1

Askia would recount how, in her final delirium, his mother had kept on about the letters that Sidi Ben Sylla Mohammed, his father, was supposed to have sent from Paris. And some photos. Which he had never seen. But then one day he went off on the same route as the absent one.  He did not leave to find the missing father. He could live with gaps in his genealogy. He left because of a strange thing his mother had said: “For a long time we were on the road, my son. And wherever we went, people called us Dirty Feet. If you go away, you will understand. Why they called us Dirty Feet.”

Paris. He was standing in front of 102 rue Auguste-Conte that afternoon because three days earlier, in his taxi, a client had intimated that she had photographed Sidi Ben Sylla Mohammed. Scrutinizing his face in the rear-view mirror, she had said, “You remind me of someone. A man with a turban who posed for me a few years ago.” This was not the first time a passenger had used the remind-me-of-someone line on him, just to make conversation. Often enough, the exchange of words would turn into a physical exchange, as an antidote to boredom, that emptiness deep in the skin and the dark night. But the girl that evening had mentioned the turban, a detail echoing the distant words of Kadia Saran, Askia’s mother.  Yes, it was the same refrain: “You look like him Askia,” she had said. “Exactly like him. If you wore a turban, it would be as if he’d come back. Almost as if. Because he won’t come back.” He was an adolescent at the time. More than thirty years had passed and Askia had gone away, but not to confirm his resemblance with the absent father. Still, he did want to see the photos, and the girl answered that he could, though not right away. She had to go to the provinces for one or two weeks to work on a project.

Askia’s travels had begun owing to another of Kadia Saran’s mysterious pronouncements: “Our family is under a curse is to depart again and again, to tramp over thousands of roads until we are exhausted or dead. Look at yourself, my son, always wandering through the night in your taxi.” It was hard to understand his mother and her words. All Askia knew was that his line of work obliged him to rove the streets and highways. Yet in his flight across the pavements of the north, he wanted to verify whether his machinery, programmed to roam, could stop.

A dog and its mistress passed in front of him on the sidewalk. He recalled that as a child, spending his days at the garbage dump of the Trois-Collines, in the squalid tropical suburb where he had landed with his mother, he would mingle with dogs that he did not like. Especially one belonging to old Lem and whose name was Pontos.

2

102 rue Auguste-Comte. A newly refurbished four-storey building. Askia rang the doorbell. To the left of the door, a ground-floor window opened. He imagined it must be the apartment of the concierge, someone—and old lady or gentleman—banished to the desert island of this apartment, the old woman stationed there to challenge visitors with a thousand questions and drive away troublemakers. But it was not an old woman who greeted him. A fifty year-old man thrust his head out.

“I have an appointment with mademoiselle Olia,” Askia said.

“The full name, please?”

“Olia.”

“A given name—doesn’t tell me very much.”

“She has brown hair.”

“That doesn’t tell me much either. Which floor does she live on? You have an appointment? I wasn’t told anything. Sorry, I can’t help you.”

And the man closed the porthole. Askia lingered on the sidewalk. He was not very angry. He simply thought this photographer, the client who had promised to show him portraits of his father, had had some fun at his expense. He headed toward the railings of the Jardin du Luxembourg, directly across the street. The railings were hung with an exhibition.  Pictures suspended in the sky of another world—still shots from a film: Himalaya. L’enfance d’un chef. Images from a far-off world, hung on the park fence. Large boards displaying people walking in various seasons. Like him. The wind hammered at his neck. He raised his coat collar and strolled several times around the fence and the pictures. The crowd began to thin out, the night submerged the landscapes on display. The night overtook him. He decided to go home.

She came up behind him, surprising him in his dialogue with the faces on the boards. He followed her back across the street. She keyed in the code at the entrance. They took the stairway opposite the door. The brass of the handrails and the velvet of a red carpet glimmered in the faint light of the hallway. They climbed the stairs, she in front and he at her heels. She stopped when they reached the last floor and slipped the key into the lock of the double door. He went in behind her. The place was small, attractive, new. The front door opened immediately onto a room that served as both living room and kitchenette. Facing the door was a sofa draped with an ash-coloured sheet. Behind the sofa were four shelves in the same white as the walls. He scanned their contents: books, bibelots, an earthenware ashtray and bowl, a tiny square box made of wood.

