The shoe in her hand a soft-cuffed slip-on printed with checks of white and primary colors. Gordon nods. A piano boogies softly to itself somewhere under a chugging bass. She watches him looking over the cubbies, drumming her fingertips on the countertop in time. A dented cash register hulks at one end, a label freshly pasted at an angle to the back of it, The Order of American Mechanicals United, it says, Local 235. Gordon sets a pair before her, one a double-buckled pump in scuffed blue pseudo-alligator, the other a checkerboarded slip-on. “So,” she says. “These are mine?”

“Welcome to Portland,” says Gordon.

“They won’t fit,” she says.

“You’ll figure it out.” He sets the pump atop the mound of mismatched shoes on the worktable. The bell jingles as she leaves.

Through the pattering beaded curtain, into a cramped kitchen all scarred linoleum and darkly looming cabinets. Filling a kettle at the red tub of a sink, he sets it on a burner, cranks the knob to high, absently scratching the back of his head, where white curls ring his dark bald pate. “Too blasted many,” he mutters. Opening a cabinet, he rummages for a thick-walled mug, a red plastic jar that says Folgers 1/2 Caff. The bell jingles, out in the shop.

He shuts the drawer he’s opened, sets a spoon by the mug, “Better not,” he mutters, pushing out through the beaded curtain, “if that’s you, boy – ”

It’s the Marquess of Northeast, the Helm Linesse, stood in the middle of the shop, gunmetal hair cropped close, her two arms pale and bare the length of them. “Porter,” she says.

“If it’s titles and affairs of state you’re after,” he growls.

“It’s clarity I’d have,” she says, looking past him to the cash register. “Do we speak now Northeast to North?”

Following her gaze, his scowl curdles. “Rabbits always about, yipping and flexing, that’s all it is.”

“You haven’t taken it down.”

“They’d only put up another. And this is, after all, a free house.” The hissing of that unseen kettle climbs enough to be heard over the softly music. “I could make two cups,” says Gordon.

“You were worried, before,” says Linesse, sitting at the small kitchen table.

“I never worry,” he says, and dollops steaming water into mugs. “No future in it.”

“You came to me, concerned,” she says. “That their yipping in your shop might discourage your domestic kaffeeklatsch.”

“We never klatsched,” he says, dumping spoonfuls of grounds. Chiming as he stirs. “But I did come to you.”

“You’re no more concerned?”

He sets a mug before her. “Nobody here to discourage, anymore.” Sitting himself across from her. “All of them what’s loosed and fancy-free are down Southeast, taking their due direct from her majesty’s own hand.”

“You’re alone?”

“Boy’s about, time to time.” Gordon sips his coffee. “He’d like a fight, but not with bravos. He’s got beef with the mortal hounds, up St. Johns.”

Linesse smiles at her mug. “There’s a grocery on the line, at Fremont. The Mooncalfe duels there in the parking lot, most nights. Boasts she’s yet to lose a bout.” Lifts it, breathing in. “And you still take the shoes,” she says.

“No one else to do it.” Another sip. “Although,” he says. “Last week, a man in a suit and tie, but dirty, frayed, shoulder sprung, accustomed to good barbering, but hadn’t shaved in days. Had a saddle Oxford, grey suede gone brown, cream of it grey, and I didn’t, Linesse, I didn’t know it. Spent an hour or more, tossing shoes about. Nothing.”

“The match hadn’t come?”

“For all I know,” says Gordon, “it never was.”

“Come back with me,” says Linesse. He lifts up his head, on the verge of a frown. “Come back with me,” she says, again. “They don’t come here for this, this building. Those shelves. They come to where the Porter is. Come back with me.”

“I give no drop,” he says. “I take no pinch.”

“It would be as free a house as this,” she says. “More. Never another morning coffee spoiled by preening hares.” His shoulders lift with a grumbled snort. “I know a dozen storefronts that would do, on Going, Albina, Killingsworth. Come back with me, to see.”

“A dozen,” he says, sitting back. “This offer’s not a whim. You came here to make it.”

Those pale shoulders shrug. “There’s no more bond between us, Gordon. Our eyes are clear on that. Unstiff your neck. Come back with me. Do your work in peace.”

“To go, from Hare, to Helm,” he says. “Your eyes may be clear, Linesse, and mine, but they’re no more the only eyes in the world.”

She’s the first to look away, to the mug she lifts for one quick sip. “Blast and rot your pride, old fool,” she says, and scrapes back from the table.

“Soon enough,” he says. “And grace and beauty dog your steps, woman.”

She’s pushing through the beaded curtain, but the bell’s already jingling, out there in the store. Tipping back his head, he says, “Again?”

But it’s Christian, stood in the middle of the shop, Linesse off to one side. “Boy,” growls Gordon, heading for the counter.

