bLACK lOAFERS*

Ignacio had bad teeth and a periwinkle birthmark on his right cheek just below his eye. He chewed and spat and spat and chewed with little regard for proper manners or decorum. His father, a Moyle with arthritic fingers, wore serge linen, silk shirts and slip-on’s and had whiskey breath, yellow teeth and kenotic tremors, which he staved off with ointments, soaves and black tea. His mother, a seamstress with beehive hair and macaw eyes, wore taffeta dresses and leatherette pumps, red and black, sometimes blue when she was in a hurry. They all died in a house fire, Ignacio’s father dressed in a gabardine suit, black loafers and a red tie, his mother in silk stockings, a nightdress, slippers, fuchsia with tassels and a bow, and a hornet’s nest hairdo.