by James Sallis
“A while.”
“Will you wake me when you do come to bed, then?”
I nodded, knowing I probably wouldn’t. She probably knew it too, hesitated and went away. I heard running water, the shower, toothbrushing, a clock being wound, classical music from the bedroom radio, turned low.
I poured brandy into a teaglass and watched the winking red eye of the telephone machine. Put on Bessie Smith and bobbed about for a while on the promise of her voice, on her empty bed blues, her nine-day crawl, her haunted house, on her thirst and her hunger. Every note and word was like something pulled with great difficulty from deep within myself.
“Cherie was here tonight,” the answering machine told me when I finally got around to running the tape back and playing it. “This is Baker. Give me a call; I may have something for you.”
I dialed and waited through a lot of rings. Looked at the clock: after midnight.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Baker. I’m sorry to wake you. Lew Griffin. I wasn’t sure what you had could wait.”
“Minute,” Baker said at the other end. He put the phone down. I heard water running. Then he came back.
“It was about six or so. Heard a knock at the door, opened it, and there she was. Had a doll, some kind of dinosaur kind of thing, for Denny. Said she was sorry she hadn’t got back sooner.”
“How was she?”
“Looked good. Told me she’d been out of town, that things were looking up for her; she had a job and new friends, she said. I made her eat something-she’s always been on the skinny side-and she and Denny spent an hour or maybe a little more together.”
“She tell you anything about this job?”
“No. But as she was leaving she told me she wouldn’t be able to come back again, that she was leaving town.”
“And?”
He paused. “Cherie’s been a good friend to us, to Denny and me. I’m not telling you this because she’s a kid and we’re big folks, or because you found Denny when he wandered off. I’ve thought about this a lot.”
“Then why are you telling me?”
“I think because she told me three times, ‘I’ll be leaving for good on a Greyhound at two thirty-six this morning.’ Almost like she wanted me, or someone, to stop her.”
“Does she?”
“Who knows? I don’t know what I want, most mornings. Maybe you could ask her.”
“I could do that. Was she alone?”
“She came here alone, yes. After she left I looked out the window. A car pulled up to the curb a half-block up-town and she got in. A Lincoln, late model, dark.”
“Thank you, Mr. Baker. Say hi to Denny for me.”
“I will. And try to make Cherie understand why I had to tell you. She’s a child, Griffin.”
“Yes.”
“Wonderful, but a child for all that.”
“Sorry again to have waked you up.”
“Believe me, I don’t mind at all. One of the pleasures of my life is sitting alone here in the early morning with a cup of coffee, just looking out into the dark and thinking, remembering. I do it often. But not often enough.”
I hung up to the sound of his teakettle whistling, walked into the bedroom and found Vicky fast asleep. Stretched out naked on the white sheets she looked almost like a child herself, pale and small, so vulnerable. Memories sprang into my mind like tigers.
I do it often, Baker had said, but not often enough.
And I realized how much of myself, of what I was now, was Vicky, the sound of her voice and those r’s, the books she read, her music, thin arms entering white sleeves, the sandals she wore in our hours together, her gentleness and curiosity. Whatever else should happen, all that would remain part of me forever.
I found a pad of paper and wrote on it slowly, haltingly: Je t’aime toujours, et je te manquerai quand nous nous quittons. Longtemps je te manquerai.
I tucked it underneath the clock she kept at bedside, one she’d had since nursing school. I could still hear that clock ticking as I walked out into the black, cold night, like a small heart, like a cricket, a needle stitching a life together, something that doesn’t change.
Chapter Seven
Tucked away anonymously beneath an intersection of elevated expressways, the New Orleans Greyhound station resembles nothing so much as a bowling alley. It even smells like a bowling alley: sweat, sexual frustration, beer, piss, disinfectant, tobacco smoke, french fries, onion rings.
Cabs were stacked up at the exit, their drivers hunched over racing forms, newspapers or a game of craps on the sidewalk nearby. A tall black man in yellow kept watch over incoming buses and incoming youngish women. Inside I found the usual assortment of street people hoping for a warm place to sleep, guys and girls on the make for whatever the market might bear, teenage brides with kids in arm and tow, soldiers with duffel bags, dips and junkies, a few older couples visiting grown children or out to “see America.” As I walked in one door a guy went through the plate glass of another door, pursued by two of the city’s finest. No one paid them much attention.
Cherie was sitting in one of the back pews of plastic chairs, eyes wide. A cheap brown suitcase and a huge shoulderbag were on the floor beside her. No one was in the next chair, so I took it. It was slick with sweat, beer, whatever.
“Hi,” I said.
“Do I know you?” Eyes even wider.
“No, Cherie, you don’t. But I’m a friend of your brother’s, of Jimmi’s, and I need to talk to you.”
“How’d’ja know I was here?”
“Does it matter?”
After a moment she shook her head.
“Last night Jimmi was attacked by some hoods in the Quarter, some kind of youth gang apparently. They beat him up pretty bad and long. He’s dead, Cherie. But before he died he’d asked me to find you for him. He was worried about you, and he loved you. I only wish I could have done it sooner, but I let my own life get in the way. I’m sorry for that. Jimmi was pretty special to me.”