Inserted among the books was a very broad bird feather that stirred on the slightest breath of air. The books lined the back of the shelves while the bibelots were placed in front. Affixed to the wall around the bookshelves were some photos. There was a noticeable relationship among the faces on the wall. He had once perused a tome on the writers of the Harlem Renaissance, so he had no trouble identifying the four portraits arranged in a row at the top of the wall over the shelves: W.E.B. Du Bois, Alain Locke, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen. To the right of the bookshelves, hanging one above the other, he recognized Claude Mac Kay, Sterling Brown, James Baldwin. He was unable to put a name to the fourth face.  The girl became aware of his interest.

“I enjoy portraits of Black people,” she said. “They have a way of capturing and holding the light.”

“My father has no connection with the celebrities on your wall. Could you show me the pictures you took of him? Wasn’t that the reason you asked me to drop by?”

In front of the sofa, to the left of the door, the TV and CD player sat on a sort of chiffonier, only larger. On the wall over the TV was another photograph, which he found quite beautiful. It was the interior of a nightclub: a bar, high stools, two women and a man, all holding cigarettes between their fingers, their heads wreathed in smoke. The little group was standing around some musicians. He recognized the elegantly dressed man at the piano as Duke Ellington, and leaning on the piano, cradling his trumpet, was Louis Armstrong. Askia had a mental image of his hostess attending the nightly concert given by Louis and the Duke. At the exact moment when the concert began, she would no doubt sit down on the sofa facing the picture to take in and savour the sounds emanating from the glossy paper on the wall. But his father, Sidi Ben Sylla, would not have moved in such circles. His music, Askia’s mother would have said, was not jazz, but exile.

Olia must have read his thoughts:

“You know,” she said, “I sit down in front of that picture and conjure up the concert, the notes. I imagine them soft and translucent and as slow as the water in a stream, at times lapping against the bank when the high notes soar into the air… Can we be less formal and call each other by our first names?”

“Musical notes—they can be sad too, miss. Now, about those pictures? Could you please show them to me?”

More photos lined the white walls, including the space in the far corner next to the TV, where some stairs led to a mezzanine and what Askia guessed was the bedroom. These other pictures showed Jesse Owens and the king Carl Lewis racing at full tilt, propelled by the gods of Olympus, and a very emotional Ella Fitzgerald at the microphone, with the beams of fame on her forehead. This girl Olia was peculiar. She evidently lived in a strange world comprised of images and legendary figures.  Askia thought she must be fond of legendary faces. She liked Owen and King Lewis, and Ella. Sidi, the ghost he pursued through the dark Paris nights, was not a legend.

He plumped down on the sofa. She bustled about in the kitchenette, to the left of the bookshelves beyond the sofa. She made some tea, set the cups, sugar, and teapot on the low table in front of her guest, and sat down in the lotus position. After the pictures of the Himalayas, here was the second image of the East that he’d been allowed to contemplate in the space of an evening. Olia sitting cross-legged as if she intended to meditate, as if he were an altar or the statue of a saint or an icon meant for prayers.

“You really do look like the turbaned man I photographed a few years ago,” she said, laughing with her eyes and dimpling the corners of her mouth in a way that accentuated her charm. Then she admitted that, after their encounter in his taxi, she had searched through her photo albums for the man with the turban. Sidi’s portraits must have gotten misplaced in one of her many boxes. It would just take a little time, but she would find them.

Askia had the impression that among all those images, the only thing in the room that was real was the shape of Olia’s face, with her hair tied in a bun on the nape of her neck. She was neither too short nor too tall. But thin. Her face had the originality of a painting. Her body was ordinary. He thought she should always wear black. Black—the depths of night and mystery where her face had been designed. He discerned two small pears under her sweater. Mother nature could have been more generous, he said to himself. But he felt that what was most striking about this person was not her appearance so much as her personality. The tea did him good. The tea and the warmth of this little home. And yet he was afraid. Afraid the horrific hand bristling with razor-sharp hairs that lurked in his worst nightmares might punch a gaping hole in the ceiling of the apartment and seize him and cast him out into the cold. It was a dread that went back to his childhood.

Olia stood up, offering her guest a view of her outfit, black from head to toe. She crouched in front of the small fireplace built into the wall to the right of the door. She lifted the logs out from the ash, rearranged them and lit the fire. The flames enveloped the logs, the soot-coated hearth began to glow, the flames rose higher.

