by James Sallis
“You must be Lew,” he said. “Glad to have you with us.”
I nodded, went down to the bathroom, came back and stretched out on my bed with a copy of Soul on Ice that I’d found by the john.
“You read a lot, huh?” he said after a while.
I lowered the book. “Couldn’t afford much education, and couldn’t sit still for most of what I could afford. I’ve been trying to make it up ever since.”
“You read Himes?”
“Much as I could find in used-book stores.”
“Hughes?”
“Every word.”
“Don’t run into many readers,” he said. “I’m Jimmi. Jimmi Smith. Used to be a teacher. Loved it. But I couldn’t leave the kids alone.”
“Girls?”
“Boys. That bother you?”
“Not especially. Chacun a son gout.”
“I help take care of kids now at day care centers, but we only take girls, this outfit I’m with, so it’s cool.”
“That’s good.”
“Yeah…. You got family, Lew?”
Sansom stuck his head in about then and said, “Good. You’re back.”
“Thanks to the lawyer you sent. How’d you know, anyway?”
“We know everything that happens around here, sometimes before it happens. But I have to tell you, our lawyer’s out of town on some business for us.”
“Then who …?”
“A friend of yours.”
“Walsh.”
“I didn’t say it. But it was obviously more … politic, to have the lawyer appear to be from us. Good night, guys.”
“You were asking about family,” I said after a while.
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” Jimmi said. “Never had much, I guess. Wonder what it’s like…. Got a sister.”
“Only the two of you?”
“Yeah.”
“Where’s she?”
“I don’t know exactly. About a month or so back, letters started getting returned. Tried calling her, the phone’s disconnected. I just hope somehow she’s okay.”
“You two close?”
“Only person I was ever able to love. Only one who never held anything against me,” Jimmi said.
We slept then, and in the morning he made no move to resume conversation. Carlos rose wordlessly from his bed, inhabited the bathroom for a quarter-hour, dressed and departed. I drank coffee in the common room and watched morning news on TV, trying to figure out what had gone down in recent months. How it all fit together, if indeed it did. If it could.
Those first weeks in hospital had been the worst, as I surfaced and sank, rolled back to the top and again subsided, skin barely able to contain me, insensible things at march just inside it. The only good thing about that time was remembering Vicky, how she helped me get through it all and that wonderful soft voice, and I wanted to thank her. At least that’s what I thought. I probably wanted a lot more, even then; we usually do, don’t we?
I could get nothing out of a suspicious personnel secretary at Hotel Dieu and finally went upstairs for more coffee at the cafeteria. I asked a few nurses there about her, but they were even more suspicious. Often being around other people is like coming face to face with a mirror: your blackness suddenly becomes indisputable fact.
I had a couple of cups of chicory, ordered some toast with the second, and sat watching all the faces. People losing loved ones or about to, watching them die by degrees; others trying to console with visits and small talk or scripture; some annoyed at the interruption to their lives of minor, but necessary, surgery or tests; those who took care of the interrupted and dying alike. And others who helped new lives, not so gently, into this very old, ungentle world.
By this time it was almost noon. I had paid at the counter and was just reaching to push my way out when I looked up and saw her through the glass door.
“Mister Griffin,” she said. “How are you?”
I said I was fine and asked if she’d mind my joining her.
“Not at all. I’m always alone for lunch.”
We settled into a corner booth. She ordered a salad and looked a lot younger than I remembered. I had more coffee. The waitress kept looking over her shoulder at us.
“I wanted to thank you,” I said. “I don’t think I’d have made it through all that without you.”
“Of course you would have done. Our best character shows up when we’re down, doesn’t it? And I’m paid well enough, here in the States, that I don’t need any thanks, really.” She lowered her head. “But I am glad you came to see me.”
Neither of us said more, until after a while, picking at her salad, she said, “I’ve been here fourteen months. I know a few of the people I work with, two people who live in the apartment complex close to me, and that’s all. Every month I think: I ought to go back home.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
“Maybe I am too, just now.”
We sat there finishing our coffee and salad and looking at one another. Finally she said, “I must get back onto the floor now, Mr. Griffin-”
“Lew.”
“Lew. But I hope that I’ll be seeing you again.”
“You will if you want to, Vicky.”
We were standing outside the cafeteria, in the mall, by this time. Currents of people broke around us.
“I want to. I’m thirty-five, Mr. Griffin. I’ve had affairs with a few men, been engaged twice. But I really want to get married, maybe even have kids. Perhaps that scares you.”
“Very little scares me after what I’ve been through.”
“Good, then.” She pulled a pad out of her pocket and scribbled quickly on it. “Here’s my phone number and address. Call me.”
“What’s best for you? What shifts and all.”
“Anytime. Mornings at seven-thirty are good; either I’ve slept the night through or am just coming in from work. Ten or so evenings, too. You’re almost sure to catch me then. Mostly I work nights.”
“Okay. Soon then, Vicky.”