“To me, too,” she said. “He was all I had, and I do thank you. But you’d best leave now, Mr.-?”
“Griffin. No, I don’t think so.”
It took about five minutes. I watched him stand up from his seat across the room, slowly make his way toward us. Six-four and muscles to match, wearing a polo shirt and white jeans with a tan linen sports coat, California hair.
“Pardon me, sir,” he said. “But the lady has asked you to move along, I think.”
“That’s right.”
“It really would be in both our interests if you would do so, sir.”
“Probably so, otherwise you might have occasion to get your hair mussed. But not in the lady’s, n’est-ce-pas?”
I looked up at him, half a mile at least, remembering Bible School stories of David and Goliath.
“I know you’re a big, powerful man, sweetheart, and you’re probably used to people trembling and maybe a few of them wetting their pants when you speak. The name’s Lew Griffin. Maybe you should step out into the street and ask around before you do anything … precipitate?”
If he didn’t buy the tough-guy act, maybe he’d think I was too smart to beat up.
“My employers will be most unhappy,” he said after a moment.
“I certainly hope so.”
“The girl’s going with you, then?”
“Woman. If she wants to, yes.”
We both looked at Cherie. She finally nodded.
“Perhaps we’ll meet again,” California said.
“Could be. I’ll buy you a drink if we do.”
“I don’t drink. Destroys brain cells.”
“Vous avez raison. Quand vous avez si peu….”
“What’s that?”
“Just agreeing with you is all.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, sure. Well, take care, Lew Griffin.”
“Always have.”
He turned and walked through the now glassless door, ducking low. I saw him climb into a cab outside and wait until the
driver looked up from the crap game and noticed he had a fare. The cab swerved out into traffic, sending a Cadillac into the next lane and into the path of a battered VW bus. Five minutes later, traffic was backed up half a mile or more.
We walked a couple of blocks over to the car and drove home. If she wondered where I was taking her, she didn’t ask. Maybe she’d got used to letting other people make her decisions for her these past weeks. It was almost five as we turned onto St. Charles, and New Orleans was starting to show the first signs of day, like in horror movies when the corpse’s hand begins to open and close there at the edge of the screen but no one notices.
Vicky was working a day shift. I showed Cherie the bathroom and spare bedroom and settled into the kitchen. Presently I heard the two of them talking. They came in together just as I slid the omelette out of the pan. Fruit was already sliced and arranged on another platter. I stacked toast on a saucer, poured coffee for us all, and brought warm milk to the table with me in its small copper pot.
We ate slowly, Vicky and Cherie talking for the most part, mostly about Vicky’s work.
“I’d really like that, different all the time, meeting new people, really doing something,” Cherie said.
“Well there’s always a need for volunteers and nurses’ aides, if you’d fancy that. You might be able to work your way into a regular job then.”
“I’ll have to just take whatever I can get, for now. I don’t even know where I’m going to stay.”
Vicky and I looked at one another.
“You’re welcome to the spare bedroom here for as long as you need it,” I said.
“Oh, I couldn’t do that, Mr. Griffin.”
“Lew.”
“That’s up to you, then,” Vicky said. “But the room’s here if you want it. It’s never used.”
“I know what it’s like not to have anywhere or anyone to go to, Cherie; I’ve been there. Vicky knows too. She was raised in a French orphanage.”
Cherie picked a grape out of the cluster at the center of the fruit plate.
“When we were growing up, our parents had this tiny little arbor in the backyard, just four whitewashed poles, some chicken wire and stakes, a few wild vines. There was a swing on the tree nearby, really a door Dad had hung with steel cable, and Jimmi and I’d sit at opposite ends of that swing eating grapes and spitting the seeds at each other. I haven’t thought of that in a long time.”
“I really must scoot on out of here,” Vicky said. “Cherie, please feel free to help yourself to anything of mine that you might need. Are you going in to work today, Lew?”
“I’ll catch some sleep first, I think, then see.”
“Then I won’t ring you. Au revoir.”
She leaned down and touched my cheek with her own. I wondered what it would be like without her, what I would be like without her. It was a little like trying to imagine the world without trees or clouds.
“I’ll clean up, Mr. Griffin.”
“Lew. But I’ll do it.”
“I’d really rather have something to do, if you don’t mind. You go on and get yourself some sleep.”
“You’re sure?”
She nodded.
“Then you’ve got it. Listen: for as long as you’re here, this apartment is your own. Use what you need, come and go as you please, if you can’t find something, ask. Do you need money?”
“I have … an advance, from the people I was going to work for.”
“Okay, then. Goodnight, Cherie.”
“Goodnight, Lew. Bon soir-is that right?”
“As rain.”
I showered and lay listening to the distant clatter of pans and dishes, the irregular rush of water. My childhood rose up around me: myself tucked away in bed while, as on a far-off planet, family life continued.
Soon dishes and kitchen were done and I heard the TV come on. Some vague news about an arms talk, I think; premonitions of continued cold weather; a human interest story about twins in Poland and Gary, Indiana. An old movie with zombies, diplomats, displaced Russian aristocrats, rutting teenaged Americans.
