by James Sallis
“There’s a folder on the desk, at the corner there. Perhaps you’d be so good as to retrieve it?”
I did so.
“Therein are copies of letters I’ve received. They may prove of interest.”
Opening the folder, I read the top page and the one under, then shuffled through the rest, perhaps a dozen of them. Each began with some variation of history asserting itself. Memory transports us … In those years … Experience shows that … Those who have no knowledge of history are doomed to repeat it. Santayana I took as a bad sign. This went on, soon enough we’d be getting Shakespeare and Ross Macdonald, quotes from Tocqueville manhandled like soft clay into shapes their author never intended.
“I can keep these?”
He nodded. The nod was easier than pulling out of it. Gravity and time are toll bridges, fares keep going up.
“You know who sent them.”
He started to say more but stopped himself.
“No.”
“A moment ago you spoke as though you did.”
His eyes went from the wall where they’d wandered, back to me. They were amazingly clear. “At first …” Blue springwater tumbling over white stone. “But what I thought then, upon first seeing them, I know can’t possibly be true. You’ve had a chance to look them over now, Mr. Griffin. What do they suggest to you?” His head dipped an eighth of an inch.
“Aside from the fact that you’re withholding information, you mean.”
One diffident hand made its way to the surface, floated there a moment with fingers together like logs in a raft—confirming? allaying?—then subsided. Guidry’s chin followed the hand down to sink onto his chest, bisecting the curve. He snored.
I eased from the chair and made my way into the outer room. Guidry’s home had been built around the turn of the century as Europeans began taking over the city and crept by degrees uptown, putting up ever more magnificent homes in rivalry to those of downtown Creoles. At one point, like many others, the home had been transformed, to a hotel in this case, but unlike others suffered few structural modifications. This outer room, originally intended as parlor or sitting room, in its hotel period a lobby, had remained much the same through all the home’s avatars.
Mrs. Molino rose from behind an elegant antique desk that put one in mind of stilt-legged birds.
“He’s asleep,” I said.
She nodded.
“For much of the day. And careening about the past the remainder. There’s not a lot left to him. Or of him. We always think of the elderly as increasingly needy, but it’s quite the opposite, really. Their lives get simpler—attain a kind of purity. There’s little enough now that I can do for the doctor. I manage his affairs, offer what comfort I can. Just as you’ve done. Thank you again for coming.”
“I’m not sure why I did, or, for that matter, what good it may have done. But you’re welcome.”
“Mr. Griffin?” she said behind me.
I turned.
“He’s concerned over the letters, isn’t he? The messages Alouette has been receiving.”
“Should he be?”
She stepped briskly across the room to stand close. Tall and slender, man’s oversize white dress shirt billowing out in the breeze of her passage, making me remember the first time I saw Deborah there beside the counter in her shop and thought willowy, as I’d done so often since. No sign of internal struggle in her eyes.
“That’s not for me to say.”
I could smell the shampoo she’d used that morning, apples and pears, a quiet tide of garlic, olive and lemon on her breath. Massively unsure of myself and long out of practice, signals a blur, I asked if she might consider having dinner with me. Or just coffee, if she’d be more comfortable with that.
I’ve embarrassed her, I thought at first; then, as she regained composure, recognized her reaction for what it was: some essential core of shyness overcome but unvanquished. Her eyes met mine.
“Understand that it’s terribly difficult for me to get away …”
I nodded.
“But yes. Yes, I’d like that very much, Mr. Griffin.”
“Good.”
“You have my number. Please call. We’ll arrange something.”
Touching her lightly on the upper arm, I took my leave.
From a phone in a K&B just down the street I dialed her number. New-fashioned teenagers sat with piercings and bleached hair behind old-fashioned stemmed glasses of cherry phosphate and malted milk at the lunch counter. A hunched, rickety man pushed himself erect before the display of condoms, natural vitamins and copper bracelets to brace the harried pharmacist over conflicting needs and insurance plan, his wheelchair’s E-cylinder of oxygen a silent witness.
“Mr. Griffin calling about those arrangements,” I said, “could you please hold?”
She laughed. “Certainly. This is a bit earlier than I’d expected to hear from him. Will you tell Mr. Griffin that?”
“I will indeed. Anything else I should tell him?”
“Well … There’s a good chance I’d be ready by seven, if he happened by. And a fair chance, too, that reservations might be waiting for us at Commander’s.”
“Seven. Commander’s. Got it. And who is this again?”
The connection went. She would have set the phone gently in its cradle. Smiling.
Chapter Twenty-Six
MORNING’S HIS BEST TIME, Catherine Molino said of Guidry. And my worst.
That particular morning, after returning to the house, drinking a pot of coffee and reading deeply into Rimbaud, I pulled my detective out of the box in which he’d rested peacefully for years, propped him up and set him to work, writing in his guise, there at the kitchen table as I looked past sink and sill and recalled a stream of cheap apartments:
My room looks out on a garden. There are enormous trees beneath my narrow window. At three in the morning, the candlelight grows dim and all the birds start singing at once in the trees. No more work. I gaze at trees and sky, transfixed by that inexpressible first hour of morning. I can see the school dormitories, completely silent. And already I hear the delicious, resonant, clattering sound of carts on the boulevards.