“George Honeycutt,” says Christian, and Gordon freezes. Linesse lifts the back of her hand to her mouth. “That’s your name, isn’t it,” says Christian. “That’s why it says George’s on the window.”

“That ain’t why,” says Gordon, but Christian says, “It was the kids started calling you Gordon,” says Christian. “At those free breakfasts you were running. Because you looked like the guy on Sesame Street.”

“Who have you been talking to,” says Gordon.

“People,” says Christian. “Around. About. You’re a goddamn hypocrite.”

“Boy!” snaps Gordon, but Christian plows on, “Don’t go home, you’re telling me, you can’t go home, your mother will never know you again, boy, don’t even try, and here you are, playing poker every other goddamn night with your buddies from back in the day!”

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“Stop this!” cries Linesse.

“You don’t know what you’re messing with,” says Gordon.

“You’re right,” says Christian. “One thing I can’t figure, it was, forty? Fifty years ago, when George Honeycutt up and vanished. You couldn’t’ve been more than, what, twenty-five? So why the hell you look like that?”

“Boy!” roars Gordon, pounding the countertop.

“No,” says Christian. “Damn your boy, and you,” turning, heading for the door, “and all this goddamn bullshit.” The bell, frantic at the force with which the door’s yanked open, slammed shut.

“Blasted Duckie,” mutters Gordon, “filling his blasted head with nonsense. What.” Stepping back from the counter. Linesse staring wordless at him. “What is it, woman? What?” His one hand, both of them coming up to his forehead, the top of his head, and the look on his face when his fingers find there not a balding pate, but a mighty round of tight black curls.

•

The sidewalk whiles away through trees top-heavy, greenly thick, a line of concrete shirred with drying mud. The Harper Chillicoathe picks his way along toward a flatly sheen of water glimpsed through the trunks. A sudden awkward decline ends the walk in a clean-scraped roundel, a railing jerry-rigged from old pipes at the very edge of the riverbank. A rope-lined tar-papered gangway angles over the water to a short but crowded wharf, a couple cabin cruisers and a smattering of motorboats, a line of sailboats nestled close, empty masts a white-branched thicket against more grey-green trees across the river, and a cul de sac of floating homes and houseboats. It’s all astonishingly quiet against the distant endless thrum of freeway traffic. Chilli looks up to the closely ceiled wet-cotton grey of the sky, scratching his chin beneath his yellow beard. Sleeves of his bulky oaten sweater pushed past his elbows. The windows of the one house there scummed over all with dust. A floating deck, boars greyly desiccated, long since out of true, the hot tub in the center of it filthily dry.

He sets off down the gangway, aluminum ringing under his boots, but halfway along he stops, looks back. A little man’s stood at the top of the ramp, gazing down at Chilli with a blandly lack. Chilli shakes his head, turns with a sigh to go on, but the little man’s on the ramp before him, much too close, and smiling about too many teeth.

“Cearb,” says Chilli.

That smile somehow grows wider.

“You serve herself,” says Chilli.

“So much depends upon a word,” the little man says, conversationally enough.

“The loathly lady,” says Chilli. “I’d ask of her a boon.”

“And yet, you’re here,” says the little man.

“A by-blow,” Chilli’s saying, “just one, of which she still has dozens, I don’t doubt. I had one, once, myself. A lovely creature. Not much I wouldn’t do, to have her like again.”

“And yet,” the little man says, “you’re here.”

“I’ve business with these mortal hounds,” says Chilli.

“Far be it from me to get in your way.” The little man opens his mouth and those teeth, those teeth do part as he lunges for Chilli toppling backwards clang his one hand flung wide curling a fist to grip about nothing, nothing at all.

Slumped beneath the little man, the bouncing gangway slowing, gentling, Chilli winces at the polyp of slabber that dribbles to hiss close by his beard. Lips purse over those teeth, shutting them away. “Far be it from you,” says the little man, “to draw a blade on me.”

“I’m yet a knight,” spits Chilli.

The little man shifts his weight, pushes up and back, “You’d threaten me with spurs?”

“I’ve more than spurs,” growls Chilli, kicking shoving to roll himself over and out from under as the little man laughs, “Good!” the cry, somehow at once quite loud, yet far away. “You’ll need it!”

Chilli gets to his feet on the jouncing gangway. There’s no one else there with him.

A step forward, another, as the gangway settles again. He looks back over his shoulder to see the little man returned to the top of the ramp, smiling down with teeth too bright for such a cloudy day. “Eleleu!” he crows. “Eleleu!”

