shower, everything’s pigs. Salt and pepper shakers. Pig bookends. A clock that’s a pig’s face, and a curly tail going tick-tock underneath. She busted out crying, and they said, What’sa matter? Don’t you collect ’em? That was in Pittsburgh. So we move to Philadelphia, and we don’t tell a soul about the pigs. And then yesterday was her birthday, and the people she works with, they give her a party. And guess what.”
Dale slaps his hand on the bar and Annie jumps.
“How far do we have to go?” Dale asks. His mouth opens, but it’s not a laugh, it’s a soundless, slack droop.
Suddenly, Annie is frightened. This is her life. She lives alone; there’s a screamer in the neighborhood—somebody who shrieks in the night for no apparent reason, as if there really is a captive in a basement, as if Frances never got out. A screamer, the police say when she calls to report it. She has sat up clutching the covers, heart pounding, fingers slippery on the phone. There have been burglaries in adjacent apartments; she has smelled cigarette smoke and heard gravel crunch in the alley behind her bedroom window, as if some intruder is staking her out. Robbery she can deal with, but please God, keep rape and murder away.
“You look scared, Annie. What’s the matter?” Dale asks.
She shakes her head.
“Come outside,” he says.
She follows him out the back door, into the humid evening.
There, they are surrounded by sounds of invisible revelers. Laughter, chatter, ring tones. She hears with keen uncanny clarity: dogs’ nails scraping the sidewalk, a sneeze from the direction of the old water tower. Yet she and Dale are alone. A weathered fence separates the backyard of the bar from the parking lot of the farmers’ market.
Inhaling, Dale says, “Tell me what you smell.”
Annie breathes in and out. “Garlic, shrimp, wine, leather, perfume.”
“It’s the smell of happiness,” Dale says. “People who live here, they go out to eat every night, buy stuff in all these stores. Me, I came up the hard way. Still coming up.” He shrugs. “But tell me what’s wrong.”
They might be in a movie, Annie thinks. A harsh bulb over the bar’s rear door backlights Dale’s head. They’re a man and a woman having the first real conversation they have ever had.
“I’m scared of getting old,” she says, “and there’ve been break-ins close by. Nothing feels safe anymore. I don’t feel safe.”
“What if I gave you this bar?” Dale says. “What would you do?”
She pauses, considering. “I’d take the Irish stew off the menu. It sucks.”
“Okay,” he says. “What else?”
“Keep the windows open during the day. Air it out.”
“How would you manage the rowdies?” he asks.
“Same as I do now. Cut ’em off.”
“What do you do when you’re not working here?”
“I just gave a Ghost Walk,” Annie says. “Have you ever gone on that?”
“No,” he replies, moving closer.
“You’re not going to give me this bar,” she says, meaning: What would your wife say?
Then he kisses her, planting his lips on hers slowly, so that she has time to think the word lingering, and all she has to do is stand there and feel how much taller he is, how big, and how she must feel like an escape to him. If this were a movie, she’d lay her head on his shoulder, curl into the embrace. But she can taste Dale’s worries on his lips, the dry breath of another’s fear. She steps away.
“Do you give good ghost?” he asks.
“It’s funny,” she says, “the way people want to be scared. The Ghost Walk, horror movies. Why? When there’s so much real stuff to be afraid of?”
Something like anger flickers in his eyes. He says, “That pig stuff. That’s what’s scary. My wife’s going out of her freakin’ mind.”
“Get her to collect something completely different,” Annie suggests, “to throw people off the scent.”
“You think we didn’t try that already?” Dale snaps.
He jerks open the door and goes inside, and Annie follows.
Costumed celebrants stream into the bar for food and drink: devil, clown, cowboy, pirate. Annie takes their orders. The pirate grins when she hands him a plate of fried mozzarella, and hope shoots through her. His teeth and his earring catch the light. She imagines lying in bed with him, telling him about the woman who turned into soap.
Her twisted ankle throbs, and she kicks off her shoes. The floor of the bar feels ice cold, and every passing car on the cobblestones outside sends a tremor beneath her feet.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
MEREDITH ANTHONY is a Pennsylvania native who spent considerable time on Philadelphia’s Main Line with her beloved mother-in-law, the late Nancy Light. She is the coauthor of the thriller Ladykiller, which received many rave reviews and was nominated for the year’s best mystery by ForeWord Magazine. Her short stories appear in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. She currently lives in New York City and is working on a new thriller.
DIANE AYRES is the author of Other Girls, a widely praised satirical novel. She also does editorial consulting, and her “Fiction Addiction” workshops, developed at the University of Pennsylvania, have inspired many students and professional writers. Ayres has lived in the Bella Vista neighborhood of Philadelphia with her husband, author Stephen Fried, for over twenty years, so they are still considered newcomers. For more information, visit www.dianeayres.com.
CORDELIA FRANCES BIDDLE is the author of the Martha Beale novels Without Fear, Deception’s Daughter, and The Conjurer, set in Victorian-era Philadelphia. The series was inspired by research into two ancestors: Nicholas Biddle, president of the Second Bank of the U.S., and Francis Martin Drexel, whose brokerage house helped finance the government during the Civil War. Biddle also penned the historical novel Beneath the Wind. For more information, visit www.keithgilman.com.