I fell asleep and at some later point woke to the sound of sobbing. Walked into the living room and found a talk show and Cherie asleep on the couch, half-nude, dreaming. Felt the gulf between us, and felt my own loneliness in a way I’d not done for some time.
She was sobbing somewhere deep inside the dream. I think for a moment I felt as parents feel, wanting to protect her at any cost, to lie or tell her whatever might calm her sleep, ease her waking. But parents, most parents, learn that can’t be done. They learn that, whoever we are, all we can really share is the common humanity that bonds us: the knowledge that we all hurt, that every choice is difficult and, in its own way, final.
I fetched some blankets from the closet and covered her, turned the TV off, returned to bed.
Either it’s only in the relationships we manage that we live at all, or we must think that in order to manage them in the first place. We go on trying not just to survive, but to find reasons, such as love, that allow us to betray ourselves into choosing survival.
In my dreams Martin Luther King was reading Black No More. Tears streamed down his face: rain on a window behind which there is laughter.
At some point Vicky was there, muttering something about croissants; then, later, we were making love, and later still (I think) there was somehow coffee beside the bed. Gradually I was awake and it was dark. I thought how recent days were like older ones, going by in a blur, undistinguished, largely unlived, so many twilights retreating into bleary dawns.
Finally a knock at the door, repeated twice.
“There’s dinner, when you want it.” Footsteps leaving.
We showered together and went to see.
A stew of chicken and vegetables, spinach tossed with egg and vinaigrette, pasta salad, fried bananas. Freshly ground coffee after.
“This time I do the dishes,” I said.
And did so, listening to the chirr of their conversation in the next room. Vicky had spoken with the head of volunteer services and the nursing director; both wanted to see Cherie for interviews.
I remembered Jimmi sitting up in bed without clothes reading Principles of Economy, thought of the first time I saw Vicky, just so much red hair floating above me, of how Cherie had looked so very young in the photograph and (as Vicky said) like someone who knows the best part of her life is already over.
Maybe the best parts of our lives are always over. Maybe happiness, contentment, are things we only recollect through the filters of time, elusive ghosts forever behind us.
In the next room they laughed together, Vicky’s an easy, rolling laugh, Cherie’s curiously childlike, and I thought: that’s really the only answer we have, laughter. For a long time after it was over I stood listening.
Chapter Eight
A few weeks later Vicky and I were standing together at New Orleans International. The weather had gone suddenly, unseasonably warm. We watched a small private plane gather speed and tear itself away from the earth. Earlier Don, Sansom and some others had been over for drinks and good-byes. Now it was our turn.
“I don’t know what might make you happy, Lew,” she said, “But whatever it is, I hope you’ll find it.”
“Or give up trying?”
“Quite.” She put her hand over mine on the railing. We could feel the heat through the window. I would never forget her eyes, the way her mouth shaped itself around words as they left it. “You didn’t know, but when I met you I had decided already to leave, to go home. I was never certain why I didn’t, not until you came to Hotel Dieu and found me. Only then did I realize that was what I had waited for.”
“I was in pretty terrible shape when you met me, Vicky.”
“Aren’t we all…. You know where I’ll be, Lew. You can come anytime, if you change your mind.”
“And you’ll be waiting?”
“Waiting, no. But I will be there for you if you come. This has all been something very sp
ecial for me, Lew.” She held her hand up by her heart, closed, then slowly opened it.
Eventually her flight was called, we fumbled through final farewells and awkward embraces, and she followed the laws of perspective down an embarkation tunnel.
I went to the bar for a drink and ran into a guy I’d gone to high school with and hadn’t seen since. Vicky had sold the car just before leaving. He was a cabbie now and offered me a free run home. But when we walked out a couple of hours and several drinks later, there was Verne leaning against the streetlight at the corner.
“Need a ride home, soldier? I’ve got my car.”
“I hope you don’t mind, Lew,” she said, feinting her way onto the expressway. “I know what just went down. Thought you could use a friend about now.”
“And always. But what about your doctor?”
She shrugged. “History.”
I watched her face pass through lights like a boat over waves.
“Are you okay?”
“Fine,” she said. “I’ve kept up, Lew. I talked to Don Walsh and some others, I always knew how you were, what you were up to.”
“You should have called. Or just come by.”
She shook her head. Several blocks passed beneath us as we curved across the city’s sky.
“Are you working?”
“Yeah,” she said, and laughed. “At a rape crisis center-can you feature that? For a long time now.”
“You get paid?”
“Sometimes.”
A little later she looked over at me and said, “Where’ll it be, Lew?”
“I don’t want to go back to my place.”
“I thought you might not. There’s always mine.”
“Catching balls on the rebound?”
She shrugged. “Whatever works. You wait and see.”
“Right,” I said. “You wait and see.”
Part Four
1990
Chapter One
I still hear from Vicky, almost every month: long, chatty letters about what she’s doing, new friends and books, seeing The Big Sleep for the first time in Paris, discovering Faulkner, a trip to Russia. She even went back for a visit to the orphanage where she grew up. Still moving through the world with eyes wide, holding on to every fugitive moment of it.
