the blonde alibi - part one

It was late in the evening when Kirk Stromre entered Shorty’s bookstore. He popped in like a mischievous puppy who had just broken out of its cage. His hair was dark and unkempt, he was wearing the same clothes he’d been wearing for two days, clothes that were chosen more for comfort than style; loose–fitting corduroy pants with a patch on one knee, a faded, green military-issue button-down shirt over a grayish cotton t-shirt. His socks didn’t match. But his clothes were counterbalanced by the purposefulness in his walk. He walked as though a lustful overgrown Doberman Pincher was fastened to his crotch and was leading him around. This wasn’t by design, it was how he always walked, it was his natural gait and this not-so subtle walk revealed that Stromre was in fact a "love man". He spent two, three, four hours a day making love, to all types of women. He didn’t discriminate; black, white, Asian, Hispanic, Arab, tall, short, fat, skinny, old, young, rich, poor, beautiful, homely, fast, slow, smart, dumb. It didn’t matter. For he had a genuinely unique ability to find something attractive about every woman he met and then foster that attractive aspect through the constant promise of flirtation in his smile and the twinkle in his eyes. This wasn’t premeditated or even intentional. It was just the way he was. Every word he spoke could be taken as a double entendre, every look a come-hither, every gesture a romantic one. The result was he had sex more often and with more partners than any man was really meant to have.
Janet, who stood at about half of Stromre’s 6 foot frame, noticed him first. She wasn’t certain whether this stranger belonged here or not—although she’d certainly seen odder customers come in. Shorty's, her second hand bookstore in Chicago's decaying Maxwell Street Market, resembled an early-century brothel as much as it did a bookstore; there were stacks of books in disarray piled on well-worn foot stools and hand-made tables throughout. Underground comic books were strewn about, along with pulp paperbacks and Harlequin romances. Warped oak book shelves and cracked-paint walls mixed with vintage posters and loosely-tacked on flyers that advertised jazz bands from days gone by. Japanese folding screens divided various areas into private reading spaces as table lamps with silk scarves draped over them spread mists of light here and there. All together it caused a strange optical effect for any customer who looked from one end of the long, narrow store to the other, as though their depth perceptions was enhanced some how. But patrons were used to it. Generally Shorty's didn’t see more than five or six regular customers a night, plus maybe five or six strangers who stumbled in by chance. Sometimes Janet greeted the newcomers, but more often she left them alone until they approached her. Without exception they were always surprised to find out she was the owner and operator. “Probably because I’m a midget,” Janet once told her roommate/girlfriend Chrissy, “And they probably figure that midgets only work in the circus or on the Jerry Springer show.”
Like the other merchants around Maxwell Street Market (or what was left of the Maxwell Street Market), Janet was leery of strangers. Maxwell Street had aged in a rough manner over the previous 15 years, especially in comparison to the surrounding Chicago neighborhoods which had already undergone urban renewal and gentrification. Maxwell Street had been spared from land developers somehow, but it was so close to the Chicago’s downtown loop and financial core that it was simply too ripe not to be picked. It was the last juicy cherry for corporate-sponsored property sharks to gobble up. Janet's building was just a few buildings south of where the bulldozers and wrecking balls had recently stopped and she had grown accustomed to at least one ambitious realtor per week coming in to try to throw her a pitch. But Stromre didn't look like a realtor, or a developer, or a businessman. No, he looked like the type of person who had spent a lot of time in used bookstores – yet Janet didn't know why he belonged here, in this one.
“I’ve heard you have a ‘true crime’ section,” Stromre said smiling, as soon as he noticed her. He was about the same age as Janet, early to mid 20s, and he was handsome—not like movie star handsome, but like real-life handsome. Janet tried not to blush.
“Yeah, it’s toward the back,” she swallowed.
In the back of the store, in a make-shift kitchen, Chrissy was pouring herself some coffee when she heard conversation. Her head perked up and she happily came galloping to the front.
“Hi,” she smiled up at Stromre. She was also about half his size.
“Hi” Stromre replied.
Janet stepped in between the two of them and led Stromre toward the back. "This way," she said.
