Read The Baby Blue Rip-Off for Free Online Page B

the floor. Something white.
    A Styrofoam plate.
    Mrs. Jonsen’s supper.

8
    My house trailer sits way back from the street in the middle of a big green lawn. On a dark night you can’t even see the trailer—that is, assuming the streetlight directly in front of my place is not shining, and it usually isn’t. One of my neighbors (the guy in the split-level) has his ten-year-old son shoot out the streetlight with a beebee gun so that, come nightfall, my trailer will fall into what the neighborhood thinks is a well-deserved obscurity.
    This was one of those nights. The streetlight wasn’t going, and as I pulled up to the curb, just getting back from the hospital, it was so dark that I thought for a moment somebody had hauled my trailer away.
    I love my trailer.
    It is very old—one of the oldest existing house trailers anywhere—a long, silver, faintly phallic module, plopped down in the center of a big luxurious green lawn like something laid by a dog from outer space. On one side of me is that split-level I told you about; on the other is a two-story with very nice gothic lines—and well kept up, too, I might add. You might wonder what a house trailer is doing on that big luxurious green lawn between those two high-class dwellings. I already explained that East Hill is a study in contrast, but my trailer next to the homes that bookend it makes the rest of East Hill seem normal.
    The story is this. Several years ago there was a big hole where my big lawn now resides. That hole was a neighborhood eyesore, a dump of sorts, filled with weeds and dead trees and debris, and the city took steps to do something about it. They purchased the hole and sold it to a firm who used it as an experimental landfill project. The hole was then filled with garbage, the garbage having been dunked, like a doughnut, in various chemicals, and some dirt was put over that. Nobody wanted to live on the former hole. Nobody wanted to walk on it, let alone build on it, for fear of sinking into the garbage. Which is why I was able to rent the former hole, cheap, and put my trailer on it.
    Considering the entertainment value, I don’t see what the neighbors are complaining about, really. Many of them spend their spare time watching me and my trailer, perhaps in the hope they’ll see us go sinking down into the hole like the
Titanic.
    Anyway, the streetlight was out, most probably due to my neighbor’s little sharpshooter. I climbed out of the van, walked up toward the battered hull I call home, began to unlock the door, and somebody put an arm around my throat.
    I was not expecting that.
    I was not expecting to be attacked a second time in just a few hours. The bastards could have had the decency to wait till tomorrow, at least. But decency they were short of.
    The guy with his arm around my throat told me to come around behind the trailer with him, where we couldn’t be seen from the street. I did that.
    There were more people than just the one. So far they had stayed behind me, but I heard them walking, breathing, felt them there. Maybe just two of them this time. But more than one.
    Once in back of the trailer, I was given a forearm across my shoulder blades that sent me flopping on the ground like aprofessional wrestler faking a fall. If he’d hit me much harder, I just might’ve made my neighbors happy and gone sinking down to garbage level.
    Somebody stepped on the back of my neck. I ate dirt for a while. It didn’t taste good.
    “Mallory,” a voice said.
    It was a harsh, whispering voice; I didn’t recognize it, exactly, but felt sure it was one of those I’d heard at Mrs. Jonsen’s.
    “We wanted you to know something,” the voice went on. “We wanted you to know we know you. We know who you are and where you are, and we don’t want to see you again.”
    I lifted my face a shade—not far, considering the foot was still on the back of my neck. I said, “Can I say something?” My voice was rather muffled, since I had a mouthful