Kalika Chilson clapped both hands to the fist in her hair, making plaintive whines. Short, thin, and frail, with her face all pinched in from age and chronic abuse of alcohol or drugs or something just as debilitating, she looked like a child’s stuffed monkey with its head ripped open, the stuffing material forming the gray nest of springy hair that exploded from her scalp. She wore only a faded blue tee shirt that hung almost low enough to cover her bikini-cut pale green panties and didn’t conceal the fact that she wore no bra over her sagging breasts.