“I do hope so. Au revoir.”
New Orleans natives tend to swallow or drop their r’s; that’s why, to outsiders, the prevailing white accent seems most unsouthernly, in fact distinctly Bronx-like. Vicky’s r was in marvelous contrast. She caressed each one as though she loved it, as though it were the last she might be privileged to utter.
After she was gone I looked down at the paper in my hand. It was from a notepad advertising a “mood elevator” put out by one of the pharmaceutical companies. That seemed wholly appropriate.
Chapter Three
Some light must shine behind our lives always, one of my college teachers said. He’d been a poet, apparently a good one, well thought of, promising. The light was draining out from behind his life the year I had him for freshman lit. Halfway through the second semester he didn’t show up for class two days in a row. They found him on the floor of his bathroom. He’d hanged himself from a hook in the ceiling above the tub, and though the hook had torn out of the rotting plaster, his throat was already crushed and he had died after a few moments’ thrashing about in fallen plaster, back broken across the edge of the tub in the fall.
Meeting Vicky, getting to know her, I felt the light start up again behind my own life. It hadn’t been there for a long time.
I started doing collections for a loan outfit over on Poydras. Walsh had vetted me, and I was still big enough and mean-looking enough to be effective pulling in payments for them. They started me out on a token salary, soon added a percentage, then doubled the salary as well.
Vicky and I were seeing one another pretty regularly: concerts, dinner, films at the Prytania, theater, museums, long afternoons over espresso or bottles of wine. I recalled the concept of monads-whole areas of knowledge, of understanding, which opened entire to the developing individual. And felt new worlds opening within me, worlds I’d always known were there but couldn’t find, couldn’t get to.
T
his whole period, like those early weeks in the hospital, but for quite different reasons, is something of a blur to me. I tracked people down all day, clocked out at six or so and headed for Vicky’s, and we either went out somewhere or stayed in talking and listening to music until she had to leave for work herself. My hours were flexible, and on days she was off I’d sometimes work at night to be with her during the day.
Work, a waiting woman, money in the bank, personal growth: American dreams.
But I stayed on at the halfway house. Carlos grudgingly began telling me buenos dias. Jimmi, the few times we were there simultaneously, didn’t want to talk. Vicky asked me to move in with her. Sansom came by every Friday to be sure everything was all right.
Time passed, as it will.
Both Verne and Walsh called to see how things were going. Ca va bien, I told them.
The president began another covert war.
Memorials were erected to those who’d died in the last covert war.
The CIA overthrew small South American governments and kept thick files on many of its own citizens.
Business as usual in South Africa.
Russia growled at us and we growled back-nothing new there.
Down by the Mississippi River Bridge they were swarming like ants, building for the ’84 World’s Fair.
I moved in with Vicky.
It was a rather fashionable apartment complex, and she’d made her small corner of it forever British by hanging pictures from the cornices, setting two morris chairs beside a low tea table and otherwise filling the flat with heavy, old furniture. There had been the usual compact, synthetic furnishings when she moved in, she said; she’d felt she was living in a motel. There were books everywhere.
One night after we’d been together a few weeks and had decided to stay in for the evening-I had a pot of red beans simmering on the stove and was about to start the rice-there was a knock at the door. It was Jimmi Smith.
“Bill Sansom says you’re good at finding people,” he said without preamble.
“Your sister?”
He nodded.
“Please come in,” I said, and introduced Vicky.
“I’ve got a bad feeling,” he said. “Something’s happened. I can’t go on like this anymore.”
“Will you stay for dinner, Mr. Smith-please,” Vicky said.
He shook his head but a little later let himself be led to the table. He was talking about how they used to sit on the swing in the backyard and spit grape seeds at each other, how they went everywhere together in their matched overalls. I poured wine and Vicky brought in fresh French bread. Over dinner and through a second bottle of wine he told me about his sister, Cherie. Gave me her last address and a small photo, an old school picture, the only one he had, he said, because she never liked having her picture taken.
“I’ll poke around and see what I can come up with,” I told him. “I’ll be in touch. You’re still at the house?”
“Same bunk, same book.”
I showed him out and started stacking dishes. Vicky had picked up the photograph.
“She looks so very young.”
“At our age, everybody starts looking young. Cops look like kids to me these days.”
“She also looks like someone who knows the best part of her life is already over,” Vicky said, and was sad the rest of the night.
In the morning I checked in at the loan company, picked up my slips and, finding two of the leads out in Metairie, where Cherie’s last address also was, headed that way.
The first lead took me to an apartment house reminiscent of rabbit warrens where a dirty-faced adolescent female opened the door along a length of chain and said, “Yeah?”
“Your folks home, young lady?”
“Naw. Ain’t never home ’fore ‘leven or twelve.”
“You get your sweet little butt back over here, LuAnne, and tell whoever that asshole is you’re busy,” a voice said inside the apartment.
“You know where I might reach them at work?”
She shrugged.
