“May I sit a minute?” Laughing, I sat. “It’s been psychic deliveries all day. The weight, it wears on a person.” I felt either sick or euphoric, both. Up this close, she looked so like my dad. I gouged my thumbnail into my forefinger to prevent simply reaching out her way.

Cold, she said, “How’d you do that? What else you got up your … wherever you keep such bullhockey? Give me my full eighty cent worth now. And where’d your stripedy tie go? And why’d you bribe that boy, make him leave my stuff with you?”

“Shift-change. Mother named Sutie. I see no father, but one loving, complicated sibling….”

By now, with stately effort and a skillful use of cane as fireman’s pole, Aunt Naomi had lowered herself into a brown wing chair opposite my couch.

“Oh, I get it. You with the Publishers Clearinghouse, right. Well, it’s about time, many Ebonys as I’ve toted up those stairs.—A suit jacket on a bagboy? I don’t think so.”

We sat awhile. Till I sensed how long she had been knowing. “You Clyde’s so-called son, right? The finishing-school brat grown up and already run to seed. Think you’re real slick, finally getting in here like this.”

“One hundred percent a happy accident. Thanks to the long arm of our Clyde. The man’s still got such powers! I was looking for the Mendelsons at 306 or 316. Just happened to read your name, the rest fell into place. I call it fated.”

“Call it trespassing.” I saw her staring at a black rotary phone twelve long feet across the room. Her hands closed tighter round that latent cudgel, her oak cane. Next door, a TV soap opera gossiped about itself.

“I don’t want your purse. Instead, ma’am, I’ll let you be psychic. Any tips or questions, now we’re face to face? I still love your brother more than anybody ever, my wife included. He might’ve acted unfair, but you should know what he did with all that energy. He saved my soul so many times over. His great joy, ours really, was replacing Bibles stolen from motels.”

“Believe I’m gonna to weep here. He sold us way downriver. No sane person’s likely to forgive that, sonny.”

We just kept looking at each other. I felt avid for the simple feeding sight of her. Naomi Delman’s top lip curled up off her very large if well-formed teeth, a smiling snarl too eloquent to ever try outarguing. “Well,” I said and stood. “Thank you. You’re still an extremely handsome woman, and mighty self-possessed. You sure remind me of your mother. And of him, though he got none of your looks, poor thing.”

The way Naomi glowered, I expected her to throw something.

“You got his voice,” she said, almost grudging.

“Beg pardon?”

“Maybe you just picked it up, from hearing him first thing of anybody. But the swing of it. That’s Clyde okay.”