Free The Girl Next Door by Brad Parks Page A

Summit Avenue, as any good Roth fan knows. I spoke to a lady who lives there now. She was so nice. She let me look around the house and everything. I’m endeavoring to better understand his milieu: see the things he saw, learn about his influences, get some real-world Newark experience before cloistering myself in academia.”
    “Yeah, well, speaking of real-world Newark experience … We, uhh … We’ve been assigned to work on a story about a bear.”
    “Bears are highly symbolic in Eastern European literature,” Lunky lectured.
    “Yes, I’m sure they are. But right now there’s a bear—not a figurative bear, an actual bear—wandering around Newark. Which is sort of unusual because Newark is, you know, kind of urban.”
    “Ah yes, indeed,” Lunky said philosophically, considering this information. “I guess I can see how that would be newsworthy—in a certain voyeuristic sense.”
    I smiled with what I hoped was insincerity. “Yes, the philistines get quite a charge out of this sort of thing.”
    Missing my attempt at irony, he said, “Okay. So where is it?”
    “Well, that’s part of the challenge.”
    “I see. How do you suggest we go about finding it?”
    “It’s a bear in Newark, New Jersey,” I said. “We head down South Orange Avenue and listen for the sound of screaming.”
    “Oh,” he said, then after a thoughtful pause asked, “Where’s South Orange Avenue?”
    *   *   *
    Realizing Lunky was going to need a little more mentoring than the average intern, I got him armed with a notepad and a pen—things he might have forgotten, if left to his own devices—and walked him out to the parking garage. We got into our respective cars, and I gave him instructions to stick to my bumper like the elbow patches to his professors’ tweed jackets. We wound our way out of downtown toward the Vailsburg section of Newark and what I hoped was a rendezvous with something dark and furry.
    Vailsburg is a small chunk of western Newark that, a century ago, was actually considered the countryside. These days, approximately 87 percent of its surface area is covered by manmade substances—primarily concrete, asphalt, and discarded chewing gum. It is not easily confused with grizzly country.
    As I trolled down South Orange Avenue with my window down, I kept my eyes and ears peeled for something that would suggest the regular order of things was askew. Not long after passing over the Garden State Parkway, I found what I was looking for: a teenaged kid—who appeared to be a member of the Junior Gangbangers League—had shimmied up a light stanchion and was clinging to it like he planned to still be there the next time the census came around.
    I hand-signaled to Lunky to pull over, and soon we were on foot, approaching the kid. He was whip thin with a big head of braids, and his clothing choices suggested he frequently consulted the league’s fashion manual, “31 Ways to Dress Like a Blood,” which advocated a lot of red accessorizing—red bandana, red shoes, red hat, and so on.
    “Excuse me,” I said, “you haven’t seen a bear by any chance, have you?”
    He looked at me like he couldn’t understand how white people managed to do so well on the SAT.
    “You think I’m up here ’cause I like the view ?”
    “Which way did it go?”
    He pointed down a narrow side street with a shaky finger.
    “The one day I come down here without my piece and look what happens,” he said, shaking his head.
    I looked in the direction he pointed. “I don’t see anything. I’m guessing it’s probably safe to come down now.”
    “Helllll no!”
    I grinned. Here was a kid who probably stood out on this busy street corner all day long and half the night. In a state where there are roughly 150 pedestrian fatalities a year—and exactly zero people killed by bears—a fast-moving Chevy was, statistically speaking, a far greater threat to life and limb. But this youngster didn’t look like he wanted to engage in