“Speakers,” I said. I had carried a cheap set of stereo speakers down the fire escape in a laundry bag and passed it to Tess from my perch on the first rung.

“Hope they work,” she whispered.

“Careful with those. Any signs?”

“I would say so, Sar-duh,” she replied.

“Kinda hard to say anything with a busted face– Get those in the house and I’ll be down with the rest in a minute.”

“What’s the magic word?”

“Rightfuckinnow,” I said as I began to climb back up the fire escape.

“The Moonlight Moving Company” often visited our building. It was usually engaged around the tenth of the month, which was the very last day you could pay or get eighty-sixed. Whenever we saw signs that the Roebeckes had been around on the eleventh, we figured someone had skipped, and that there might be something to gain from it.

When I had to look up “slattern” in the dictionary at school, Mrs. Roebecker instantly came to mind. She was married to an alcoholic handyman named Carl, whose neck was so coated with perma-dirt that it couldn’t support an atom more, and, according to a legend I more than half believe, later on came within a hair of being murdered by Mom at the Peetleweezer Tavern.

There was no such thing as a live-in manager of our building, or even a person you could call a landlord. A title company uptown owned it and most of the other tenements at the foot of T-Hill. You had to take your rent to the firm in person, and if there was a problem with, say, the plumbing or whatever, you had to call them to get a work order; didn’t need to live there long to understand the pointlessness of that activity.

What we got instead of professional plumbers or electricians were the Roebeckers, who lived in the West Park Section 8 housing development on T-Hill (the Rockcandyland of the poor). She was a hard worker, though a bit of a fellow thief, who cleaned vacant units, and when he wasn’t sober, he was efficient at maintaining the low standard of the building. His hands shook too much otherwise. Carl never had to worry about people hovering over him when he worked; he smelled so originally bad that there was nothing to compare it to–maybe like some kind of spicy food gone over, intermixed with stale beer, bad teeth, snot and unwiped ass. I doubt that anything else in the universe has, does or will reek the way Carl Roebecker did.

When we got home from school on the eleventh Tess or I went around to check for padlocks. If you didn’t pay by the fifth, you got the notice taped to your door on the sixth, and if still in arrears after the tenth, that’s when the padlock happened. All the doors were fitted for such an event–except ours because I’d pulled the rings out of spite. It was the next eleventh after her tenth birthday, May 1972, that Tess found a padlocked door with an eviction writ taped to it on the third floor; three doors had gotten notices on the sixth that month, just one got padlocked. Jesus H. Christ, you had to be awfully hard up not to make third floor rent. Third floor rooms shared a bath at the end of the hall and rented for maybe thirty-five or forty bucks a month. Carl must have had enough booze in his ichor to set the lock. Sometime soon, that afternoon, or the next morning at the latest, Mrs. Roebecker would be along to clean out the room in more than one sense.

The fire escape was slapped on due to city law. It ran up the side of the house sheltered by a large maple tree, and would have been perfect for burglars if it wasn’t the sort of place that even criminals felt pity for or lived in. It was the part of the day when people were either at work like Mom, or at the welfare or whatever. Anyway, although it was impossible to prevent detection if someone looked out a window or happened to come around the side, I really didn’t care about the risk, as long as I was the only one on the hook.

Moonlight Movers usually left stuff behind. Especially those who were one step ahead of the Law or child support duns. Naturally, they left shit behind for the most part–but sometimes there’d be useful items. Nearly all the long term residents owed a great deal of their furniture and lamps to Moonlight Movers. This guy had abandoned a cheap Montgomery Ward Stereo system. After Tess had discovered the padlock, I went up and peeked through the open window. Carl Roebecker was hardly Elliot Ness when it came to sealing a room. I climbed down and told Tess about the stereo and to fetch both laundry bags from our room. I looked around for signs of Mrs. Roebecker and found none.

Tess returned. “Had to dump some crusty towels outta yours.”

“And you’ll be picking them up, molecule,” I said. ”Gotta make two trips.”

Tess assumed her post. She could whistle like a steamed soul pressed through a crack in hell; if she sounded, it meant I’d have to double hurry.

There was other stuff in the room I could have boosted. Scattered tools, a cheap looking cowboy guitar with no strings or knobs, a large flashlight that didn’t look too beat and a new coffee pot, but other than the stereo and sixty cents I pocketed off an end table, I left the rest for Mrs. Roebecker. She never caught us, but I suspected that she somehow knew, and that it was all right as long as we didn’t take everything.

Halfway back down from my second trip, Tess whistled. I hustled, at any instant expecting to hear Mrs. Roebecker’s estrogen free voice. I jumped from the second rung, dropped four feet while doing my best to protect the turntable and tuner from slipping out of my grasp. Lucky for Tess I landed just fine. She was smiling.

“Sorry. False alarm.”

“Someday you’re gonna false alarm yourself into a coffin.”

“Har dee har har.”

Tess could “har dee har har” and “Sar-duh” with confidence. Despite my constant threats, not once during childhood did I ever strike her. I know how odd that sounds; older siblings have used their kid sisters and brothers as punching bags since the invention of family, and I had an especially bad temper. It’s not that Tess didn’t get to my last nerve–she did and often–but whenever I felt my anger rise to critical mass something in her eyes forgave me. I’d weaken and feel sorrowful and ashamed–and the Endless Now would take away the rest of my emotions. It was a hell of a defense mechanism.