James Sallis - The Long-Legged Fly

Some light must shine behind our lives always, one of my college teachers said. He’d been a poet, apparently a good one, well thought of, promising. The light was draining out from behind his life the year I had him for freshman lit. Halfway through the second semester he didn’t show up for class two days in a row. They found him on the floor of his bathroom. He’d hanged himself from a hook in the ceiling above the tub, and though the hook had torn out of the rotting plaster, his throat was already crushed and he had died after a few moments’ thrashing about in fallen plaster, back broken across the edge of the tub in the fall.

Meeting Vicky, getting to know her, I felt the light start up again behind my own life. It hadn’t been there for a long time.

I started doing collections for a loan outfit over on Poydras. Walsh had vetted me, and I was still big enough and mean-looking enough to be effective pulling in payments for them. They started me out on a token salary, soon added a percentage, then doubled the salary as well.

Vicky and I were seeing one another pretty regularly: concerts, dinner, films at the Prytania, theater, museums, long afternoons over espresso or bottles of wine. I recalled the concept of monads-whole areas of knowledge, of understanding, which opened entire to the developing individual. And felt new worlds opening within me, worlds I’d always known were there but couldn’t find, couldn’t get to.

This whole period, like those early weeks in the hospital, but for quite different reasons, is something of a blur to me. I tracked people down all day, clocked out at six or so and headed for Vicky’s, and we either went out somewhere or stayed in talking and listening to music until she had to leave for work herself. My hours were flexible, and on days she was off I’d sometimes work at night to be with her during the day.

Work, a waiting woman, money in the bank, personal growth: American dreams.

But I stayed on at the halfway house. Carlos grudgingly began telling me buenos dias . Jimmi, the few times we were there simultaneously, didn’t want to talk. Vicky asked me to move in with her. Sansom came by every Friday to be sure everything was all right.

Time passed, as it will.

Both Verne and Walsh called to see how things were going. Ca va bien , I told them.

The president began another covert war.

Memorials were erected to those who’d died in the last covert war.

The CIA overthrew small South American governments and kept thick files on many of its own citizens.

Business as usual in South Africa.

Russia growled at us and we growled back-nothing new there.

Down by the Mississippi River Bridge they were swarming like ants, building for the ’84 World’s Fair.

I moved in with Vicky.

It was a rather fashionable apartment complex, and she’d made her small corner of it forever British by hanging pictures from the cornices, setting two morris chairs beside a low tea table and otherwise filling the flat with heavy, old furniture. There had been the usual compact, synthetic furnishings when she moved in, she said; she’d felt she was living in a motel. There were books everywhere.

One night after we’d been together a few weeks and had decided to stay in for the evening-I had a pot of red beans simmering on the stove and was about to start the rice-there was a knock at the door. It was Jimmi Smith.

“Bill Sansom says you’re good at finding people,” he said without preamble.

“Your sister?”

He nodded.

“Please come in,” I said, and introduced Vicky.

“I’ve got a bad feeling,” he said. “Something’s happened. I can’t go on like this anymore.”

“Will you stay fo r dinne r , M r . Smith-please,” Vicky said.

He shook his head but a little later let himself be led to the table. He was talking about how they used to sit on the swing in the backyard and spit grape seeds at each other, how they went everywhere together in their matched overalls. I poured wine and Vicky brought in fresh French bread. Over dinner and through a second bottle of wine he told me about his sister, Cherie. Gave me her last address and a small photo, an old school picture, the only one he had, he said, because she never liked having her picture taken.

“I’ll poke around and see what I can come up with,” I told him. “I’ll be in touch. You’re still at the house?”

“Same bunk, same book.”

I showed him out and started stacking dishes. Vicky had picked up the photograph.

“She looks so ve r y young.”

“At our age, everybody starts looking young. Cops look like kids to me these days.”

“She also looks like someone who knows the best pa r t of he r life is al r eady ove r ,” Vicky said, and was sad the rest of the night.

In the morning I checked in at the loan company, picked up my slips and, finding two of the leads out in Metairie, where Cherie’s last address also was, headed that way.

The first lead took me to an apartment house reminiscent of rabbit warrens where a dirty-faced adolescent female opened the door along a length of chain and said, “Yeah?”

“Your folks home, young lady?”

“Naw. Ain’t never home ’fore ‘leven or twelve.”

“You get your sweet little butt back over here, LuAnne, and tell whoever that asshole is you’re busy,” a voice said inside the apartment.

“You know where I might reach them at work?”

She shrugged.

“Excuse me, LuAnne,” I said, and kicked the door in.

He was on the couch, thirty-eight or forty maybe, wearing a doubleknit leisure suit with the pants pulled down around his ankles.

“Don’t bother getting up,” I said. “If you do, I’ll kick your balls into Oklahoma. Go put your clothes on, honey,” I told the girl. “You know about statutory rape, mister? Even prison-yard hardasses take a dim view of it.”

“You a cop, man?”

“Are you out of here?”

“You told me not to move. ’Sides, I’m the girl’s uncle.”

He was coming up off the couch and I kicked him in the belly. He grunted and fell back.

“This is a child , asshole.”

After a while, when he was able, he hauled himself afoot, pulled up his pants and left. The girl looked after him, tears forming in her round eyes.

“World’s full of them,” I said.

“I loved him,” she said.

The second lead came up just as empty: a used book and record store not far off Veterans near Causeway. It had that fusty, peculiar smell they all have. A girl of twenty or so sat behind the counter braiding lustrous black hair that, unbraided, must have reached her knees.

“I’m looking for Frances Villon,” I said.

“Frances Villon?” Tentatively.

“I was given this address. I could have the spelling wrong.” I spelled it out. “She’d arranged a loan from us.”

“Frances Villon.” First with an English pronunciation, then the French. Her eyes wandered off and came back. “I get it-Francois Villon.”

“What?”

“You’ve been had. Francois Villon was a fifteenth-century French poet. I don’t think he’d be in need of any loans just now.

‘I am Francois to my great dismay,

Born in Paris, up Pontoise way;

By a fathom of hempen cord I’ll sway

While my neck discovers what my buttocks weigh.’

Someone’s idea of a joke, huh?”

“Any idea who might be inclined to that kind of joke?”

“Not really, but it’s kind of appropriate.”

“What do you mean?”

“Villon himself was a professional thief.”

The address I had for Cherie Smith led me to a converted garage apartment behind a lumberyard. It was empty; through the front window I saw only a sack of trash and some sweepings on the bare floor. I tried the door. It was locked.