James Sallis - The Long-Legged Fly

An hour or so later I awoke, up to my neck in cold water.

I pulled the plug, toweled off and had another shot of scotch. It was almost two o’clock. My head hit the pillow already dreaming.

In the morning there was light, lots of it, and red hair, lots of that too. Then Vicky’s face close to mine: “ R ise and shine. O r at ve r y least, r ise. Up. Daytime. Wo r k. R emembe r?”

“This the way you treat your patients?”

“You don’t know?”

Still in her whites, she lay down alongside me. On the pocket of her uniform top there was a large yellow-orange stain, a starlike sprinkle of blood spots across the front of it.

“Fo r get wo r k. Stay he r e with me.”

“Bad night?”

“Eve r ything it p r omised to be and mo r e.”

“Maybe you should be thankful. Few things are what they promise, these days.”

She nuzzled into me, took a deep breath and said, “We had a cop come in tonight, Lew. Some gang had sucke r ed him into an alley, kids, all of them. They closed him off, beat him and took his gun, then eve r y one of them bugge r ed him. When they we r e done with that, they slit him open like a pig, st r aight ac r oss the belly.”

“You’ve seen worse.”

“The r e was no r eason fo r any of it. They we r en’t doing anything; he wasn’t pu r suing them. They didn’t even know him. And someone else stood the r e behind a window and watched the whole thing happen befo r e he even thought to call. What’s w r ong with this count r y, Lew?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never known.”

She sat up part way, leaning on an elbow.

“These last months, eve r ytime I hea r a code called to E R I f r eeze up inside, something vital stops. I d r eam some days that I answe r one of those calls and it’s you the r e on the gu r ney, face r olling towa r d me.”

“Everybody used to say my grandfather was too mean to die.”

“But he did.”

“He didn’t seem very mean by then.”

“We all die, Lew. Good, c r uel or indiffe r ent-and that’s the most of us, I guess-we all die. Maste r and slave, elite and p r oleta r iat, elect and p r ete r ite alike. But no one should eve r have to die like he did, in some filthy alley bleeding to death while the blokes who did it are standing ove r you laughing.”

I held her for a long time then. And finally said, “I would have died if it hadn’t been for you, Vicky. But you were there, and it was so very obvious that you cared. I’m sure I’m not the first one who’s felt that way.”

Tears runneled her cheeks. “And is that all we can do, Lew? Just ease anothe r ’s pain, fluff a pillow, change the sheets, listen?”

“Is that so little?”

“No,” she said, “of cou r se not. But hold me, Lew.”

Afterwards she fell asleep beside me, still in whites. I dozed off myself and woke ravenous.

I closed the blinds so she’d sleep on. Quietly found underwear, socks, shirt and suit, closed the bedroom door, opened it again and went back for belt and shoes. Showered, shaved and dressed. Then went into the kitchen for a breakfast (or lunch perhaps, considering the hour) of leftover quiche and custard. During a second cup of coffee the phone rang and I jumped at it, trying to keep it from disturbing Vicky, overturning my chair. It was Manny from the loan company, wanting to know if I was coming in today.

“Got a stack of ’em, Lew.”

“Sorry. Overslept. Give me twenty minutes-fifteen if there’s a tailwind.”

As I was leaving, Vicky opened the bedroom door.

“Be ca r eful, Lew,” she said.

There was, indeed, a stack of them. I sorted through, first picking out names I knew from other times-those were usually quick collections, all you had to do was show up-then the ones close-in to town. After thirty minutes or so I figured I had a week’s work and told Manny so.

“So? Anybody else we’ve had, it would be three weeks’ work. There’s a few would have fainted or run home to mama at the prospect. Get out of here, Lew, and don’t come back till you’re ready to.”

“With the cash, of course.”

“Or some reasonable facsimile.”

“Thanks, Manny.”

I was almost out the door when he said, “I hear your woman’s leaving you, Lew.”

“Maybe. How’d you know?”

He shrugged and splayed his fingers against the desktop. “People talk. It gets ’round. You know.” He looked up from the desk, eyes huge behind glasses. “She’s pretty special, huh?”

“Aren’t they all?” Then, ashamed, “Yes. She is.”

“Good luck, Lew. I hope it works out good for you, you deserve it.”

“Thanks. Hey, can I go get your money now?”

“Absolutely. Mine and anyone else’s you happen to come across. Wouldn’t think of stopping you.”

I put in a solid ten hours. The overall take was $4,617. Manny got forty percent of recovery. My own commission was ten percent of Manny’s cut. Short primer in capitalism.

Vicky was already at work when I got home. She’d left a note on the fridge: Great morning. I missed you tonight. Sleep well. Ta. In the oven she’d left a casserole; a bowl of soup was atop the stove, fresh bread wrapped in a warm towel nearby.

On the bedside table I found the book she was currently reading. Stiff yellow cover with title and author in black, no blurbs or jacket illustrations. I opened it at random and read, translating word-by-word as I went along:

“Though it was only an Autumn Sunday, I had been born again, life lay intact before me, for that morning, after a parade of temperate days, there had occurred a cold fog not clearing until almost midday; and a change in the weather is sufficient to create the world and ourselves anew.”

If only that were true, I thought. If anything were sufficient to create the world and ourselves anew.

I remembered, only a few months ago, walking along the river with the words tabula rasa and palimpsest rolling about in my mind.

But the world doesn’t change, and mostly we don’t either, we just go on looking into the same mirror, trying on different hats and expressions and new sets of vice, opinion and prejudice; pretending, as children do, to see and feel things that are not there.

Like most small Southern towns, the place I was born and grew up in had its share of drunks. Lots of folks drank, some heavily, but of them all-those who agelessly, perpetually stumbled and raged along the streets (dirt for many years, then gravel, eventually blacktopped); others in clothes just as threadbare though aggressively clean, who were themselves pie-eyed most weekends and evenings-of them all there was one that everybody talked about. Almost as though this were an elected, honorary position, or something like the African griots , mavericks central to their culture yet reviled. Griots in Senegambian society sang the praises of their social leaders, committed to memory epic genealogies which became the oral history of their culture, sang and played in groups to set rhythms for farmers and others at their work. Yet when the griot died he could not be buried among his society’s respectable folk. His body, instead, was left to rot in a hollow tree.

The one everybody in my town talked about was a barber, “a damned good barber” they would say, shaking their heads, “if he could just leave that bottle alone.” (Others added: “And that pussy.”) I grew up playing with his son, Jerry-a schoolteacher now-because we both lived way outside town, and the black-white line blurred as you got farther out. Neither of us had much of anyone else to play with.