James Sallis - Moth

“Hi, we’ve never met, but I live a few houses down.”

“I know who you are. Raymond, you get on about your business now.”

“Who is it, honey?” came a feminine voice from deeper in the house.

“Neighbor, Cal.”

“I’m sorry to bother you, but-”

He held out a hand. Muscles bunched along the forearm as we shook. “Norm Marcus. Call me Norm or Marc, whichever comes easier to you. You want to come on in, have a beer or something?”

“I’d love to, but a friend of mine just called and things don’t sound so good over there. Since I don’t drive I wondered if-”

“You need a ride, right?”

“I’ll make it worth your while.”

“Worth my while, huh?” He half turned, called into the house “Be right back, Cal” and stepped out, pulling the door shut. “It’s already worth my while, Lew. Man can’t help a neighbor, why’s he bother living anywhere-know what I mean? Where we headed?”

I got in beside him and told him the address. He punched in a tape of Freddie King, hit the lights, and swung out toward St. Charles.

I tried to pay him when we pulled up at Don’s place, but he said don’t insult him. “You want me to wait?”

I thanked him again and said no, and that we had to get together for that beer soon.

“Absolutely. Or you just come on by for dinner, any night. Eat about nine, usually.”

The front door was locked, but like mine Don’s house is an old one whose frame and foundation have shifted time and again, and whose wood alternately swells with humidity and shrivels from heat. I pushed hard at the door and it opened.

He was still there all right, in the kitchen, head down on the table, facing away from me. An inch or so of bourbon remained in the bottle. The pizza, out of the box now, lay upside down on the floor, Police Special nearby.

I quickly checked a carotid pulse. Strong and steady.

He bobbed to the surface, without moving or opening his eyes.

“You, Lew?”

“Yeah. Let’s get to bed, old friend.”

“I tell you my wife was fucking Wally Gator?”

I hauled him more or less to his feet and we caromed from wall to wall down the narrow hall to his bedroom. I let him go slack by the bed, went around and pulled him fully aboard. Took off his shoes and loosened belt, trousers, tie.

I was almost to the bedroom door when he said: “Lew?”

“Here.”

“You’re a good man. Don’t ever let anybody tell you different.”

I sat there in his kitchen the rest of the night, though at this point there wasn’t a lot of rest left, fully understanding that I wasn’t a good man, had never been, probably never would be. The world outside faded slowly into being, like prints in a developing tray. And when magnolia leaves swam into focus against cottony sky, I put my thoughts aside, finished the bourbon and got coffee started. Not long after that, Don’s alarm buzzed into life. I walked in with two cups of cafe au lait, looked at him, and shut the damned thing off.

The dead walked at last, or more accurately stumbled, at nine or so, into the kitchen where it looked at the clock, looked at me, back at the clock, mumbled shit most unexpletively, and slumped into a chair.

I poured coffee and put it down before him. He sat looking at it, estimating his chances. Gulfs loomed up everywhere. Washington and the Delaware. Napoleon crossing to Elba. Raft of the Medusa. Immigrants headed for Ellis Island, shedding history and culture like old clothes. Boats packed with new slaves, low in the water, nosing into compounds at Point Marigny across the river from what was now downtown New Orleans.

Finally he launched a hand into that gulf. It wavered but connected, and he drank the ransomed coffee almost at a gulp.

“I talk much last night?” he said partway into a second cup.

“Some.”

“Before you came over here, on the phone? Or after.”

“Before, mostly.”

“Then I told you about Josie.”

I nodded.

“And I was thinking about doing something stupid. I really don’t remember too much else.”

“You weren’t thinking at all: you were feeling. But yes, it did look for a while like maybe you were going to stop being stupid for good.”

“Yeah, well.” He looked around the room, down at the floor. “Anyhow, the moment’s passed. You eat my pizza? Stuff’s great for breakfast, cold, you know.”

“Sorry. It was crawling across the rug, making for the door. I had to shoot it.”

He shook his head. “You’re a sick man, Lew.”

We finished the pot and he called in while I scrambled eggs. We ate, then sat over a second pot of coffee. Heading back to bed finally, he paused in the doorway. Looked down the hall.

“Thanks, man. I won’t forget this.”

“I owe you a few.”

“Not anymore you don’t.”

I found nongeneric scotch in the pantry beside five cans of stewed tomatoes, a stack of ramen noodles and two depleted jars of peanut butter, poured some into a coffee cup webbed with fine cracks beneath the surface, and dialed Clare’s number. When her machine told me what to do and beeped at me, I said:

“This is your sailor, m’am. Who’d like to buy you dinner tonight, if you’re free. Garces okay? Call me.”

Garces is a small Cuban restaurant, tucked away in a decaying residential area a few blocks off Carrollton, as close to a special place as Clare and I had. Family-owned and — run, it started out years back as a grocery store and serves daily specials astonishingly simple and good, including a paella you’d kill for, cooked while you wait, one hour. Paella’s where jambalaya came from, word and recipe freely translated.

I walked six or eight blocks and grabbed a bus on Magazine. Got home, rummaged through mail, listened to messages. Someone I didn’t know wanted me to call right away. The English Department secretary needed to speak with me at my convenience. And Clare said: “Lew, I dodged home for lunch and found your message. Wish you’d gotten to me earlier, now I’ve already made plans. How’re the sea legs? Talk to you later.”

I stretched out on the couch for a nap and thought about Don, how he’d been looking lately, his long slow fall last night, this morning. Probably the steadiest man I ever knew. But you stand there peering off the edge long enough, whoever you are, things start shifting on you. You start seeing shapes down there that change your life.

The phone had been ringing a while, I realized. In my dreams I’d turned it into a distant train whistle.

The tape clicked on just as I answered, and I stabbed more or less randomly at buttons, Answer, Hold, trying to stop it. Taped message and entreaties to “Wait a minute, I’m here, hang on” overlapped, waves colliding into a feedback that made the room sound strangely hollow and cavernous.

“Can a girl change her mind?” Clare said when the tape had run its course.

“Why not? Always another ship coming into port somewhere.”

“Okay. So I’ll cancel this other thing and see you at Garces at, what? Six be okay? Want me to pick you up?”

“I’m not sure where I’ll be before then. I’ll meet you there.”

“Then maybe I can take you home, at least.”

“Just how do you mean that, lady?”

“Hmmmm …”

Where I was before then, as it turned out, was right there on that couch, though I did rouse a couple of times, first to answer the door and tell a private-school girl still in uniform (white shirt, blue tie, checked skirt, black flats) that I didn’t need candy or wrapping paper, later to explain to an elderly Latin man that I liked the grass kind of high there in my patio-size front yard.