James Sallis - Bluebottle

Portions were not generous. Her name, a few scenes of her coming by Amano's trailer to talk or just to get away after her husband (?) became (verbally? physically?) abusive. He'd stomp around railing at her for hours, or he'd slam out the door into his pickup and be gone all night, or, worst of all, he'd come back half drunk with friends in tow and together they'd go on drinking long into the night, talking about their rights, how niggers were taking their jobs, and how things had to be put back in place again, way they were meant to be.

One entry contained a brief description of the woman he called Jodie. No way of knowing whether this might be anymore or less fanciful than the name, or, for that matter, the character herself. Maybe he'd made them all up, person, name, appearance, or had embroidered the details past recognition, like blowing up rubber gloves into fantastic rooster's combs. But it was worth a try.

I started off with the trailers close by Amano's. At the first, no one was home, or had been home for some time, judging from the mass of handbills jammed into the door frame. At the second an elderly woman came to the door in walker and high top tennis shoes and said that yes she lived alone here now since Max passed on six and a half years ago and not a day went by but she missed him, meals were the worst so she didn't eat much anymore.

Third pass, I flew low over a woman who I hoped (surely they couldn't be all hers) was running an illegal daycare center.

Fourth and fifth stops got me variations of TV Blaring With (Husband Wife Son Daughter Other) Shouting Above The Din To Offstage.

Women in housecoats or print dresses gone perilously thin. Guys in underwear shirts and pants with buttons undone at the waist, accessorized with beer cans. Young kids taking care, shepherdlike, of younger ones. A gloriously drunk late-middle-age man in corduroy suit gone shiny with wear, narrow yellow knittie, blue shirt frayed to white threads at the collar; he answered the door holding a copy of Dunsany's Last Book of Wonder.

"My husband's not here," the woman said at my twelfth or thirteenth stop. She'd barely got the door open before she said it, and I had the feeling she said it a lot to bill collectors, rent collectors, collectors for the Times Picayune, postmen needing three cents additional postage on a letter.

Brownish-blond hair pulled back in a thick braid, like a loaf offine bread. Small, perfectly formed ears. Eyes close-set, scar from a childhood accident bisecting one eyebrow.

"I'm looking for an old friend," I said, "Ray Adams," watching for the reaction. I wasn't disappointed. "It might be better if I came in."

She withdrew fromthe door and stood with her back against a closet, giving me just enough space to squeeze inside.

"Yeah, okay," she said.

The description hadn't included the cicatrix jagging down her jawline and neck, but then, diat was recent. She wore oversize shorts and a white blouse with long sleeves, no shoes. She looked as though she'd gone to bed a little girl and woke up forty years old.

"I don't have anything to offer you. Coffee or anything, I mean. Bobby forgot to give me money. He meant to."

Momentarily I wondered: meant to give her money, or meant to forget? And was her putting it like that a form of subversive aggression? Maybe this woman, too, knew something about dissembling, how it lets you strike out without seeming to, how it lets you go on.

'That's all right."

Then she realized that I was waiting for her to sit before I did, and looked embarrassed by it. She dragged a chair over from the dining nook. I sank into, decidedly not onto, the couch. It was covered by a throw, a fits-all dark paisley cloth reminiscent of bedspreads, full of folds and creases like time itself. Things cellophane- and crackerlike crinkled and crackled under me. I peered at her through my own peaked knees as through a gunsight.

"You knew about Ray's…" What was the right word? "… masquerade."

She nodded. "And you know Ray?"

'To tell the truth, I haven't met him. I am looking for him, though. I was hoping you could help me with that."

"You said you were his friend."

"I did. I said that. Is your name Jodie?"

"Josie. From Josephine, but nobody calls me that. What are parents thinking when they give names like that to a kid? Josephine, that's someone with a handful of rings wearing one of those, what do you call it, those flowery tent things-muumuus. So you call yourself Jo. Names don't get much plainer than that, what kind of life are you going to have?"

She stopped herself and looked around without any seeming awareness of the irony of what she'd just said. I had the sense that her chatter didn't come from nervousness; that this was simply the way her mind worked and she allowed it to go on doing so in my presence. I also had the sense that she'd made diat choice.

"Josie."

Her eyes came back to me. "Yes, sir?"

'When did you last see Ray?"

"It's been a long time. Is he all right?"

"I don't know. That's part of what I'm trying to find out You have any reason to diink he might not be?"

She glanced at me and almost immediately away again. "I've been thinking about getting new curtains. Add some color, brighten things up." We sat together looking at the weighdess, paper-thin aluminum frames, curtains like the windows themselves curiously foreshortened, dwarfish, out of proportion. Pictures of teakettles and potted plants on them.

"Were you and Ray close, Josie?"

"I guess. I couldn't say anything to Bobby, naturally.

But Ray was always there. Any time day or night, his light would usually be on. I got lonely or scared, all I had to do was walk over and sit down, talk to him. At first he just listened, being nice. But when I started talking about Bobby's new friends, I could see him getting interested. I wasn't ever sure why."

"These were the guys talking about their rights?"

"Their rights, and how they were always being kept down. Like they knew squat about being kept down-you know what I mean?"

"Yes. I do." I remembered Himes's identification, as a Negro, with women, and at the same time how terribly he could treat them.

After a moment, she nodded.

'This was the first Ray knew of them?"

"I think so. And at first he didn't say much, but I could see the change come over him whenever I mentioned Bobby'd had some more of his friends by again. Like a light started up behind his eyes. Though he'd never bring it up unless I did. So I started paying attention when they were around, trying to remember, and I'd tell Ray about them, stories they told, things they said. Eventually that was almost all we'd talk about. I was land of sad about that, but it made Ray… I don't know if happy is the right word."

"He never told you why he was so interested?"

"Not in so many words. Like I say, he started asking questions, where Bobby met these friends, what they looked like. Sometimes I'd go over and he wouldn't be in his trailer, he'd be up at Studs, though he hadn't ever gone there before. He didn't even drink before that, that I know of. One of the last times I did see him, he told me if ever I came across him anywhere else, I should act like I didn't know him. He said don't be surprised if whoever he was with was calling him Ray Adams."

"You saw him after that, though."

"Yes, sir. Twice. the first time, it was early morning, eight or so I guess. Bobby'd just gone to work, anyway. Ray came to the door and said he couldn't talk right now, he was writing. Before, he'd always stop what he was doing when I came over, like nothing else mattered. I sure wish I had something to offer you. No one ever comes here much except it's with Bobby. I'm sorry."

I told her it was okay.

"The last time, it was two, diree in the morning. I was up watching TV because Bobby and I'd had a fight and I couldn't sleep after he'd roared off. Some movie about a woman getting even with men who'd abused her, searching them out one by one and killing them, but then she falls in love with the cop who's searching for her and gives it all up. Taking Care, something like that. In the middle of it, Ray shows up. He's just there, suddenly, in my window. I almost pee. 'Bobby's gone, right?' And when I say yeah, he is, he comes on in.