When she looked back to the window, she saw the patrol car, cruising slowly, watchfully, along, and she turned away from Weird Trappings, her boots loud and deliberate on the deserted street.

Stiff Kitten practiced, and when rent couldn’t be paid, lived, in the empty space above Storkland. A sort of baby’s K-Mart, Storkland sold everything from disposable diapers to cribs that rocked themselves, safety pins by the gross and rolls of pink and blue wallpaper. The cloying smell of talcum powder sifted up from below through the old floorboards, and their lease strictly forbade rehearsal before five thirty p.m. every day except Sundays, but it was roomy and just barely within their budget.

This late, the store was locked tight, salespeople closing out their registers, an old woman pushing her dust mop from aisle to aisle. Outside, the sidewalk was washed in the glow of the huge neon stork perched over the doors, a neon bundle of joy hanging from its beak.

Daria walked quickly across the employees’ parking lot, past the two or three cars still waiting patiently for their drivers, tried hard not to notice the “Equal Rights for Unborn Women” and “Pro-Family, Pro-Life” bumper stickers on the rear windshield of a banged-up Chevy Nova. She squeezed herself into the narrow space between masonry and the sagging chain-link fence that separated the building from a Texaco station, barely room enough to breathe, much less walk. Back here, the streetlights and shine from passing cars couldn’t reach, and already the night was pooled like runny tar. But the door was braced open, half a brick wedged there, and she was glad that at least she wouldn’t have to stand around in the cold and the shadows digging in the knapsack for her keys.