The store had grown dusty and disorganized over the past few months, years. Janet had not yet given it the thorough cleaning she should have after she inherited it five years earlier. Neither her nor Chrissy had been motivated to do even the slightest bit of tidying up other than a half-hearted attempt once every month or so—sometimes they actually mopped the floors, but not too often. Suddenly though, with this handsome stranger here smiling at her, Janet found herself noticing dust and debris that she previously hadn’t bothered to notice.
“Things are little disorganized right now…” she felt compelled to explain, as she led Stromre down a corridor of book shelves. And then Stromre abruptly came to a stop. There, hanging on the wall, an old photograph rendered him motionless. He stood staring at it. His eyebrows furrowed toward each other like two rams about to collide horns. Janet turned toward him.
“Oh, that’s a photo of my grandfather. He’s the little guy,” Janet explained. “I’m not sure about the other guy.”
“It’s Jack McGurn,” Stroemre explained. “Machine Gun Jack McGurn...”
Machine Gun McGurn – Janet shrugged, the name meant nothing to her. But Stromre took a step closer and scrutinized the photo in more detail. The dark, wavy hair, the pugilist's nose and jawline, McGurn had a slight smirk on his face as he leaned down beside the little man—the midget, Janet's grandfather.
“That picture has been there forever. It must have been taken sometime before World War II. My gramps owned a magazine stand out front then.” Janet said, nodding toward the front of the building. Stromre glanced toward the front with a curious expression, then back to the photo.
“That makes sense.” Stromre explained, “McGurn was assassinated in 1935, the day after Valentine's Day”
Stromre looked down at Janet, “So your grandfather used to own this place?” he asked.
“Yeah, for over 50 years.”
Stromre eyeballed Janet with a smile.
“My granddad was originally a circus performer,” Janet found herself explaining. “He came to Chicago in 1933 to work the World’s fair—which was where he met my grandmother. My grandmother was a fan dancer. She was tall—five foot eight. They ended up having seven kids, all regular size and 17 grandkids that were all regular size as well—except one.”
“You,” Stromre nodded smiling into her eyes.
“Yeah, I’m the only one to get the midget gene, can you believe that?” she smiled back. “I think that this kind of endeared me to Gramps.”
Stromre nodded, “So when did Gramps buy this store?” he asked.
“A little before World War II. He bought the building and ran the bookstore here until he died in 1991. I was just 21 when he died, but no else in the family knew how to run the place—I mean, I was the only one who ever helped Gramps with it. So even though I was a girl, he left the business and the building to me.”
Janet had Stroemer’s complete attention and she felt a tremendous blush coming on. She continued babbling nervously to fight it off.
“You know I’ve got some more photos of my Gramps if you’d like to see them.” God, why did I ask him that? She admonished herself before the words even left her lips.
“Yeah, I’d love to.”
Janet gathered herself and sent Chrissy, who had been shadowing them, to a cabinet in back to retrieve an old shoe box filled with photos.
“The last photo ever taken of Gramps was in the hospital.” Janet told Stromre, handing him a color photo of Gramps. Stromre looked at Gramps, who had a big painful smile, lying on a hospital bed.
“He was a big practical joker,” she explained. “Even on his death bed, he convinced my grandma that he was gonna come back to her from the other side... like a ghost. He used to talk like he was Dr. Suess when he got to joking around, like, ‘I may come back as a dog or frog or even a log. But I’ll be coming back from the land of the ghouls—and I better not catch you be messing around with any damn fools!’” Janet laughed at the memory.
“And Grandma believed him too, because after he died she still talked to him as if he was always still right there beside her. She’d ask him where he put the playing cards or the salt shaker—stuff like that. My aunts and uncles thought she was losing her mind and they decided to put her in a home. Within a year she died too.”
“Sounds like she loved him a lot.” Stroemre said in a soft voice that made something tingle in Janet's chest.
