The Crazyladies of Pearl Street Read Online Free

winter because, in fact, the average yearly temperature up there was just about perfect.
    The overall effect of our building, with its traces of erstwhile refinement in the intricate plasterwork now muffled beneath coats of ancient paint, was one of fallen gentility, of tawdry elegance. An old gentlewoman with her front teeth knocked out in a bar brawl.? HYPERLINK “file:///C:\\Documents%20and%20Settings\\Administrator\\Impostazioni%20locali\\Temp\\Rar$EX00.266\\Trevanian%20-%20The%20Crazyladies%20of%20Pearl%20Street.htm” \l “note2#note2” ??[2]?
    We thought ourselves lucky to have three big rooms, but we soon learned that first-floor flats were cheap because they were not considered desirable, in part because their windows were within reach of drunks and vandals leaning out from the stoop, so people could never sleep with them open, no matter how hot the weather got. Also, the rooms were awkwardly shaped because of the space lost to the big entrance hall and two flights of stairs, a broad one ascending to the second floor 'drawing room, and a dark narrow one down to the coal bunker and furnace in the basement. The front receiving room, however, with its high ceilings and ornate if paint-clogged plaster cornices had retained a certain forlorn grandeur, and here I was to sleep on the iron daybed for the next eight years, and here I listened to adventure programs on our Emerson radio, and here, late into the night, I knelt on a pillow at the big front window in the dark, and I daydreamed as I watched the street, when winter snow sifted down diagonally across the pane, or when plump drops of spring rain burst upon and wriggled down the glass, and sometimes in summer I would open the window (it was safe to open because it only came up about three inches before its warped frame jammed) and let the cool late-night air flow over my face as I listened to the melancholy sound of trains down in the freight yards that separated Pearl Street from the wharves and warehouses of the Hudson. In all seasons I was intrigued by late-night life on Pearl Street: sleepy lovers walking because they had no place to go, her head on his shoulder; befuddled drunks stepping off the curb with neck-snapping jolts, then looking back and swearing at the pavement for its duplicity, the rotating light of prowl cars grazing smears of red over the brick walls when the cops came to investigate a complaint or arrest someone... and sometimes the obscure wanderings of Pearl Street's crazyladies.
    Having investigated our new home, Anne-Marie and I were in the kitchen, looking at the bottle of green soda and thinking about that green cake. She sighed and said she was really, really, really hungry. Poor Anne-Marie. We hadn't eaten since breakfast, and food was more crucial to her sense of well-being than it was to mine or Mother's. When she drank hot chocolate, she would look into the bottom of her cup and hum with pure pleasure, and she got light-headed and frightened when she was hungry; but she hadn't said a word because she didn't want to spoil the Saint Patrick's Day party by eating just before it started. I went into the front room and woke Mother to tell her we were hungry. She dug into her change purse in that tight-fingered way that meant she was almost out of money and clawed out a quarter, and she sent me across to the cornerstore to get a loaf of bread and a small jar of peanut butter. Mother believed that peanut butter offered the best food value per unit of money you could buy. Meanwhile, she would locate the box containing our kitchen things and unpack it.
    “But don't mess up the kitchen,” I reminded her. “We've got to keep everything ready for the party.”
    I crossed the street and passed, head down, through the knot of older kids that had returned to loiter in front of Mr Kane's cornerstore.
    “Hey, kid! Where you from?”
    I didn't answer. I had developed the tactic of pretending to be lost in my own thoughts to avoid having to deal with