The Long-Legged Fly

rise. Up. Daytime. Work. Remember?”

“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.

“Forget work. Stay here with me.”

“Bad night?”

“Everything it promised to be and more.”

“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 suckered him into an alley, kids, all of them. They closed him off, beat him and took his gun, then every one of them buggered him. When they were done with that, they slit him open like a pig, straight across the belly.”

“You’ve seen worse.”

“There was no reason for any of it. They weren’t doing anything; he wasn’t pursuing them. They didn’t even know him. And someone else stood there behind a window and watched the whole thing happen before he even thought to call. What’s wrong with this country, Lew?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never known.”

She sat up part way, leaning on an elbow.

“These last months, everytime I hear a code called to ER I freeze up inside, something vital stops. I dream some days that I answer one of those calls and it’s you there on the gurney, face rolling toward 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, cruel or indifferent-and that’s the most of us, I guess-we all die. Master and slave, elite and proletariat, elect and preterite alike. But no one should ever have to die like he did, in some filthy alley bleeding to death while the blokes who did it are standing over 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 another’s pain, fluff a pillow, change the sheets, listen?”

“Is that so little?”

“No,” she said, “of course 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 careful, 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