Ghost of a Flea

with this sort of thing these last several years. I would hope that you might call on me. Not that I think for a moment you will.”

Time ticked in the wires.

“I am hardly a monster, Mr. Griffin. Few of us are. It’s not as though I’m sitting here with drums going, waiting for those mighty gates to open.”

“I am a man, Jupiter.”

“Ah yes. Sartre, to balance my own King Kong. Interesting, isn’t it? How, increasingly, we seem to live our lives as allusion, reference-not directly, but refracted from something else.”

The CD player had shut itself off, dropping the house into a supernal quiet.

“Thousands of years ago, Mr. Griffin. Thousands of years ago, something, a creature who had not existed before, lugged itself up out of the slime and sat drying on a rock, looking around. It had no idea what it was, what it would become. Even where it was. But at that point, even with no words for it, the creature knew two things.

“It had knowledge of itself. It was self-aware.

“And it knew, as it struggled even to breathe in this new world, that it hurt.”

Without response to that, I remained silent.

“Of course, personally, I have also the pragmatic, absolutely nonphilosophical consolation of knowing that, for me, the pain will soon be over. An unfair advantage, some might suggest.”

“I’m sorry,” I said after a moment.

“Why should you be? From your vantage, no doubt, I’ve earned my pain.”

“We all do, in our own way. Just that sometimes it seems so out of proportion.”

“Yes. Yes, sometimes it does.” A cough started up in his chest, like a fist closing down; I heard him turn it away, end it, by sheer force of will. “I do apologize for calling so late.”

“Not a problem.”

“Good…. I should hate to impose.” A man walked slowly past on the street outside, a step or so off the curb, looking in. He was shabbily dressed, eyes bright with something: drink, fever, too many lost battles, too much time alone. “I wonder if you may have given any further thought to what we last spoke of.”

“Alouette, you mean.”

“I suppose I do.” When I said no more, he added:

“She’s well?”

“She is. As is the child.”

“Good. Very good. And may I ask concerning the … notes … she has been receiving?”

“Dr. Guidry, I understand and appreciate your concern, but that’s something you really need to take up with Alouette directly, not with me.”

“You’re right, of course. And I’d be happy to do so, if only she’d take my calls. At any rate, Mr. Griffin, forgive me. And thank you for your time, of which already I’ve taken up far too much.”

“Not at all. Good night, sir.”

I heard the receiver get set down and was about to hang up myself when a voice came on the line.

“Mr. Griffin, Catherine Molino here. You remember me?”

“Of course I do.”

“Thank you for talking to him. He doesn’t have much to look forward to these days. Perhaps …”

“Yes?”

“I was thinking that maybe someday it would be possible for you to come and see Dr. Guidry, speak to him about his daughter. That would mean a great deal to him.”

“Why would I want to do that, Mrs. Molino?”

She didn’t speak for several moments. “Because he is old and sick and alone, Mr. Griffin. Or simply because we’re all human.”

Without waiting for a reply, she said, “Thank you, Mr. Griffin. Good night,” and hung up.

Chapter Twenty-Two

I opened my eyes. Another eye hovered inches away, regarding mine. A rat. Its whiskers twitched. Obviously, whatever I was, I was too big to eat here. But he could go get help, haul me back home for later.

I sat up. Hard to believe what effort that took. For a moment the rat stood watching. But I was moving around now, no longer an easy target, alleyway carryout. The rat moved off towards the wall, sniffing at better prospects there.

I was, indeed, in an alley. I think we are in rat’s alley where the dead men lost their bones. But I wasn’t dead. I wouldn’t feel this bad if I were dead.

Yards off, doorway-size, an oblong of street and buildings showed. Light spilled from the doorway. Out there, cars passed, people hurried by on foot, life went on. Brick walls around me, a three-foot pile of black garbage bags, Dumpster marked Autumn House.

I felt at my pockets. Wallet gone. Money. One arm of my sportcoat torn almost away, tie crushed, blood and dirt ground into my shirt, one shoe off and possibly gone missing.

Back home, on my own, I’d found the release and deliverance of literature. Here in the city I’d been introduced to another: alcohol. And I’d taken to it, as my father would have said, like a duck to water. River was whiskey and I was a duck, bluesman Buster Robinson sang, I’d dive to the bottom and never come up.

Bracing myself on the brick wall, I stood. Life’s oblong there at the mouth of the alley wobbled and stood still. I staggered towards it. Last thing I could remember was this long conversation with a cabdriver in some anonymous bar off Canal, vague impressions of new rounds being ordered and other folk arriving and departing, among them two young women in town from Alabama who agreed to accompany us to the Seven Seas for a splash of true New Orleans. Then it all went blank.

Blanks and blurs were things I got used to.

I also got used to squad cars and cops asking questions.

“Bad night, boy?” one of them said. He stood, legs wide apart, just outside the alley. And barely out of high school from the look of him.

“You’d appear to be some beat up.” That was the other one, hanging close by the car. Over the years, quantities of food dished up in New Orleans portions had made him a walking equator. Limp hair that looked like a fig leaf draped across his scalp. “You okay?”

I ducked my head, ambiguously. Could be agreeing, indicating I didn’t know. Say as little as possible always: I’d learned that.

“Where you from?”

I tried, but for the life of me I couldn’t come up with an address. Too many cheap apartments and rooms, the latest of them taken just a few days back. Some place off Jefferson, I thought.

“From the city, then.”

“Like we didn’t know?”

“Gonna take a little ride here.”

Led to the car, I saw cement canals, establishments on the far shore. Metairie, then. Metairie cops were famous for picking up homeless and ferrying them back just across the line to New Orleans, dropping them there. Police equivalent of sweeping dirt under the rug. Threat dealt with. City’s problem now.

Truth to tell, I fared little better back on familiar turf. Next time I woke, it was to similar environment and circumstances. The Metairie cops had dropped me off on Jefferson Highway and I’d started making my way towards home. Somewhere just the other side of Claiborne two guys came up and asked if I could help them with bus fare. They were pissed when I said I couldn’t and really pissed when they found out I’d told them the truth and had nothing, no money, absolutely nothing of worth or use, on me.

“Sir, are you okay?”

From all evidence, no.

New Orleans’s finest this time. Again I’m slumped up against a building somewhere and it’s morning. Again I