Clancy Street was dark, even in the light of day. It was a two block stretch in a seedy part of town with an elevated train that ran over it. In the shade on the tracks the air would shake with the passing of commuters every fifteen minutes or so. The cars parked along it were near abandoned Mopar monsters that rattled and coughed when, and if, they ran, and pimped out SUVs with rims that spin and license plates bordered in flashing lights. Onto this row of bodegas and bars turned a late model white Volvo station wagon, that ran like it had never missed a scheduled maintenance, which it hadn’t. The service of her car was a legitimate excuse to leave the house in the middle of her dreary day, and frankly she needed that more than the car had ever needed a new air filter. I couldn’t help but think that was my fault.

  The Volvo pulled in a smooth parallel park and came to a stop no more than three inches from the curb. The driver’s door opened and she stepped out dressed in a black trench coat, and a pair of flat Doc Martins that I didn’t even know she owned. She stepped onto the sidewalk and looked up at the sign above the bar before her. It said eddy’s, but only because there was a hole in it where there had once been a T.

  “Cheap **** bastard,” she muttered, “still hasn’t fixed it.”