Stromre's eyes were gentle and kind and something about the attention he kept shining on her was warming. It tickled her insides. Of course she didn’t believe in love at first sight, or even in soul mates, so she didn’t know what it was or even how to explain it; this excitement. But her heart was pumping, skipping beats. And her head felt lighter, as though her circulatory system was pumping oxygen into her brain trying to lift her off the ground like a balloon. She offered Stromre coffee. Stromre accepted and asked her a question about the building, then a question about her family. Each question sent her off on a story as she nervously revealed more and more about herself. Before she knew it she was telling him all kinds of personal things about her life and even things about her and Chrissy.
“Just let me say this about Chrissy,” Janet explained. “Chrissy has a penchant for getting herself into awkward social situations—always in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing, at the wrong time.”
Chrissy flashed a smile then feigned a dirty look. "Oh honey, you know it!" she declared as Janet went on.
“The first time I ever met Chrissy in fact, was on a CTA bus. But right before she got on the bus there was this other lady—some woman who must have worked for the Department of Health or something because as this woman got off the bus she left something behind that she had been carrying. It was this fold-out poster board that she must have used as a visual aid for giving presentations about sexually transmitted diseases because it had ‘STDs’ written on it in bold black letters. Weird, but when this woman got off the bus and accidentally left this poster board behind, everyone on the bus was kinda looking at this poster curiously, but no one did anything - not until the next stop, which is when Chrissy gets on. And when Chrissy climbs up on the bus, she immediately sees this fold-out poster board and I can just tell by the puzzled look on her face that she’s gonna pick it up and open it to see what it is. For some reason I always feel a little embarrassed when another midget does something awkward. So I stand up and start walking toward her to warn her—I figured maybe she hadn’t seen the big ‘STD’ written across it, or maybe she didn’t know what it meant—I mean she wasn’t even 16 years old at the time. But before I made my way to her, she had opened it up and is holding it up to inspect it so that everyone on the bus can see it. And this poster had the grossest things on it that I’d ever seen in my life—there’s all these weird, bizarre pictures of people’s genitalia infected with red, pus-filled herpes and huge bulbous syphilis legions ballooning out of someone’s anus. It was the grossest damn thing I’d ever seen in my life, I mean it was terrible, and the other passengers started moaning and croaking, and holding their stomachs…”
“Oh it wasn’t that bad!” Chrissy interjects. “You’re exaggerating now.”
“I’m telling you there was this guy next to me holding his stomach like he had the urge to regurge—and clueless Chrissy here is looking at all of this freaked out stuff on the poster board in utter confusion. So then what does she do? She folds it up, puts it under her arm and drags it up to the bus driver, where she then she unfolds it again and says, ‘Look at this!’ As if the bus driver had a solution to this! Well, that was just too much! I mean it’s one thing to see someone making a fool of themselves, but one of my own people! So I went up to her and tried to grab the poster from her, but she’s very strong—even at 15 Chrissy was very strong—and she frowns at me and grabs it back. And then we get into a tug of war over this thing. I mean can you imagine what the passengers who were getting on at the next stop must have thought, boarding the bus and seeing two midgets, one black and one white, fighting over an STD visual aid poster?”
Stromre couldn’t help but laugh at the story. He had a welcoming, encouraging laugh and it reinforced what Janet thought about him from the moment she saw him—he was genuine, he understood. Chrissy understood this too and the two girls went on jabbering about themselves, trying to outdo each other with their stories as they drank coffee and flirted the night away.
It was past 2 am by the time Janet realized she still hadn’t shown Stromre any True Crime books yet. He hadn’t made any mention of it though. He was too occupied with the moment, as the three gelled together easily, like honey, tea leaves and hot water. He was enjoying himself so much that he seemed to forget all about his excuse for being there in the first place. Chrissy meanwhile continually brushed herself against him every chance she got; when she talked she put her hand on his arm and let it linger upon his body before she eased it away. He reacted as if it was all quite natural as he kept eye contact with both girls. It was about then that he asked Janet about the upkeep of the building.
“The upkeep? Well, neither one of us are much of a handyman,” she told him, “and we can’t afford to hire one. There’s just too many problems. The roof leaks—which makes most of the second floor uninhabitable, and we have problems with the plumbing, plus the basement smells like a dungeon.”
“I could fix that for you,” Stromre offered casually. “I could fix all those things.”
