Charles De Lint: Dreams Underfoot

I tried to stay awake. I lay beside her, propped up on an elbow and stroked her shoulder, her hair. I marveled at the softness of her skin, the silkiness of her hair. In repose, the harsh lines were gone from her face again. I wished that there was some way I could just keep all her unhappiness at bay, that I could stay awake and protect her forever, but sleep snuck up on me all the same and took me away.

Just as I went under, I thought I heard her say, “You’ll know other lovers.”

But not like her. Never like her.

When I woke the next morning, I was alone on the sleeping bag, except for Ben who lay purring on the bag where she had lain.

It was early, too early for anyone to be awake in any of the houses, but I wouldn’t have cared. I stood naked in the frosty air and slowly got dressed. Ben protested when I shooed him off the sleeping bag and rolled it up.

The walk home, with the sleeping bag rolled up under my arm, was never so long.

No, Tally wasn’t a ghost, though she haunts the city’s streets at night—just as she haunts my mind.

I know her now. She’s like a rose bush grown old, gone wild; untrimmed, neglected for years, the thorns become sharper, more bitter; her foliage spreading, grown out of control, reaching high and wide, while the center chokes and dies. The blossoms that remain are just small now, hidden in the wild growth, memories of what they once were.

I know her now. She’s the spirit that connects the notes of a tune—the silences in between the sounds; the resonance that lies under the lines I put down on a page. Not a ghost, but a spirit all the same: the city’s heart and soul.

I don’t wonder about her origin. I don’t wonder whether she was here first, and the city grew around her, or if the city created her. She just is.

Tallulah. Tally. A reckoning of accounts.

I think of the old traveling hawkers who called at private houses in the old days and sold their wares on the tally system—part payment on account, the other part due when they called again. Tallymen.

The payments owed her were long overdue, but we no longer have the necessary coin to settle our accounts with her. So she changes; just as we change. I can remember a time when the city was a safer place, how when I was young, we never locked our doors and we knew every neighbor on our block.

Kids growing up today wouldn’t even know what I’m talking about; the people my own age have forgotten. The old folks remember, but who listens to them? Most of us wish that they didn’t exist; that they’d just take care of themselves so that we can get on with our own lives.

Not all change is for the good.

I still go out on my rambles, most every night. I hope for a secret tryst, but all I do is write stories again. As the new work fills my notebooks, I’ve come to realize that the characters in my stories were so real because I really did want to get close to people, I really did want to know them. It was just easier to do it on paper, one step removed.

I’m trying to change that now.

I look for her on my rambles. She’s all around me, of course, in every brick of every building, in every whisper of wind as it scurries down an empty street. She’s a cab’s lights at 3:00 A.M., a siren near dawn, a shuffling bag lady pushing a squeaky grocery cart, a darkeyed cat sitting on a shadowed stoop.

She’s all around me, but I can’t find her. I’m sure I’d recognize her I don’t want you to see what I will become.

—but I can’t be sure. The city can be so many things. It’s a place where the familiar can become strange with just the blink of an eye. And if I saw her

You wouldn’t recognize me and I wouldn’t want you to.

—what would I do? If she could, she’d come to me, but that mean spirit still grips the streets. I see it in people’s faces; I feel it in the coldness that’s settled in their hearts. I don’t think I would recognize her; I don’t think I’d want to. I have the grisgris of her memory in my mind; I have an old sleeping bag rolled up in a corner of my hall closet; I’m here if she needs me.

I have this fantasy that it’s still not too late; that we can still drive that mean spirit away and keep it at bay. The city would be a better place to live in if we could and I think we owe it to her. I’m doing my part. I write about her

They’re about me. They’re your stories, I can taste your presence in every word, but each of them’s a piece of me, too.

—about her strange wonder and her magic and all. I write about how she changed me, how she taught me that getting close can hurt, but not getting close is an even lonelier hurt. I don’t preach; I just tell the stories.

But I wish the ache would go away. Not the memories, not the grisgris that keeps her real inside me, but the hurt. I could live without that hurt.

Sometimes I wish I’d never met her.

Maybe one day I’ll believe that lie, but I hope not.