Chilli heads on down the gangway to the rough grey boards of the wharf, the small white cabin at the corner. Hayden View Moorage, says the sign over the door of it. Beyond the façades of floating homes and towering bows of boats crowd close to either side, the wharf a shadowed alley between, clink of sailboat fittings nudged by a fainting breeze, and the lap and sluff of water drowns the distant traffic’s thrum. Boots loud on the boards he counts off moorings to his left, stopping at the fifth, a crooked gangplank propped between wharf and yellowing deck, the blocky snout of a houseboat snugged between a cabin cruiser draped with blue tarpaulins an an attempt at a miniature Queen Anne, the siding and spindlework a folly of lavender and teal. Chilli casts about, looking over cleat wound about with thick grey line, the railing about the porched-over bow, screen door blank against the shadows within. “Hello?” he calls.

“The request,” a voice lazily loud from within, “is for permission to come aboard.”

“I was told to meet the XO here.”

“You have but to ask,” with a sing-song lilt. Chilli sighs. “Do I have it?”

“What’s that.”

“Permission,” says Chilli.

“To?”

Looking about, arms akimbo, shaking his big yellow head. “Permission to come aboard,” he says.

Thump, the screen door’s kicked open. “There,” that voice within. “Was that so hard?”

The cabin’s dim, brief curtains drawn, a table to one side and a figure slumped over it, wrapped in a thickly bulk. A flag pinned to the back wall, red of it bright even here, criss-crossed with spangled bars of midnight blue. A sharply narrow man leans out to pull the screen door shut with a click. “So,” says Chilli. “You’re Chad.”

“Chad’s dad,” says the man, dropping onto the table’s other bench.

“You’re Chad’s, father?”

A laugh. “Nah, man, Chad is dad.”

“I was told he was the XO.”

“Meet Danny Moody,” hand pressed to the lapel of his army-surplus jacket, “the new Executive Officer of this outfit.” Chilli’s eyeing the other figure, still unmoving, the swaddling an unzipped nylon sleeping bag. “Don’t mind Jasper,” says Moody. “He’s a rusty old weathervane. Takes a hell of a gust to shift him, but he always ends up pointed the right way. So!” A clap too loud for that close space. “I was told you want somebody out of somewhere.”

“Something like that.”

“So we’re in the neighborhood.”

“It’s a delicate matter.”

“That you want smashed in a million pieces,” says Moody. “Hey.” He shrugs. “We’re honest about what it is we do.”

“What we want,” Chilli takes a breath, “what I need,” tipping back his head, sighs. “Take your time,” says Moody. Chilli shoots him a look. “I’ve changed my mind,” he says.

“You don’t want somebody gone,” says Moody.

“I’ll do it myself,” says Chilli.

“You’ll do it yourself. Okay.” Pushing back the cuff of his jacket to check the golden watch about his wrist. “That it? Because, if so, ipso, you wasted my time, you wasted yours, you’re wasting Jasper’s, which, frankly, takes effort – ”

“There’s something else you can do for me.”

“Which,” says Moody, “would,” leaning forward, sharp elbows on the table, “be, what?”

Chilli’s hands in his pockets, looking down, yellow beard spread over his chest. “Watch someone for me. No smashing. No interfering, no contact at all. Is that something I can hire your hounds to do?”

“My men,” says Moody, pointedly, and then a shrug. “What do you think, Jasper?” The slumped figure doesn’t budge. “We can evolve, no question, but should we? Ought we?” Peering up at Chilli. “Ah, what the hell, buddy. We’ll do it. Who and what and where and when?”

“A camp,” says Chilli. “East of the airport, hard by the slough. You’ll find her there,” looking away, the flag on the back wall. “Among a dozen others or so. But,” he takes a step toward the windows across the cabin, elaborate gingerbreading visible through the gap in the curtains.

“Let me guess,” says Moody. “It’s another delicate matter.”

“This can’t come back to me. To us. You can’t be seen, and if you are, no one can know who asked it of you.”

“It’s a homeless camp,” says Moody. “Right? Who’s gonna ask?” Leaned away from the table, a hand on his knee. “Look, buddy, discretion’s a watchword, but we need to know at a minimum who it is we’re keeping an eye on, here.”

“Someone,” says Chilli, “who once was, highly placed.”

A chime sounds. Chilli turns back. Moody’s grin’s quite sharp, and there’s the flash of gold about his wrist. “Oh,” he almost croons, and, relishing each word, “could this possibly be, the dear, departed, Bambi Jo Maguire?”

“You know her,” says Chilli, each word distinct, deflated.

“Aw, man, me and her, we go way back!” says Moody. “She was the best man at my wedding! Aw, hell, buddy, I’d do this one for free!”

Slither and squeak, Jasper sits up, sleeping bag falling away from tangled matted hair and glaring eyes. “But the men, you know,” says Moody, holding out a hand. “They won’t.”

Chilli pulls out a thick roll of bills wrapped about with a rubber band. Sets it, upright, on Moody’s palm.