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out."
        "Did you get to go?" Evvie asks Bella worriedly.
        "Yeah, but I was in such a rush I got my support hose all twisted."
        All our eyes are now facing the bar entrance as a group of tough-looking older guys pile out. They say their macho good-byes, playfully punching one another as they head for their cars.
        "Quick," Ida says, smacking Evvie on the back. "Which one is Siciliano?"
        "I can't tell yet," she says.
        "That's what I keep telling you, they all look alike in the dark," Ida says maliciously.
        "Don't look for the guy," I say. "Just watch his car."
        "That's so smart," says Bella admiringly, as she gets her twisted hose straightened out.
        Moments later Elio Siciliano climbs into his big black Chrysler. I try to get a good look at him, but all I see is a large, bulky guy with a semibald head of gray hair and bowed legs.
        He starts up his motor, and I start mine.
        The girls in the back lean over the front seats to stare out the windshield. They are fairly panting with excitement.
        "Uh-oh," I say.
        "What?" a chorus of four voices yelps.
        "What if he's a fast driver and I can't keep up with him?" I've been doubting the sanity of this whole endeavor all evening.
        "Never mind that," says Bella. "What if he catches us and has a machine gun?"
        Luckily, Mr. Siciliano drives at a moderate speed. Eight blocks later he arrives at a modest light gray stucco cottage. I check the address. It's his. After he parks in his garage, I head for home. The stakeout is over.
    Operation Elio is a bust.
        So that's it. We wasted a whole evening and I have nothing to show for it but a car littered with garbage.
        We arrive back at Lanai Gardens around midnight. The girls, still on a high, are already rewriting history, chatting about what they'll report around the pool tomorrow. Not me. I just want to crawl into bed with a pillow over my head and think about the possibility of moving to Alaska.

    10

    Attack of the Flying Aunts

    I am awakened at four a.m. My pillow is damp; my sheets are in a tangle. I can't believe it. It's the Flying Aunts dream again.
        Why can't I have one of those easy ones, like the losing-your-car-keys dream or the forgettingwhere-you-live dream?
        I hate this one. It's my mother and her three sisters, harpies, zooming kamikaze-like down at my poor father, screeching at him while he's strapped in an electric chair at the kitchen table. Like always, he's clutching the New York Post in one hand. But in his other hand? I always have to wait and see.
        Evvie and I are also in this dream. As usual, I'm a shy eight and she's an adorable six. Tonight she tosses her curly red hair about and hits me with a giant jar of Gerber's baby spinach. Believe me, she's hit me with worse. A seltzer bottle last time. Fakackta dream. Oy. And her singing! Jack and Jill went up the hill and Jack fell down . . . The Flying Aunts love it. They kvell how she's better than Judy Garland. And cuter, too. They never kvell over me.
        Then, just before the screeching aunts can put the plug in the socket and electrocute Dad, he throws me the thing he clutches in his other hand. It's always a book. It's always a different book. Tonight it is an illustrated Cinderella. "Read," he says. "Read!"
        The dream always ends with my mother's complaint: "He never remembers to take out the garbage."
        I get up, make coffee, and ask myself, so what was that about, my childhood? Why now? Hey, that was sixty-seven years ago and now it's relevant? Give me a break. I need this like I need another hole in a bagel.
        Mom was always talkative. And oh, so busy, and so was Evvie. Two curly redheads in perpetual motion, unlike the plain, straight-brown-haired, quiet, boring ones.
        They went to the beauty parlor together and to Klein's department store on Union Square for every