KEITH GILMAN’s debut novel, Father’s Day, was awarded Best First Novel by the Private Eye Writers of America. Gilman is also a cop, on the job in the Philadelphia area for over fifteen years. The second book in Gilman’s series of detective novels is due out in 2011. For more information, visit www.keithgilman.com.
CARY HOLLADAY, a native of Virginia, lived in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, in the early 1990s and still misses the cobblestoned streets and the cheese shop. She is the author of five volumes of fiction, including The Quick-Change Artist: Stories. She teaches at the University of Memphis.
SOLOMON JONES is the best-selling author of six novels, including The Last Confession, The Bridge, and his critically acclaimed debut, Pipe Dream. Jones is an adjunct professor at Temple University’s College of Liberal Arts, an award-winning columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News, and an aide to U.S. Congressman Chaka Fattah. He is a member of The Liar’s Club, a Philadelphia-area writers group. For more information, visit solomonjones.com.
GERALD KOLPAN lives in Philadelphia’s Queen Village neighborhood. He has been an illustrator, graphic designer, and rock musician, as well as a print and broadcast journalist. In the 1980s, Kolpan was a contributor to NPR’s All Things Considered, and for over twenty years he was the Emmy Award–winning features reporter for Philly’s WXTF-TV. Ballantine Books published his first novel, Etta, in 2009 (www.ettathenovel.com).
AIMEE LABRIE received her MA in writing from DePaul University in 2000 and her MFA in fiction from Penn State in 2003. Her collection of short stories, Wonderful Girl, won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction in 2007. Her short stories have also been published in Minnesota Review, Pleiades, Quarter After Eight, Iron Horse Literary Review, and other literary journals. Currently, she is the director of marketing and communications for alumni relations at the University of Pennsylvania.
HALIMAH MARCUS was born in Philadelphia and grew up in Narberth, a western suburb of the city. After receiving her BA in English at Vassar College, she retu
rned to live and work in West Philadelphia. She currently attends Brooklyn College’s MFA Program in Creative Writing for fiction.
CARLIN ROMANO, Critic-at-Large of the Chronicle of Higher Education and Literary Critic of the Philadelphia Inquirer for twenty-five years (1984–2009), is now Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Ursinus College. In 2006, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism, cited by the Pulitzer Board for “bringing new vitality to the classic essay across a formidable array of topics.” He lives in University City.
ASALI SOLOMON was born and raised in West Philadelphia. She received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and was selected as one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” for her first book of short stories, Get Down. After nearly twenty years of wandering, she once again lives in West Philadelphia, with her husband and son.
LAURA SPAGNOLI lived in various apartments in Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square area for twelve years before moving to the Italian Market neighborhood. Her poetry has appeared in ONandOnScreen.net, New Millennium Writings, and Philadelphia Stories, among other places. She works as an associate professor of French instruction at Temple University, where she founded a magazine featuring students’ original writing translated into and out of English.
DUANE SWIERCZYNSKI is the author of several best-selling Philadelphia-based crime thrillers, most recently Expiration Date and Severance Package. He also writes for Marvel Comics, and is especially proud that he once brought Frank Castle, a.k.a. the Punisher, to the mean streets of Philly. He’s the former editor-in-chief of the Philadelphia City Paper, and lives with his family in the so-called “Great Northeast.”
DENNIS TAFOYA was born in Philadelphia and lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. His first novel, Dope Thief, was published by St. Martin’s Minotaur in 2009. He is a member of the Mystery Writers of America, the International Thriller Writers, and the Liars Club, a Philadelphia-area writers group. His second novel, The Wolves of Fairmount Park, was published by St. Martin’s in June 2010.
JIM ZERVANOS is the author of the novel LOVE Park, which was hailed as “a love letter to Philadelphia” and a “tribute to the power of brotherly love.” His fiction has appeared in numerous publications, including the story anthology Philly Fiction. He is a graduate of Bucknell University and the Warren Wilson MFA Program. An English and creative-writing teacher, he lives with his wife in the city’s art-museum area.
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Introduction
PART I: CITY OF BURSTS
AIMEE LABRIE
South Philadelphia
SOLOMON JONES
Strawberry Mansion
ASALI SOLOMON
West Philadelphia
KEITH GILMAN
Grays Ferry
PART II: CITY OF OTHERLY LOVE
DENNIS TAFOYA
East Falls
LAURA SPAGNOLI
Rittenhouse Square
HALIMAH MARCUS
Narberth
PART III: THE FAKER CITY
MEREDITH ANTHONY
Fishtown
JIM ZERVANOS
Fairmount
CARLIN ROMANO
University City
DIANE AYRES
Bella Vista
PART IV: THOSE WHO FORGET THE PAST…
DUANE SWIERCZYNSKI
Frankford
CORDELIA FRANCES BIDDLE
Old City
GERALD KOLPAN
South Street
CARY HOLLADAY
Chestnut Hill
About the Contributors
Philadelphia Noir Page 23