I have another drink and spit on the roof-tiles—because my room is a garret. Soon I’ll go down to buy bread. It’s that time of day. Workers are up and about all over the place. I’ll have a drink or two at the corner bar, come back to eat my bread and leftovers, be in bed by seven, when the sun brings woodlice out from under the roof-tiles.
Early mornings in summer and December evenings—these are what I remember, what I love most about this place I find myself.
I paused, changed the period to a comma, and added:
this place where I’ve fallen to earth anew.
Just what had prompted me to carry this away from my reading of Rimbaud? Why, of all things, candles? And, given that my books were set in New Orleans, surely the woodlice should be roaches—of the hearty species that, as one local friend notes with more than a touch of pride, rock you back on your heel when you step on them? But something had caught, and this wouldn’t be like other times I’d sat at the table scribbling. These pages wouldn’t go onto the heap of bills, junk mail and newspapers on the shelf by the table, by the Mason jar stuffed full of corks from wine bottles and the mug with its stub of a handle like a broken tooth and its cargo of buttons, paper clips, corroded copper pennies, dimes worn smooth. These pages would be, as they grew, my last book, a return to where it all started.
When the phone rang, levering me back into this world, I looked up in surprise. The clock on the stove read 1:13. Had I always known it was there? Small engines go on ticking everywhere about us.
Four calls all told, that afternoon.
The first was from Jeanette asking Deborah and me to dinner with her, Don and Derick that night. Kind of a celebration, she said. Though of what, they hadn’t decided yet. Maybe we could all do that together, decide.
“Thanks, Jeanette, but incredibly enough you’ve ca
ught me on one of those rare evenings—these occur maybe two or three times a year—when I actually have plans.”
“Well, we’re sorry, of course. But we can do this later.”
“That would be great. As long as it’s not too much trouble.”
“We have dinner most nights, Lewis.”
“True enough. But you don’t celebrate every night.”
She paused before saying, “In our own way, I think we do.”
“There’s something else, Jeanette.”
I told her about Deborah’s departure.
“I’m so sorry, Lew. Are you okay?”
“I will be, sure.”
“If there’s anything we can do …”
“Thanks.”
“We’ll talk soon.”
“You bet.”
I’d barely made it back to kitchen, chair and legal pad before the phone rang again. I sat looking through the open doorway at the phone on its table, newel post, wooden floor, the pattern of it. A composition, like Van Gogh’s painting of his room at Arles, something brought to stillness and no longer quite of this world.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Don said when I picked up.
“No need, my friend.”
“Fifteen at the outside.”
“Do us all a great favor, Don. Stay home with your family.
It’s cold out. And I’m fine.”
“Sure you are.”
“Really. I am.”
“You sure?”
“It’s not exactly like I was blindsided, is it? This’s been working its way to the surface for a long time.”
“And nothing you could do about it, I suppose.”
Little moved on street and sidewalk, lawns, porches. Every minute or two, as though chugging across a TV screen, exhaust a white plume, a car traversed the window. Two kids on collapsible scooters with bright green wheels rowed by. Had the neighborhood ever been this quiet, this still, by day? The cold was a part of it. But I had again the eerie, familiar feeling that there’d been some catastrophe, some dislocation, which only I and a handful of others had survived.
“How many times have we been through this, Lew, your side or mine?”
“Too many.”
“Both of us lost count some years back, I guess.”
“Probably just as well.”
“Yeah.” Behind him I heard the sounds of life going on: voices, rattle of cutlery and dishes, drawers, cabinets, a radio or TV. “Angels die. Because the air’s too thick for them down here. Skull Meat.”
“Or The Old Man. One of them, anyway.”
“You always disparage your books, Lew, pretend they aren’t important to you. I never have understood that.”
“They’re important—if that’s the right word—while I’m writing them. Afterwards …” Afterwards, what? “They’re pretty much a blur to me. One runs into another.” Like our lives here on the island. Scatter of bright segments, the rest of it mush.
Another of those comfortable silences that existed between Don and myself from the first, and that increasingly with the years seemed to occupy our time together, fell.
“Okay, so I’ll stay home,” Don said finally. “But only if you promise to call if you need me, man. A drink, a meal, just to talk.”
“Absolutely.”
The third call came within the hour. I was building a sandwich from the stump of a pork roast, cold bread, horseradish, mustard and mayonnaise, slivers of pickle. Children sauntered, biked and skateboarded by outside on their way home from school, children dressed in plaid skirts or charcoal-gray slacks, children in baggy cargo pants and bell-bottoms salvaged from thrift shops, children with processed hair, buzz cuts, bouffants, dreadlocks, multiple piercings. In the front room, off hall and telephone berth, NPR’s Talk of the Nation beamed in from the greater world. As did this call.
“David?”
“I don’t have much time. I just wanted to let you know that I’m all right, didn’t want you worrying.”
“Where are you?”
“Out in the world somewhere. That’s what Buster Robinson and your other characters would say, right?” Someone spoke behind him. He covered the mouthpiece to respond, after a moment took his hand away. “Look, I’ll be in touch soon, okay?”