“Excuse me, LuAnne,” I said, and kicked the door in.
He was on the couch, thirty-eight or forty maybe, wearing a doubleknit leisure suit with the pants pulled down around his ankles.
“Don’t bother getting up,” I said. “If you do, I’ll kick your balls into Oklahoma. Go put your clothes on, honey,” I told the girl. “You know about statutory rape, mister? Even prison-yard hardasses take a dim view of it.”
“You a cop, man?”
“Are you out of here?”
“You told me not to move. ’Sides, I’m the girl’s uncle.”
He was coming up off the couch and I kicked him in the belly. He grunted and fell back.
“This is a child, asshole.”
After a while, when he was able, he hauled himself afoot, pulled up his pants and left. The girl looked after him, tears forming in her round eyes.
“World’s full of them,” I said.
“I loved him,” she said.
The second lead came up just as empty: a used book and record store not far off Veterans near Causeway. It had that fusty, peculiar smell they all have. A girl of twenty or so sat behind the counter braiding lustrous black hair that, unbraided, must have reached her knees.
“I’m looking for Frances Villon,” I said.
“Frances Villon?” Tentatively.
“I was given this address. I could have the spelling wrong.” I spelled it out. “She’d arranged a loan from us.”
“Frances Villon.” First with an English pronunciation, then the French. Her eyes wandered off and came back. “I get it-Francois Villon.”
“What?”
“You’ve been had. Francois Villon was a fifteenth-century French poet. I don’t think he’d be in need of any loans just now.
‘I am Francois to my great dismay,
Born in Paris, up Pontoise way;
By a fathom of hempen cord I’ll sway
While my neck discovers what my buttocks weigh.’
Someone’s idea of a joke, huh?”
“Any idea who might be inclined to that kind of joke?”
“Not really, but it’s kind of appropriate.”
“What do you mean?”
“Villon himself was a professional thief.”
The address I had for Cherie Smith led me to a converted garage apartment behind a lumberyard. It was empty; through the front window I saw only a sack of trash and some sweepings on the bare floor. I tried the door. It was locked.
Walking around back to look for a rear door or usable window, I discovered another, larger garage apartment. A tall, stooped young man with longish stringy hair was just backing out the door.
“Come to see the place?” he said.
“You the agent?”
“Showing it for them. I’m on my way to class, but I’ve got a few minutes, if you want to look it over. There wouldn’t be any problem with your renting it. You know….”
I knew only too well.
“To tell the truth,” I said, “I was looking for the former tenant.”
“You a cop?”
“Do I look like a cop, son?”
“You sure as hell ain’t her daddy.”
“Friend of her brother’s. He asked me to find her, if I can. Hasn’t heard from her in a long time. He’s been worried.”
“Not much I can tell you. She stayed pretty much to herself. Never had people over, didn’t go out much.”
“She work?”
He shrugged. “I guess.”
“When’d she leave?”
“Let’s see…. Close to a month, must be.”
“You know why?”
“Couldn’t make the rent. Owner finally had to ask her to move out.”
“Did she?”
“The very next morning. Cleaned the apartment up and all before she went, too. Not many’ll do that anymore.”
“No forwarding address?”
“Not with me, not with the po
st office. I know because the owner was going to send back part of the deposit even though she missed the last month’s rent. Felt kind of bad about the whole thing, I guess.”
“Okay. Listen, I don’t want to keep you, but if you happen to think of anything, anything that might help, could you give me a call?”
I handed him a card and a ten dollar bill.
“I can’t take your money, Mr.-” He looked down at the card. “-Griffin?”
“Sure you can.”
“Wouldn’t feel right about it.”
“All right. Then you just keep it a while and if nothing comes up, you send it back to me.”
“Well,” he said.
“Listen, I’ve held you up. Which school you go to?”
“Loyola.”
“Then let me drop you. Wouldn’t be a problem. You know….”
He grinned. “I would appreciate it, if you’re sure it’s not too much trouble.”
“Not at all.”
I dropped him off amidst armies of long legs and round bottoms in tight jeans and perfect breasts under sweaters, thinking I’d never make it to class in all that. Or wouldn’t have-more years ago than I want to think about.
I headed back downtown, brewed a pot of coffee at the apartment-Vicky was on a rare day shift-and had just poured some Irish into it when the phone rang.
“Mr. Griffin?”
“Yes.”
“Kirk Woodland.”
I waited.
“At the apartment a little while ago.”
“Oh. Right.”
“I just thought of something, might help you. There’s this kid down the street from where I live. He’s, I don’t know, eighteen or so, but really retarded, you know? Cherie used to go see him a lot, tell him stories and all, try to teach him things. You think she might show up there sometime?”
“She might indeed. Thank you, Kirk. You know the address?”
“No, but it’s the only two-story wood house on the next block south. Can’t miss it. White with yellow trim.”
“There’ll be twenty more coming to match what you have. I’ll shove it under the door.”
