get rid of it?”
Davis lights both cigarettes. Beltrane wants to grab the man, but instead he takes a draw and the nicotine hits his bloodstream. A spike of euphoria rolls through him with a magnificent energy.
“I don’t want to tell you that,” Davis says. “I want to tell you why you should keep it. And why you shouldn’t go see your daughter tomorrow.”
Beltrane’s mouth opens. He’s half smiling. “You crazy,” he says softly.
“What do you think of, when you think of New Orleans?”
He feels a cramp in his stomach. His joints begin sending telegraphs of distress. He can’t let this happen. “Fuck you. I’m leaving.”
Davis is still as Beltrane hoists himself out of his chair. “The shelter won’t let you back in. You said it yourself; you gave up the bed when you left. Where are you going to go?”
“I’ll go to Lila’s. It don’t matter if it’s late. She’ll take me in.”
“Will she? With streets winding through your body? With lamps in your eyes? With rain blowing out of your heart? No. She will slam that door in your face and lock it tight. She will think she is visited by something from hell. She will
Beltrane stands immobile, one hand still clutching the chair, his eyes fixed not on anything in this room but instead on that awful scene. He hasn’t seen Lila’s face in twenty years, but he can see it now, contorted in fear and disgust at the sight of him. He feels something shift in his body, something harden in his limbs. He squeezes his eyes shut and wills his body to keep its shape.
“Please,” says Davis. “Sit back down.”
Beltrane sits.
“You’re in between places right now. People think it’s the ghost that lives between places, but it’s not. It’s us. Tell me what you think of when you think of New Orleans.”
Moving up St. Charles Avenue, Beltrane arrived at the Avenue Pub, which shed light onto the sidewalk through its open French doors and cast music and voices into the night. He peered through the windows before entering, to see who was working. The good ones would let him come in, have a few drinks. The others would turn him away at the door, forcing him to decide between walking all the way back down to the French Quarter for his booze, or just calling it a night and going back to his wrecked car at the cab station.
He was in luck; it was John.
He stepped inside and was greeted by people calling his name. He held up a hand in greeting, getting into character. This was a white bar. There were certain expectations he’d have to fulfill if he was going to get his drinks. Some college kid—he had short hair and always smelled of perfume; he could never remember his name— grabbed his hand in a powerful squeeze. “’Trane! My
“Awright, awright,” Beltrane said, letting the kid crush his hand. It was going to hurt all night.
The kid yelled over the crowd, “Yo, John, set me up one of them shots for ’Trane here!”
John smiled. “You’re evil, dude.”
“Oh, whatever, man! Pour me one, too! I can’t let him go down that road all by hisself!”
Beltrane maneuvered to an open spot at the bar beside a pretty white girl he’d never seen before and an older guy wearing an electrician’s jumpsuit. The girl made a disgusted noise and inched away from him. The electrician nodded at him and said his name. The college kid joined him in a moment with two milky gray shots in his hand. He pushed the larger one at Beltrane.
“Dude! I’m worried, bro. I don’t know if you’re man enough for a shot like this.”
“Shiiiit. I a man!”
“This is a man’s drink, dog!”
“Dat’s what I am! I a
“Then do the shot!”
He did the shot. It tasted vile, of course, like paint thinner and yogurt. They always gave him some horrible shit to drink. But it was real booze, and it slammed into his brain like a wrecking ball. He coughed and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
The college kid slapped his back. “Shit, ’Trane! You okay? I thought you said you was a man!”
He tried to talk but he couldn’t get his throat to unclench. He ended up just waving his hand dismissively.
Beltrane screwed a bleary eye in the bartender’s direction, who moved in a series of ripples and left a ghostly trail in his wake. A beer seemed to sprout from the bar top like a weed. He held out the bag of shrimp he’d gotten earlier. “Heat this up for me, John.”
When John came back a few minutes later with the bag, Beltrane said, “You seen Ivy tonight?”
“She was here earlier. You still trying to hit that, you pervert?”
Beltrane just laughed. He clutched his beer and settled into his customary reverie as bar life broke and flowed around him, wrapping him in warmth like a slow-moving river. He downed the shots as they appeared before him and concentrated on keeping them down. Somewhere in the drift of the night a girl materialized beside him, her back half turned to him as she spoke with somebody on her other side. She had a tattoo of a Japanese print on her shoulder, which dipped below the line of her sleeveless white shirt. She was delicate and beautiful. He brushed her arm with the back of his hand, trying to make it seem accidental, and she turned to face him.
“Hey, ’Trane,” she said. Her eyes shed a warm yellow light. He wanted to touch her, but there was a divide he couldn’t cross.
“We all God’s children,” he said.
“Yeah, I know.” She looked at the boy she was talking to and rolled her eyes. When she looked at him again she had raised windows for eyes, with curtains blowing out of them, framing a yellow-lit room. Below them, her face declined in wet shingles, flowing with little rivulets of rainwater. It took him a moment to realize the water was flowing from inside her. Behind her, her friend rose to his feet; wood and plaster cracked and split as he stood. His eyes were windows, too, but the lights there had been blown out. Water gushed from them. The bar had gone silent; in his peripheral vision he saw that he was ringed with wet, shining faces.
A figure moved to the window in the girl’s face. It was backlit; he couldn’t make out who it was. Water was rising around his feet, soaking through his shoes, making him cold.
Davis says, “There’s some people I want you to meet.” His voice is so soft Beltrane can barely hear it. Davis is sitting on the edge of his desk, looming over him. His eyes are moist.
Beltrane blinks. “I got to get out of here.”
“Just wait. Please?”
“You can’t keep me here. I ain’t a prisoner.”
“No, I know. Your … your ghost is very strong. I’ve never seen one that was a … a city, before.”
Beltrane is suddenly uncomfortable with Davis’s proximity to him. “What you doing this close? Back off a me, man.”
Davis takes a deep breath and slides off his desk, moving back to his side of it. He collapses into his chair. “There’s some people I want you to meet,” he says. “Will you stay just a little bit longer?”
The thought of going outside into this strange city does not appeal to Beltrane. He doesn’t know the neighborhood, doesn’t know which places are safe for homeless people to go and which places are off-limits— whether due to police or thugs or just because it’s someone else’s turf. He was always safe in New Orleans, which he knew as well as he knew his own face. But new places are dangerous.
“You got another cigarette?” he says. Davis seems to relax a little and passes one to him. After it’s lit, Beltrane says, “How come I can’t get rid of it?”
“You can,” says Davis. “It’s just that you shouldn’t. Do you … do you really know what a ghost
“This must be where you start preaching.”
“A ghost is something that fills a hole inside you, where you lost something. It’s a memory. Sometimes it can be painful, and sometimes it can be scary. Sometimes it’s hard to tell where the ghost ends and real life begins. I know you know what I mean.”
Beltrane just looks away, affecting boredom. But he can feel his heart turning in his chest and sweat bristling