“David—”
The connection went.
Most of an hour later, sandwich a scatter of crumbs on a chipped plate, half a bottle of California chardonnay sent after it, the fourth call came.
“’ew.”
“No way this is good.”
“Beg pardon?”
“Larson: you’re using the phone. Scary, real scary. What’s wrong?”
“It’s ’ette. Paramedics are taking her to Baptist and I need to stay with ’Verne. Thought maybe you’d swing by there.”
“The hospital, you mean.”
“She’s okay, but one of us needs to be there.”
“What happened?”
“Oh, right. Okay. I’m on a job over in Metairie. Been there two, three months.” Long enough to become forever, the only present, for Larson, something he had in common with Doo-Wop. “Gem of a house, kind you’re not ever gonna see again.”
“Okay.”
“I’ve got my face two inches from the hardwood banister, going at it with the finest chise’ I have, trying to reshape this thing, when Robert comes crabbing up the scaffo’d. Boy’s got a ce’phone, on’y one who does—so we a’ways give out his number. For me, he says, and hands over the phone.”
Officer McAllister calling. And this is … It’s about your wife, I’m afraid…. First of all, let me assure you she’s all right….
A neighbor, old Miss Siler, placed the call. She’d been sitting out on her porch sipping at a toddy as she did most afternoons now she’d been retired from teaching after thirty-nine years (“More than one toddy, I suspect,” McAllister said, “less than a dozen”) and noticed a young man with a package under his arm stepping up onto Alouette’s porch. He didn’t ring the bell, which Miss Siler thought odd, but then he didn’t do much of anything else either, so she lost interest. Next thing she knew, that young man was running off down the street like he had the very devil after him. Miss Siler looked back, up the street, across the yard, over the railing onto the porch, and there was Alouette, stretched out on the boards. She dialed 999, 919, finally got it right with 911. Officer McAllister responded.
Alouette was coming to as he arrived. She told him she’d heard someone on the gallery, boards creaking out there. She waited, and when no one came to the door, she opened it to look out. Thought she saw movement—someone hurrying around the bend? That was all she remembered. Presumably she’d stepped out onto the gallery. And someone was there. No sign of what the man had been carrying underarm. They did have one good impression of a footprint, McAllister said, looks like a heavy work shoe with waffle soles, where he vaulted over the banister, same banister she’d likely hit her head against.
“They’re taking her out now, ’ew.”
“Then I’m out of here too. On my way. I’ll give you a call.”
No one answered next door at Norm Marcus’s house. I’d figured on snagging a ride in his cab, something I’d done before in similar situations, but that having failed, set out on foot, cutting through alleyways and across open lots, staggering in a broken run down Prytania, past St. Charles, along Napoleon Avenue to Baptist.
There in the ER I found Alouette standing beside a gurney simultaneously raging, enumerating inefficiencies of the system and demanding to be released. Five medical personnel stood facing her, hopelessly outnumbered. They hadn’t a chance.
Everything’s all right at home, I told her. Larson’s with the kid. You okay?
“Fine—except that I’ve been abducted and now the aliens in their monotonous, unimaginative manner are preparing to perform medical experiments on me.”
“The paramedics had to bring you in,” one of the nurses said. “They’re legally obliged to do so. We explained that to y
ou.”
“And I explained to you that I had no problem with that. They brought me. I came. Now my ride’s here.”
Doors swung open to admit a stretcher and two paramedics. One of them was reporting to the resident who’d met them out on the dock. The resident glanced over at me. One of her eyes drooped, the other looked wild.
“… BP low but stable. Tourniquet’s been in place just over twenty minutes. Out when we got there, but he’s been conscious since. Alert and oriented. Stopped to help someone with car trouble, apparently. Had his hand under the hood when the driver decided to peel off. Took this one’s arm, up to the elbow, with him. Probably still there under the hood.”
“My ride’s here,” Alouette repeated, “and you have work to do.”
Outside, we walked over to Claiborne. A cab pulled in to the curb to pick us up almost instantly. The driver, an elderly black man swaddled in layers against the cold, undershirt, plaid flannel shirt, checked sweater, sweatshirt zipped to his chin, nodded when I gave him our destination. He nodded again at the end, when I paid him. Never spoke.
“Thanks for saving me, Lew.”
“Sure. Glad you don’t mind.”
“Am I really that difficult?”
“Yes.”
She laughed. “Guess I could always claim I have no choice, it’s in my genes.”
Vehicles swarmed thickly about a windowless, bunkerlike store selling beer, wine and liquor at discount prices. Smoke wafted up from Henry’s Soul Food and Pie Restaurant across the street. Four police cars sat outside.
“This wasn’t the first time, Lew. The last couple of letters, I thought I heard someone on the porch. I’d go out and find envelopes in the mailbox.”
“You should have told me.”
“I know.”
Attaining Jefferson Avenue, the driver turned riverside. His tape of Sam Cooke done, he pushed in a new one, Barry White.
“At first I just didn’t think it amounted to much. Later on, I guess my pride kicked in. I could take care of it myself….”
“Fearless, like your mother.”