would kill her. Instead, I found her curled up in a salad bowl, her head resting on a slice of tomato.”
“So you called her Salad Bowl.”
“Yes. What about you? Did you have a dog?”
After a moment’s hesitation, Bobby told her the story of his two-dimensional dog. When he’d finished, she looked at him, her eyes scrunched, her lips twisted in a half-smile. “You had a paper dog named Elvis?”
“It was really cool for a while.”
“That doesn’t strike you as odd?”
He grinned as he shook his head. “Two words. One concept. Salad Bowl.”
“Ha. But at least my dog was real.”
“Elvis was real to me.” Bobby picked up his fork and began to eat.
An old man on a skateboard turned the corner and propelled himself toward them.
Bobby smiled in recognition. Ratman Caruthers was a fixture in San Pedro and someone who was a lot more than he seemed to be. On the surface he looked like any other Los Angeles homeless man, the only difference his mode of transportation. Not too many seventy-year-olds had the agility or know-how to operate a street board. But necessity was the engine of invention. The old man needed a way to get around, and at the age of forty he’d learned how to longboard down the suicidal hills of Rancho Palos Verdes. He’d been using this particularly California mode of transportation since 1972. But his board was far from normal. The slick wheels had been replaced by thick-tread, off-road tires meant for remote control jeeps, which were mounted on extra-wide trucks for stability and better control.
Ratman pulled to a stop and popped his board upright. He leaned it against the doorjamb and headed into the restaurant. Had Sid Vicious survived to his dotage, he might have looked like Ratman: black Converse shoes, skintight jeans across thin thighs, a black T-shirt, with a ripped leather jacket completing the look.
A few moments later, Ratman came back out with coffee in a Styrofoam cup and a croissant. He took a sip of the former and held the latter near the opening of his jacket. A tiny white head poked free, sniffed a bit, and was followed by the rest of the rat’s body. Ratman ripped off a chunk of the croissant and fed it to the rat that now sat atop his shoulder. He shoved the rest of the croissant in his jacket pocket, lowered his board, then cruised downhill, sipping his coffee.
“Do you know him?” Bobby pointed at the man’s departing form.
“Mr. Caruthers? They say he used to be a science teacher at the high school.”
“He’s gotta be seventy. That would put him there when your dad was a student.”
“I never thought about that.”
The waitress brought Laurie’s coffee and refilled his. Laurie took her time pouring an inch of cream and mixing it with three bags of sugar. She tested it, then added another bag. Bobby suppressed a shudder. He liked his black.
“What happened to him?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Kids talk, you know. Half of the things, heck, most of the things we talked about in high school were exaggerations, gossip and lies. When I think about some of the things we cared about, I cringe.”
“What’d they say?”
“Stupid kid things.” She took a sip of her coffee, grimaced and added another bag of sugar. When she finished she tasted the now milky liquid, grinned, and took another sip. “They said he went crazy. His wife died and he took off.”
“Not so crazy. Lots of people leave when stuff like that happens.” Bobby thought of himself and his actions after Sister Agnes died. Without her, there’d been no reason to stay.
“Oh, he didn’t leave. He only traveled ten blocks. He went to the halfway house.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You know how people talk about UFOs. Or crop circles. Or even Stonehenge? We have our own place like that here.”
“The halfway house?”
“For some reason after people die, their loved ones end up there.”
“I thought the place was for ex-cons and druggies,” he said.
“It