Page 4 of Cold, Cold Bones

“People over eighty.”

“What about—”

“Let it go.”

Katy’s altered tone triggered a warning. But we’d been joking. Hadn’t we?

I was about to change the subject, when Katy’s eyes narrowed in a way I didn’t like.

“I’ve been in the army for eight years, Mom. I’ve been to war. I’ve seen people with their limbs blown off, their heads shattered, their organs spread around them as they bled out. I’ve seen little kids die. The last thing I believe in is romance.”

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” I said, unsure how I had. But I think you’re getting the picture. My daughter came home touchy and I was treading softly.

Katy leaned back and ran both hands down her face. “Sorry. I’m just tired from this friggin’ move.”

“It’s amazing how much a small truck can hold,” I said lightly.

Katy raised a palm toward me. Despite the greasy yellow coating, I high-fived it.

“Let’s wrap this bastard up,” she said.

“Let’s do,” I agreed.

We bunched our wrappers and stuffed them into the bag, and were heading down the hall when Katy asked,

“Have you ever met one?”

I was lost. “One what?”

“A cold Sicilian.”

I could think of no response.

“I’ve dated two,” she said. “Each was hotter than a steak on a griddle.”

I definitely didn’t follow up on that.

The remaining boxes and household items took more than three hours. One oversized chair almost didn’t make the cut. With a lot of cursing and maneuvering, and a little muscle from a sketchy-looking guy passing by on the sidewalk, we finally managed to force the thing through the door.

Since we looked and smelled like escapees from some subterranean chamber, dining out wasn’t an option. Having no idea of the location of her soap and towels, Katy accepted my invitation to clean up and eat dinner at my home, called “the annex,” but insisted on sleeping in her new digs.

Remembering my first apartment with its mattress on the floor and Salvation Army Papa-san chair, I understood and didn’t try to dissuade her. She’d hang back to lock up and follow in her own car.

Long before the era of zip codes, the fine citizens of Charlotte loved to distinguish the sectors making up their town. Each area was endowed with a name and set of stories. Plaza-Midwood. Tryon Hills. Eastover. Dilworth. Cherry. Perhaps this practice wasn’t always for the purest of reasons. Nevertheless, old ways die hard. As the city grew and new developments appeared or old areas gentrified, the new neighborhoods were also tagged with catchy, realtor-friendly labels. NoDa. South End. Piper Glen. Ballantyne.

Katy’s house was in Elizabeth, an older section composed of a hodgepodge of bungalows trimmed with expansive front porches and interspersed with enormous brick mansions, and high-priced condos resulting from the demolition of the quaint but outdated. Mature pines, willow oaks, and magnolias shade the here-and-there charmingly root-buckled sidewalks.

But Elizabeth isn’t strictly residential. The hood’s main drag ishome to the Visulite, the city’s first movie theater, recently converted to a live-music venue. Its streets host a suitably eclectic collection of restaurants, bars, boutiques, and food trucks frequented by the well-to-do and the barely doing.

No description of Elizabeth appears without the wordtrendyorhip. It’s that combo of soccer practice and carpool by day/partying and merrymaking by night—plus a location just a bump east of uptown—that accounts for the area’s appeal to young professionals.

Point of information. Some Charlotteans say uptown, others prefer downtown. Positions on the issue are unshakable and have nothing to do with geography.

I live in Myers Park, another bump out from the city center. Its shaded streets boast a mix of old Georgians and Colonials elbow-to-earlobe with new Italianate, Neo-classical, and brutalist monstrosities resulting from the replacement of knockdowns on undersized lots. Meticulously manicured lawns all around.

Myers Park has a price point only slightly higher than Elizabeth, but its residents tend to lean conservative. More lawyers and bankers, fewer artists and poets.

The drive took all of ten minutes. It was dark by the time I pulled onto the circle drive at Sharon Hall.