The process initially feels like a success, until I am made aware that my dream will soon end, and the image will no longer make much sense to me. At that moment I become aware that this is a dream I’ve had time and time again. So I try to save the information for my waking self, but to no avail. I wake up each time with the word or picture always gone, but always teasingly close to being identifiable.
In a darker and rarer manifestation, I struggle to see a safe place to land a plane, peering out of a cockpit into a kaleidoscope of colors, my hands gripping the controls as the ground suddenly materializes much too quickly in front of me.
I always wake with a start before the crash occurs.
In the worst variation, I hopelessly peer into a deep jungle of brown and yellow and orange looking for an army of well-camouflaged killers that I know are out there, the fiends naturally decked out in a uniform I can’t quite see. In this version there is a constant level of frustration, as I know that my colorblindness is what places me in peril. I know my assassins are visible and therefore avoidable, but sadly not by me.
Again I wake, at the exact moment before I spot them, seconds before they kill me.
This dream is doubly unsettling because it cunningly utilizes a secondary source of fear.
When I was very young, I may have watched a film on television. It was in black and white. It was a jungle scene, where a man waits to die. I don’t remember why, but his killers are in the trees bearing down on him. He can’t run away for some reason. He might be wounded or he might have used all his bullets. I suspect he wasn’t a particularly good man, some sort of immoral white hunter, and his death may well be a richly deserved one. I don’t remember exactly what pursues him. But he waits and his death is inevitable and the film ends there. If I remember correctly the last shot is of something moving in the trees above him, as he sits and waits for his turn to die.
And here’s the problem with this memory: I have no earthly idea if this is another dream or a real film I saw. I don’t recall the title, or the name of the actor, or much else beyond these scant images that probably amount to five minutes of screen time, if indeed they really were images on a screen.
So in this composite of a dream I sit in a jungle waiting to die and the thing that is going to kill me is up in the trees, and I am colorblind, so naturally I can’t see it.
I don’t have this dream often, which is a good thing, because I really dislike it.
Being colorblind since I was very young has required that I often circumnavigate some variation of the following tiresome piece of conversation:
“So you’re colorblind,” someone will say.
I unfailingly answer this in the affirmative.
Then they point up to the sky or down to the grass.
“What color is that?” They ask me challengingly.
I answer blue or green for two reasons. One, I happen to know that the sky is blue and the grass is green. And two, I can see that they are blue and green. I can see blue. I can also see green. I can even see red and yellow and brown and orange. But I suspect that when these four colors bring all their various hues together and stir up the pot, the end result appears a lot more muddled in my eyes than most. But this is purely speculation on my part as I’ve only seen through my defective eyes. What I see might be very close to what everyone else sees, or it may be very different.
My point is that there exist two kinds of patterns.
There are patterns that are there that you can’t see, and there are patterns that you see that aren’t there.
I defy you to tell me which of these two experiences is the more real.
Ten
When I returned to the house, the courtyard in back was occupied and I met the caretaker and her friend for the first time. They were sitting by the fountain drinking white wine and sharing an auto trading magazine. She asked me if I needed anything. I could think of nothing and said as much. She told me what day to put out the trash. She told me that glass bottles were not recyclable in New Orleans. She apologized for the shower pressure. The house, she hastened to explain, was a hundred fifty years old and could be cranky. Was I using the Wi-Fi? Had I found a parking place close by?
I explained about the missing chair and they both found this amusing. She told me she needed to find a new car. She couldn’t decide between a Camry and an Accord.
I wasn’t much help in that area.
The caretaker and her friend both seemed friendly, and I was encouraged to hang out and share the courtyard. But I declined and left them to their wine and car shopping.
The inside of the house was warm and airless in the late afternoon. I opened all the windows and turned on the ceiling fans. The front door opened onto a small concrete porch framed by a black railing. Four steps descended directly onto the pavement. There was an ornate metal gate behind the front door that opened and locked using the same key as the front door.
I got my guitar, locked the gate behind me, and sat down on the steps to play.
Elysian Fields was a busy boulevard with a grassy avenue running down the middle of the road. Several people walked by and we nodded to each other without saying much. A couple and their dog jogged determinedly past without looking in my direction. The sun descended slowly but the temperature stayed where it was. My fingers began to hurt. I tried playing my songs in different keys. My singing voice was lower than I thought it would be, or I was older than I thought I wanted to be. I sang much more comfortably in the lower keys, and I was grateful to have the capo to get there. I remembered my elegiacal recital of the previous morning and endeavored to play and sing faster.
