Halloween Week: Trick, Not Treat

Halloween certainly is a lot of people's favorite holiday -- I just saw a Mass Transit demonstration in San Francisco, thousands of people in costumes riding through the hills dusk-lit streets, gleefully stopping traffic as definitely as pyroclastic flow from a volcano. I saw devils, I saw angels, I saw women as men and men as women. I said hi to a banana, who said hi back. I saw tandem bikes, Victorian velicopedes, devices that seated four, five, and six people that were to bicycles what a catapult is to throwing a stone by hand. Everyone crossed under the Stockton Street tunnel, in a scene out of Fellini, out of Kaufman, out of dreams. There is a portion of everyone's heaven reserved for a stream of gaudy happy bicycle riders, encouraging you to come join and ride for a while.

Trick, Not Treat is not about one of the people who love Halloween. It's about a vicious little snot, one of those people who jumps from stealing candy bars to robbing liquor stores. This is before the jump, about coincidence -- or maybe fate -- trying to set him straight.