Janet and Chrissy looked at each other as if it was the most bizarre offer anyone had ever made. The place was in shambles and the bookstore hadn’t made a cent of profit for years. Of course Janet wanted him to fix it up, but she didn’t know if it was worth it and besides, she didn’t have a red cent to pay him.
“I’ll work for room and board,” Stromre announced as if he was reading her mind.
This sent her defenses up at first. Why should I trust this stranger, she wondered, a stranger who I know nothing about—to fix up my building in exchange for room and board? But on the other hand, what do I have to loose? And besides, he’s so…God damned Sexy! There I’ve admitted it!”
“The only room we have is our bedroom upstairs,” Chrissy purred, positively fondling him by now—her pointy little breast sweeping his forearm. “But we don’t take up much room, if you wanna share it?”
Stromer gazed at Janet knowingly, his gaze sent the hottest flash she had ever experienced in her life suddenly flushing through her body. Sweat started gushing from her pores as if an inferno was raging inside—and then it dawned on her: They were ALL gonna be lovers.
“Okay, let’s see it then,” Stromre said.




***



The next morning Janet woke up to find Stromre with half his body sprawled across the rug on the floor and the other half sprawled out over their queen size futon mattress. Chrissy was rolled up like a kitten under his chin. Janet had gotten herself turned around in the middle of the night so that she was facing the opposite way. Chrissy’s big toe was about an inch and a half from Janet’s left nostril. Janet had only logged maybe two or three hours of sleep, but still she was wide awake with thoughts of what was going to happen next racing through her mind. Sexually she had never been with anyone other than Chrissy before. Chrissy, on the other hand, had had quite a few lovers. In fact she had a boyfriend when Janet first met her. A black guy named Adrian who was about 5 foot 2 in high heels and thought he was a pimp. He tried getting into Janet’s pants the first time he got her alone. Janet told Chrissy about it, but Chrissy wasn’t surprised. In fact she didn’t even care. She was used to the swinger’s world. But Janet wasn’t, and as she lay there a million different thoughts bombarded her. Everything from whether Stromre was really gonna stay with them and fix everything up, to whether both she and Chrissy were going to be his lovers, or just Chrissy? Or just her?
She lay like that, somewhat nervous yet unable to move while the sun's morning rays began to peak through the window in the corner. She picked over every detail of that night. It had been a roller coaster ride with her and Chrissy screaming in gleeful ecstasy as Stromre swung them around into varying positions, never letting go of either one of them, spinning them up in the air at times, over his head, then corking them from every angle and in every orifice... it was... well, just too fantastical to even believe. But now every possible scenario of what would happen next was racing through her mind.
Slowly the sun rose and Janet finally settled onto a fantasy-scenario in which she and Stromre were lovers who would walk to the market every Sunday to buy their weekly groceries then return home and listen to piano jazz on the radio and read a book or play dice games or cards. This fantasy was rudely interrupted when Chrissy turned over, opened her eyes and gave Stromre a good morning kiss on the mouth. As Stroemre opened his eyes and saw Chrissy’s grinning face, Janet realized they were all still naked. At least she had a sheet covering up her private parts. Stromre and Chrissy both looked over at Janet as she froze for a second, not sure of what to do next. God, will my body look unattractive to him in the daylight? she fretted.
Just then Chrissy sprung up, bounding towards Janet in two little rabbit hops and pulled the sheet that was covering her private parts from her and ran off with it, giggling as if Janet was supposed to chase after her. Good God! Chrissy did a full circle around the room at top speed and ended up right back on top of the bed, right between Janet and Stroemr. Stromre then snatched the sheet from her with one hand and laid Chrissy down beside Janet, nearly on top of her. He posed above them—like a Greek God or a Comic Book Super Hero, and with the sheet wrapped around him as if it was a cape he somehow seemingly floated very slowly down onto their excited little bodies, the cape following behind like a huge parachute that eventually covered all 3 of them in their own private little tent.



