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Gertrude’s wispy-thin hair is shock white. Although she’s pushing a hundred, she doesn’t look a day older than eighty. Introducing herself by her nickname, “Trudy,” she smiles, showing her broken teeth—some decaying and in need of extraction.  Gertrude confesses she was never called Gertie because kids would have picked on her and called her Dirty Gertie, and you know what that means—Dirty Gertie is a bad girl, easy, a slut. 

Patricia Vaccarino writes about the legendary Alicat Bookshop in Yonkers, New York.