almost as if he had returned to earth as someone new. He could smell the growing fetid dank stench from his bum’s overcoat and he held up his hand in the darkness and imagined that his fingernails were clogged with dirt. It used to be that the days his nails were filthy were happy days, because that meant he’d spent hours in the garden behind his house on the Cape. His stomach clenched and he could hear the whomping sound of the gasoline spread throughout the farmhouse catching fire. It was a memory in his ear that seemed to come from some other era, pulled from some distant past by an archaeologist.
Ricky looked up, and pictured Virgil and Merlin sitting in the alleyway across from him. He could make out their faces, envision each nuance and mannerism of the portly attorney and the statuesque young woman. A guide to Hell, that’s what she told me, he thought. She’d been right, probably more right than she had any idea. He sensed the presence of the third member of the triumvirate, but Rumplestiltskin was still a collection of shadows, blending with the night that flooded the alleyway like a steadily rising tide.
His legs had stiffened. He didn’t know how many miles he’d walked since his arrival in Boston. His stomach was empty, and he opened the package of cupcakes and ate them both in two or three gulps. The chocolate hit him like a low-rent amphetamine, giving him some energy. Ricky pushed himself to his feet and turned toward the pit of the alleyway.
He could hear a faint sound and he craned toward it, before recognizing it for what it was: a voice singing softly and out of key.
Ricky moved cautiously toward the noise. To his side he heard some animal, he guessed a rat, scuttling away with a scratching sound. He fingered the small flashlight in his hand, but tried to let his eyes adjust to the pitch-black in the alleyway. This was difficult, and he stumbled once or twice, his feet getting tangled in unrecognizable debris. He almost fell once, but kept his balance and continued moving forward.
He sensed he was almost on top of the man when the singing stopped.
There was a second or two of dark silence, and then he heard a question: “Who’s there?”
“Just me,” Ricky replied.
“Don’t come any closer,” came the reply. “I’ll hurt you. Kill you, maybe. I’ve got a knife.”
The words were slurred with the looseness that drink provides. Ricky had half hoped the man would have passed out, but instead, he was still reasonably alert. But not too mobile, Ricky noted, for there had been no sounds of scrambling out of the way or trying to hide. He did not believe the man actually had a weapon, but he wasn’t completely certain. He remained stock-still.
“This is my alley,” the man continued. “Get out.”
“Now it’s my alley, too,” Ricky said. Ricky took a deep breath and launched himself into the realm he’d known he would have to find in order to communicate with the man. It was like diving into a pool of dark water, unsure what lay just beneath the surface. Welcome madness, Ricky said, trying to summon up all the education that he’d gained in his prior life and existence. Create delusion. Establish doubt. Feed paranoia. “He told me we’re supposed to speak together. That’s what he told me. ‘Find the man in the alleyway and ask him his name.’ ”
The man hesitated. “Who told you?”
“Who do you think?” Ricky answered. “He did. He speaks to me and tells me who to seek out, and this I need to do because he’s told me to, and so I did, and here I am.” He rattled this near-gibberish out swiftly.
“Who speaks to you?” The questions came out of the dark with a fervent quality that warred with the drink that clouded the man’s already crisscrossed mind.
“I’m not allowed to say his name, not out loud or where someone might hear me, shhhh! But he says that you will know why I’ve come, if you’re the right one, and I won’t have to explain any further.”
The man seemed to hesitate, trying to sort through this nonsensical command.
“Me?” he asked.
Ricky nodded in the darkness. “If you’re the right one. Are you?”
“I don’t know,” was the reply. Then, after a momentary pause, the addition, “I thought so.”
Ricky moved swiftly to buttress the delusion. “He gives me the names, you see, and I am supposed to seek them out and ask them the questions, because I need to find the right one. That’s what I do, over and over, and that’s what I have to do, and are you the right one? I need to know, you see. Otherwise this is all wasted.”
The man seemed to be trying to absorb all this.
“How do I know to trust you?” the man slurred.
Ricky immediately slipped the small flashlight out and held it underneath his chin, the way a child might when trying to spook his friends around a campfire. Ricky flashed the light up, illuminating his face, then instantly swung it over at the man, taking seconds to survey the surroundings. He saw the man was lying with his back up against the brick wall, the bottle of wine in his hand. There was some other debris, and a cardboard box to his side that Ricky guessed was home. He switched off the light.
“There,” Ricky said as forcefully as he could. “Do you need more proof?”
The man shifted. “I can’t think straight,” he moaned. “My head is hurting.”
For an instant, Ricky was tempted to simply reach down and take what it was that he needed. His hands twitched with the seduction of violence. He was alone in a deserted alley with the man, and he thought, the people who had put him in that location wouldn’t have hesitated to use force in the slightest. It was only by the greatest sense of control that he was able to fight off the urge. He knew what he wanted, only he wanted the man to give it up. “Tell me who you are!” Ricky half whispered, half shouted.
“I want to be alone,” the man pleaded. “I didn’t do anything. I don’t want to be here anymore.”
“You aren’t the right one,” Ricky said. “I can tell. But I need to be sure. Tell me who you are.”
The man sobbed. “What do you want?”
“Your name. I want your name.”
Ricky could hear tears forming behind every word the man spoke. “I don’t want to say,” he said. “I’m scared. Do you mean to kill me?”
“No,” Ricky said. “I will not harm you if you prove to me who you are.”
The man paused, as if considering this question. “I have a wallet,” he said slowly.
“Give it here!” Ricky demanded sharply. “It’s the only way to be sure!”
The man scrambled and scratched, and reached inside his coat. In the darkness, his eyes barely adjusted, Ricky could see the man holding something out in front of him. Ricky grabbed it and thrust it into his own pocket.
The man started to cry then. Ricky softened his voice.
“You don’t have to worry anymore,” Ricky said. “I will leave you alone, now.”
“Please,” said the man. “Just go away.”
Ricky reached down and removed the bottle of cheap wine that he’d purchased at the liquor store. He also grasped a twenty-dollar bill from the lining of his coat. He thrust these to the man. “Here,” he said. “Here is something because you weren’t the right man, but that is no fault of your own, and he wants me to compensate you for bothering you. Is that fair?”
The man clutched the bottle. He didn’t reply for a moment, but then seemed to nod. “Who are you?” he asked Ricky again, with a mingling of fear and confusion still riding every word.
Ricky smiled inwardly and thought there are some advantages to a classical education. “Noman is my name,” he said.
“Norman?”
“No. Noman. So, if anyone asks who came to visit you this night, you can say it was Noman.” Ricky presumed that the average cop on the beat would have about the same patience for the tale that Polyphemus’s cyclops brothers did, and the fiction created centuries beforehand by another man adrift in a strange