***



Seven hours later, as afternoon crept into early evening, Janet led Stromre to the basement. At the bottom of the steps, Stromre was astonished at the very first sight he came upon. There sat a dozen boxes of old pulp magazines from the ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s – magazines with names like Spicy Mystery Stories, Mammoth Adventures, Weird Tales, Horror Stories, Detective Fiction Weekly, The Black Mask, Breezy Stories. The covers of these magazines were filled with colorful illustrations of scantily clad, voluptuous women who were either being tortured by freak-headed martians or being tied up by cloak-wearing apes with exposed skulls. There were busty naked femmes in the background as well, hanging by a noose or being pronged and fondled by cross-eyed goblins with a splayed spears. Stromre pulled out a handful of the magazines and started devouring them.
“Jesus, these are incredible.”
“If you like those,” Janet said directing him to a tubular cardboard container that was nearly seven foot in length, “Then look at this!” And she started pulling out and unrolling gigantic posters from inside - 4’x 6’ poster advertisements from Europe. They reminded Stromre of the poster the father from the movie the Bicycle Thief pasted and slabbed to the sides of walls and buildings throughout the downtown streets of Rome. Each poster contained illustrations of a beautiful woman - in some posters she was sipping wine, or trying on hats, showing off her long luscious legs and high heel shoes. Most of them were dated from the 1920’s and had various artists’ signatures in a bottom corner.
“That’s my grandmother,” Janet informed Stromre, folding one poster after another. The faces were all drawn a bit different from each other, different hair colors, different highlights, different shadows, but the bodies were all the same. She had one of the most beautiful bodies Stromre had ever seen.
“Before she was a dancer she had been an artist’s model in France,” Janet explained.
Stromre was floored, there was a look of disbelief in his eyes as he whispered the word “Zheta,” just barely audibly.
Zheta? Janet wondered.
Zheta was her grandmother’s name, but she hadn’t told that to Stromre—even during all of that yapping she had done about her family, she didn’t remember actually calling her anything other than grandma. So how did he known my grandmother’s name? Janet wondered.
“Hildie’s here!” Chrissy suddenly called from upstairs. “She wants to talk to you.”
Hildie was one of the regulars at Shorty's. She was a middle-aged Hispanic woman who read tarot cards and conducted séances. She came in every day to browse the Astrology section and to convince Janet that she should try to contact her dead grandparents. Hilde had a strong feeling about them, she told Janet. “A very strong feeling about them – they have a strong presence in this store,” she explained. Hilde had known Janet's grandparent's for years and missed them a great deal, they had been her two best friends.
Without exchanging 'Hello's”, Hildie started in. “I had this very clear vision last night,” she told Janet. “It was your grandfather. He returned to this building and was looking for something—something belonging to your grandmother—something very important. I do not know what it could be—but he’s searching for it in this building—I am very sure of this. This vision was very vivid,” she explained and her eyes widened as they always did when she was convinced that something ‘otherwordly’ was going on. “And then this morning,” she continued, “on my way over here I see Jorge...”
Jorge was an elderly man who rode his bicycle up and down the alley at nights collecting aluminum cans.
“…and Jorge tells me that he heard strange noises coming from your building last night—screams and whoops and rattling chains.”
“Rattling chains, Okay, c’mon, what are trying to do? Scare Chrissy?” Janet interrupted.
And right on cue Stromre ascended the stairs from the basement. Hildie nearly leapt half a foot in startled terror, which brought an embarrassed shrug from Stromre.
“Hello,” he said as easy as a big league outfielder grabbing a lazy pop fly.
Hilda did her best to compose herself, “I don’t think we’ve met,” she stared cautiously.
“My name’s Stromre,” he said, with the casualness of an old friend. “I’m helping fix the place up.”
“He’s living with us,” Chrissy chimed in.
Hildie's eyes grew larger, then darted from Janet's face to Chirssy’s face and then back to Janet's. It was obvious that the gears of her meddlesome little mind were working overtime. “Well... that's nice,” she said, as polite as a bank teller who is being robbed would be.
