James Sallis - The Long-Legged Fly

“Right.”

“You writing all this down?”

“Right.”

I walked-mainly because of the lawyer who materialized from nowhere and told me, the desk sergeant and then the court that he represented a rehabilitation center operated by “one William Sansom and Associates.” Somehow he managed to get a judge down there and had me in the courtroom for a prelim within the hour. The judge was a woman of fifty or so who listened closely to everything, yawned a couple of times and said, “No P.C. It’s out.” I saw Walsh standing at the back of the courtroom. He and the two feds exchanged glances as they left the courtroom.

It was nearly midnight when I got back to the place. The TV was still on, but nobody was there watching it. Upstairs one of the bunks held a snoring body cocooned in sheets. On another a guy sat nude, reading Principles of Economy .

“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.

“Miste r Griffin,” she said. “How a r e 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 cou r se you would have done. Ou r best cha r acte r shows up when we’ r e down, doesn’t it? And I’m paid well enough, he r e in the States, that I don’t need any thanks, r eally.” 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 he r e fou r teen months. I know a few of the people I wo r k with, two people who live in the apa r tment complex close to me, and that’s all. Eve r y 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 floo r now, M r . G r iffin-”

“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 thi r ty-five, Mr. G r iffin. I’ve had affai r s with a few men, been engaged twice. But I r eally want to get ma rr ied, maybe even have kids. Pe r haps that sca r es 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. “He r e’s my phone numbe r and add r ess. Call me.”

“What’s best for you? What shifts and all.”

“Anytime. Mo r nings at seven-thi r ty are good; eithe r I’ve slept the night th r ough o r am just coming in f r om wo r k. Ten o r so evenings, too. You’ r e almost su r e to catch me then. Mostly I wo r k nights.”

“Okay. Soon then, Vicky.”

“I do hope so. Au r evoi r.”

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.