I went back inside the house and got a cold Hopitoulas from the fridge and my laptop. I hunted for more songs I could play: old ones from my long time past, strummy melancholic numbers for the most part. I found an early Moody Blues song that I once knew how to play. I went back outside and played it, but it was a terrible song, or else I was terrible playing it. I sung “Maggie May” and “Reason to Believe.” One made me happy and the other made me sad. Which is weird because, when you get right down to it, they’re both essentially sad songs.
If I listened long enough to you
I’d find a way to believe that it’s all true
Knowing that you lied straight-faced, while I cried
Still I’d look to find a reason to believe
“That’s a sad song you’ve got there, Mister Tourist. How come you didn’t see me this afternoon?”
I looked up. “I’m very sorry about that.”
The woman on the bike smiled at me. She wore the same dress. She looked languid in it.
“You don’t have to be. This is where you’re living?”
I nodded. She looked up at the front of the house.
Her verdict took a while to arrive. “It’s nice and pretty,” she finally allowed.
“How did you find me?”
She laughed a little. “I didn’t. This is the way I go to get back home. I like this street. All the way down to St. Claude then I make a right.” She hesitated for no apparent reason. “Up one old narrow street then down another.”
“Is it very far to go?”
She seemed to consider this longer than was necessary. “Not really.”
“Are you fully recovered?”
She looked confused.
“From the crash.”
She smiled a little. “I’m just fine now.” Another inexplicable pause. “I’m very adaptable to circumstances.”
“I’m sorry again.”
“It wasn’t really your fault.”
“Did you replace your things?”
“No. There was no point. It was only things. You called them broken. I really should give you some of your money back.”
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
She stood with her legs on either side of her bicyc
le and gazed at me. Inside her crate were an assortment of colored beads, a shiny white dress, white high-heeled shoes, and a very blonde wig. She was wearing the same clothes she had worn the previous night. Her dress was oddly old-fashioned and looked well worn, like a mandatory uniform. I thought she looked a little sullied.
“Would you like a drink?”
“That depends. What are you offering?”
“I only have beer to drink.”
“Then a beer to drink will be just fine.” She held out her hand. “I’m Mel. It’s nice to finally meet you properly.”
I told her my name was Tom and we shook hands.
Mel propped her bicycle slowly against a trash container and I found her a kitchen chair from the house and brought it outside. We sat in silence for a while. Then she spoke.
“You’re new to this place.”
I nodded.
“So why are you new to this place?”
This seemed like a good time to tell Mel all about Logan Kind. So I did.
“He lived here before Katrina?”
“Yes. And a little bit after that.”
I told her where he lived and where he played.
“I don’t think I ever saw him.”
“Were you here before Katrina?” I asked her then.
She answered me slowly. “I’ve been here a good long time.”
“Would you have stopped and listened to him?”
She considered my question carefully. “I might have. If I thought he was interesting. I like show tunes and songs you can dance to. Would he have played anything like that?”
I thought it was doubtful and I told her so.
Mel looked at me thoughtfully.
“So you’re following his path. You’re playing on the street where he played.”
I nodded again.
“And why would you want to be doing this?” Her tone was playful.
“The long answer or the short answer?”
“Oh, the short answer, please.”
“I’m looking for him?” I said it as if it was a question.
“But you said he’s dead.”
“I know.”
“So why would you want to be doing that?”
“It’s just something that I do. I’ve done this before.”
“What do you mean?”
“I hunt for the dead.”
“I see. And how does it end for you?”
Mel had asked a very good question. I thought for a moment.
“It’s happened twice before. There were dead people both times. They were killed both times. I found out who killed them, and I found out why they died.”
It was about as eloquent as I could manage.
“What about this time?”
“This time there’s two people dead and there’s a connection between them. I don’t think anyone got killed this time. But I don’t really know why they died yet.”
“And you want to know why?”
“I do want to know why.”
“Is it your job?”
“It’s not exactly a job.”
There was a long pause. Then I spoke.
“One of the dead people was Logan Kind and he played on the street where I was playing this morning. He played there over eight years ago. He was a folksinger and a guitar player and he made one truly great recording and it was a long time ago. He drowned a few months after Katrina. The other was Stephen Park. He was a fan of Logan’s. He killed himself in a café a few days ago. I was in the café when he did it. It was the anniversary of Logan’s death when he died. It was sad. They both were sad. Stephen Park was young and he died and I do know partly why. He died because it was the same day that Logan died, and he chose to die that day, just like Logan probably chose to die that day too. But do you see that that doesn’t really explain why either of them died. Not properly. Not enough.”
Mel was kind enough to nod at that point.
Then she spoke. “He played on the corner of Burgundy and Dumaine?”
I nodded my head.
She shook hers. “That’s not much of a place to be making a living. There’s nowhere near enough eager young tourists out walking around with their lovely money in these parts.”
“I don’t think he was playing for the money.”