“He just came here last night,” Chrissy added, as Janet just knew she would—her penchant for opening up socially awkward situations wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Just last night,” Hilde gasped, looking at Janet, then back to Stroemre, then again to Janet, and all in the matter of two and a half seconds. It was obvious that she had, someway in her head, connected her dream (plus what Jorge had told her) to Stroemre’s arrival. A look of utter petrification froze her face. Stroemre smiled as if he was watching a familiar cartoon on TV. Janet though, strangely enough, had an unexpected feeling, it was as though a heavy weight had been lifted from her shoulders and it made her very happy somehow—despite whatever ghostly thoughts may have been running around in Hildie’s mind.
“I’m gonna get some tools out of my trunk,” Stroemre said then headed for the door.
Before the door closed behind him Hilde turned to Janet and exclaimed, “That…that’s your gramps!”
“Oh my God, Hilde! Gramps is dead.”
“It’s your gramps reincarnated,” Hilde insisted.
“How can that be Gramps reincarnated! He only died in 1991. If he was reincarnated that would make Stromre just 5 years old.”
“Maybe your grandfather’s spirit somehow invaded Stroemr’s body,” Chrissy chimed in. “Remember how he told your grandmother that he would come back here as a ghost – and I mean, he was a pretty pushy little guy, you know.”
“You hardly even knew my gramps, Chrissy. Besides, if he was my gramps, then why did he have sex with me? My grandfather wouldn’t do that!”
“WHAT!?!” Hilde yelped out. She was beside her self in shock, looking as if she was about to have a heart attack. “You had sex with this man who you just met.”
“Oh, don’t’ act like such a Puritan,” Janet admonished Hilde—after all Hilde had been a streetwalker before she had been miraculously given the gift of clairvoyance.
“Maybe sometimes he’s your granddad, and other times he’s the real Stroemre,” Chrissy calculated, “You know, like there’s a power struggle going on inside his body and his soul.”
“Chrissy, you have been reading way too much Anne Rice.”
“No, that’s a definite possibility,” Hilde claimed. “I’ve seen it before. But more likely, what is really going on is that the social mores from our material world just don't matter in the spiritual world. Ghosts can sleep with whoever they want, no matter if they are related even!"
Janet had had about enough. “You two are ridiculous. I hate to disappoint you but I don’t believe in any of that voodoo hooey about spirits from beyond the grave.”
“Well how do you explain Hilde’s dreams then?” Chrissy asked. “Her dreams are never wrong.”
Of course Janet could not confirm or deny that, even though more than one person had testified to the fact that Hilde’s prophetic visions were accurate. It was strange however that Hilde said her gramps was looking for something that belonged to her grandmother, Zheta—I mean, if I was apt to believe in that sort of nonsense, Janet reasoned to herself, that would explain how Stromre had known my grandmother’s name...
Janet looked at Hilde and Chrissy, they each wore expressions as if they expected Janet was on the verge of having the same obvious revelation they had both had.
But of course I didn’t believe in that kind of stuff, Janet reassured herself.
Just then Stroemre walked back into the store and the three women become quiet. He had a small frayed, green and white duffel bag with him, which he emptied out on a reading table up front. They all watched as he began going through the contents. The bag contained personal belongings: a tooth brush with flattened bristles, a pair of sandals, a couple of white t-shirts, a couple of paperbacks, some letters wrapped up with a rubber band, a couple of legal pads full of scribbles, and a pair of wool socks.
“Here they are,” he said under his breath as he pulled out a pair of work gloves. “I want to get right to work,” and he stuffed everything back into his bag then excused himself as he returned to the basement.
When he descended the staircase, Hilde quipped, “He certainly seems to know his way around here pretty good for a guy who’s never stepped foot in here before last night.”
Hilde and Chrissy continued to gossip. Stromre began working on the water heater downstairs. Janet was torn. Should I go help him or should I continue to be subjected to more of the Snoop Sister's chit chat?
Two hours later Hildie took her leave which allowed Janet the opportunity to explain to Chrissy that all this voodoo was just Hilde’s wild imagination, “I mean you really shouldn’t mention any of this nonsense to Stromre because it might make him think we are weird.” Janet explained. But Chrissy didn’t seem convinced and Janet felt fairly certain that Janet would say something embarrassing to Stroemre about it sooner or later.