James Sallis - Ghost of a Flea

Kiting out over fragments of brick, dropping at glide’s end onto a grassy patch, the grasshopper took flight. Greevy sat looking after it.

“City has several dozen varieties of roach,” he said at length. “All of them as distinct as individual human faces, many of them deriving from one specific area of the city. Not to mention the others. Fleas, mites, lice. Moths and ants. Or our best if most rapacious friends, flies. Not only different from one another, but vastly different in behavior, diet, where they lay their eggs, how the young develop, gestation period.”

Greevy took a deep swig of beer and held the bottle out to me. What the hell. Here we were, casual scientists, two men of the world talking things over, trying to understand. I drank and passed the bottle back.

“Day or two, the samples I took will start hatching. From the eyes, mouth, wounds. I’ll be able to tell you more then. Almost to the moment how long he’d been dead. What he’d been eating. What parts of the city he frequented.”

The bottle shuttled back another time or two.

“Strange work you do,” I said.

Though there’d been no bell, kids began spilling out onto streets from a school nearby, those with top grades, I assumed, let go early as reward. They took to bicycles and buses and looked impossibly young, part of the world’s order and continuity. They fit.

One of them, though, twelve maybe, a girl with skin white as paper and coppery hair, stepped in front of us and stood there fiercely.

“What are you men doing?” she said.

Greevy ignored her.

“You’ve been sitting there watching, for a long time now. I saw you from inside, through the window. That’s how it can start. I should call the police.”

“We’re just friends, miss,” Greevy said, “catching up on things. Neither of us even knew there was a school nearby. Believe me, no harm’s intended.”

“Sure you are. You people never intend harm, do you? And this is where you usually meet, right? In the middle of a vacant lot.”

“Miss. I’m sorry. I don’t know what else I can tell you.”

A bus pulled in at the stop across from the school. Our inquisitor’s eyes went from us to the bus and back.

“Well-” She turned and ran for the bus, sprang aboard. We saw her face in the back window, still watching us, till the bus passed out of sight. Neither Greevy nor I spoke for a time.

“Had a son once myself,” he said finally. “Long gone now.”

“Divorce?”

“Death.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Me too.” He upended the empty bottle. A drop or two came out. “Boy was never right. Just couldn’t get it together, and even when someone else’d pull it together for him, he couldn’t keep it in the road. Something just got left out in the mix, you know. No one’s fault. But no one should have to live like that, either. All I could think when I heard was, Good, he’s not hurting anymore.

“It’s all a gift, Griffin. All of it. You think maybe your son, wherever he is, knows that?”

“I think he does, yes.”

“Good.” After a moment he said, “So how do I get in touch, assuming I have something for you?”

I scribbled name, address and phone number on a sheet from my notebook, tore it out and handed it to him. It went haphazardly into a coat pocket, no surprise. Though from general appearance the coat had been in use for some time, the pocket was still sewn shut. He had to rip out stitches to get the paper in.

“Circle K up by the corner,” he said. “Still have more than an hour before my ride shows up. You want, we could grab a quart of beer, a couple of dogs.”

Fine idea, I said, just what I wanted, and we swung that way. But when we got there a tour bus sat across the street. Through storefront windows we could see streams of elderly folk clutching bags of chips and pretzels, bottles of orange juice, candy bars, souvenir pralines. Greevy and I ended up on the curb by a nearby Exxon station. NOPD cars came drifting past as kids schlepped home lumpy knapsacks, lunchboxes, Gameboys, Walkmen, form-fitted saxophone and French horn cases.

“They think it’s Disneyland,” Greevy said.

“Kids?”

“The tourists. Look at them. Like this is what they’ve been waiting for all along, what their lives’ve come down to, this pitiful bus ride with a package of Fritos and an adventure happening outside the window at the end. The kids know better. At least I hope to hell they do.”

Listing right then left, a man with bandy legs approached us.

“Sonny Payne,” he said. “How do you do. I’m homeless and I’m hungry. If you don’t have it, I understand, because I don’t have it either. But if you do, anything you might see fit to pass on, a sandwich, a few coins, a piece of fruit, will be appreciated. Thank you.”

He stood there swaying, ticking it out. No response came, he’d move along, deliver the same speech verbatim just down the line. Greevy, however, pulled out his wallet and handed the man a ten.

“Thank you, sir.”

“My son was on the streets for years.” Greevy passed the quart of Corona to me. One of the NOPD cars slowed to check us out, then went on.

“I think it’s against the law, our sitting out here drinking,” I told him.

“Yeah. Probably is.” He took the bottle back and drained it. “You up for one more?”

As I make my way home, traversing abandoned lots, shoulder-narrow alleys, car-beset stretches of St. Charles, Jackson and Prytania, darkness lays its hand on the city, gently at first, then ever more firmly. Portions of sunlight cling to the edges of buildings. Headlights and streetlights straggle on. In houses I pass, behind windows tall as a man, wood floors are held in place by antique dining tables, barrister’s bookcases and overpadded chairs. In there, too, light falls: white light like cool pure water from chandeliers, light yellow and warm from table and floor lamps.

I turned onto Prytania, skirting a house that looked like any other save for a discreet metal sign hung from its eave: Anderssen Real Estate. I’ve probably walked past a hundred times without taking notice. A fortyish man wearing slacks and an open-neck white dress shirt still crisp from the morning’s iron emerged, locked up, mounted a silver BMW and rode away. Almost immediately another man stepped around the low wall of cinder block separating this house’s driveway from that of the next. He made for a niche tucked between house and wall beneath an overbite of roof and there unrolled his blanket, positioning himself on it and setting out with every aspect of ritual a well-used plastic bottle of water, cans of food, backpack, folded newspapers. Then began pulling off braces and supports. The crutch he’d had under his left arm. Neck brace padded with foam. Wrap-around knee support. Plastic form into which right foot and ankle had been strapped. Wrist splint with wide Velcro ties attached. Elastic elbow wrap. Some weird sympathetic magic-he wore these, none of it could happen to him? Or had he from whatever obscure motive-sympathy, instinct for salvage, pride of ownership-simply fished them from refuse bins at nearby Touro Infirmary, slowly accumulating, growing one might almost say, this exoskeleton within which he went about the world?

My own house of wooden floors, high ceilings and windows tall as a man, when I arrived, stood empty. I could have held it to my ear and heard the sea. Deborah away at rehearsal, David simply away (what else could I say just now?), out in the world somewhere. Cars past those windows followed headlights leading them like faithful horses towards the Barcaloungers, big TVs, barbeque grills and backyard swingsets that defined their riders’ lives. Few surprises when these crews disembark.