“So why was he playing?”
“I don’t really know,” I was forced to admit.
We lapsed into silence. I had told Mel as much as I could, but it wasn’t quite everything.
I could have told her that in my adventures in Michigan and Boulder I had followed firm convictions, that I was certain that Keith Pringle had been murdered, that I was equally positive that someone was killing homeless people in the town where I lived, in the creek waters close to where I rode my bike most days.
I could have told her this, as I could also have justly claimed to have been right on both those occasions, but telling her this would probably have led to the revelation that I was now operating with no such strong conviction. I was far less certain of anything I was currently doing.
And that revelation would have brought me to a sobering notion: that I was wasting time; that all this was for want of anything better to do; that I was simply bored. These were grim possibilities for two reasons. The first was that I was probably wasting my time. The second was that I was probably not going to find much of anything.
“Where is it you work?” I asked her then.
“You can usually find me by the Square.”
I had a follow-up question ready. “And what is it you do?”
There was a hesitation before she answered. “I create enchantment. Why don’t you stop by tomorrow and see for yourself?” At that she stood up and handed me the glass. It was still half full. “Too much strong beer for me. I do thank you for this, Tom.”
I watched her as she rode her bike along the length of Elysian Fields as the sun dropped out of the sky.
* * *
There are faded showbiz personalities, B-level stars for the most part, whose final act devolves into a nostalgia-drenched retelling of their lives and times. They stand on a stage and chatter on about their career, usually gossiping, always shamelessly namedropping more famous people, creating an aura of easily broken confidentiality, as their audience is suckered into the sham intimacy of the show.
The town where Nye and I have our art supply distribution center has one such famous son, a singer and comedian who almost made it to the very top in Hollywood. He worked as a support act to the truly legendary, he guest-hosted talk shows when the star was unavailable or drunk, he wrote autobiographical memoirs that elevated self-effacement into a fine act. They even named a street after him because he never forgot to be kind to the place that he came from. He came home often and he performed benefits. The town had changed its color and fallen on hard times in the years since he’d left, but he was still loved and he was still remembered.
Nye and I attended one such benefit. His act was the slickest hokum and his extensive list of Tinseltown buddies was too many degrees of separation away from the rap stars and ballers his younger audience could relate to. But it was a warm day and he stood sweating in a loud jacket for the longest time. His wife was a frosted blonde in a tight tailored suit and high heels, who looked tired. He called out the name of the town every two sentences and they cheered him each time he did. He named the park and the main street where the department store used to be. He told us it was where he worked his first part-time job every Saturday. The building was long demolished. A storefront church, a gold-into-cash store, and a hair stylist now shared the property. The park stood next door to an elementary school that never used it; there were too many broken bottles and discarded needles in the long grass for the little kids to play there safely.
I thought of this kind of self-referencing mono
logue the next afternoon, as Mel stood on her crate on the Square and simply talked. Around her performed the usual trashy theatrical detritus: tiresome robot figures caught inexplicably motionless for a stretch of time considered admirable only by the most hapless of tourists. There were Dr. John lookalikes hawking preposterous and outlandish fortunes to grimy college kids from Wisconsin. They had heaved up their cherry red hurricanes on a side street off Bourbon half an hour previously, and were thus weakened and susceptible to the smoky liquor fumes and the whispered opaque platitudes.
Mel’s performance was slight but novel in its giddy economy. There were two acts and two personas. She was indomitably sassy and southern and flirty for the first, as she gathered a handful of young men drunk and bored and more than willing to be teased and flattered; her eyes unerringly sought out the best looking of the young boys as she lasered her innuendo-soaked words in his direction.
The opening recital was diluted Tennessee Williams filtered through a modernistic gauze. Mel was channeling Blanche DuBois, if the over-delicate and doomed Blanc to recite her life and times standing on a milk crate several times a day. I had seen the movie with Brando and Vivien Leigh, and the costume now made more sense. Mel and the boys in the audience fell into a joshing pattern of give and take. They would listen and grow listless and make as if to leave, and Mel would implore and pout and cajole and they would reluctantly return; they were utterly adolescent in their predictability.
It would have been nice to say that, through it all, Mel never once had to depend on the comfort of strangers.
At the end of the first act, the audience would place money in the crate and she would kiss them on their cheeks and place a string of beads over their heads. Older tourists and women were largely ignored. The chosen boys were close to half her age in my estimation. When they walked away she too departed, carrying the contents of her crate, her bicycle left chained to the gates of the park for the briefest of intermissions.
Act Two featured a tighter white dress cut at a weird angle so that the skirt appeared to be blowing in the air on one side. The bodice was flat on the front, the shoes were high white pumps and Mel’s legs were smooth and bare.
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