3

The flames and the question in the girl’s eyes—“Who are you? Who are you?”— awoke a scattering of reluctant images in the haze of Askia’s memories. The outlines of a village, a red dirt road travelled by herdsmen, back there near Nioro du Sahel. The ground, heated by the rays of a relentless sun, rising toward the thick clouds in a fine dust that stuck to the skin. Nioro, the point of departure, as far back as his memory could take him. He must have been five or six years old. Nioro or a dry patch of land somewhere in the vicinity.  The long red road and a bridled donkey led by his father Sidi, who had sat his only son, Askia, on the animal’s back. Behind the donkey, the father and son, walked the mother, Kadia Saran, carrying on her head a basket of provisions, a bundle, a pouch containing phials filled with potions, amulets, and root sticks, a noria of remedies against all the ills of time, to which were privy only these herders of the great winds. And all of them in tow of the faltering donkey that could trot no faster than their flight over the sloping trails.

Of this he was sure: It was there they had set off one opaque night steeped in a complicit silence. And when he hunted through his memory for the reason why they had departed, what emerged was the certainty that it could not have been for the grazing. Because there had been no cattle left for already a long while. Only the donkey had remained, sole survivor of the epidemic that had mowed down their herd.  This fact came back to him, and he saw their journey in a different light. A sombre light: the lack of rain in the Sahel, the burnt millet fields, the land covered with lizards through which the despair crept in, the empty granaries, the stomachs hollowed out by hunger, and the gazes and prayers fixed on the horizon where the rain would come from.

He thought the departure was because of the rain and the earth dying under their feet. He recalled those days spent crossing other arid lands, ravaged plains where a few souls hung on, resigned or reckless, full of hope or outright scorn. Scorn because the father, the mother, the son, and the donkey passing by their huts had a strange smell. The smell of many unwashed days. The mocking voices on the roadside:

“It’s true we don’t have any water left, but is that any reason to smell so bad?”

“Can it be that the wind’s tongue may not have washed away their filth?”

“It’s true that they are not to blame.”

“They have no water.”

“Still, is anyone entitled to stink like pariahs, like miscreants, like undesirables?”

“Can it be that the sand may have refused to lather away their dirt?”

“Try to understand. The sand is hot. It’s impossible to cleanse your body with…”

“Can it be…”

“That they…”

“Live on the long road…”

“Because the long road is all they have?”

“Who are you?” Askia read in her eyes and the camera lens. This is how those few scattered episodes, the starting point of the roads he had forever taken, came back to him.

4

Paris. A raw month of February running its monotonous course. His first meeting with the girl. He had forgotten to lock the doors of his taxi. She said, “You must have been sent by an angel— taxis are so rare at this time of night, especially on such a small street.” And, without waiting for his response, she settled in and asked him to take her to rue Auguste-Comte by the Jardin du Luxembourg.  Engrossed in the pictures she was deleting from her camera, she hardly looked at him. Their eyes met in the rear-view mirror, and he heard her explain, as if answering a question of his, that she used digital for minor projects.   She stared at him for a split second and returned to her business. She talked while selecting and deleting pictures. He followed her with his eyes, furtively spying on his customer as she purged her camera of portraits that did not please her.  A bitter smile appeared on his face. Because it occurred to him in very precise terms that, four years earlier, before he had fled, he too had been wiping out faces with the click of a button.

He had taken boulevard Saint-Michel. There was nothing very complicated about this run. All he had to do was let his customer off farther up, near the Luxembourg gates. By the fountain bearing the same name as the boulevard: silhouettes gliding past, coats buttoned up against the dying winter, noises, moods, skins, a man standing alone with his back to a corner of the fountain, tending a grill and the chestnuts he sold to those scurrying over the cobblestones of Lutèce. The night had spilled its ink across the page of the day, the street had retrieved a light different from that of the old sun: signs glittering on the façades of the cafés, waffle shops and newsstands. And another light streamed from the nimble fingers of a juggler, an artist throwing flaming torches, catching them and launching them back into orbit again. It was a beautiful performance but he was afraid the juggler would get burned. His customer was still bent low over her camera. He wanted to hear her voice again, perhaps for her to assail him with the music of her speech: “Isn’t it a lovely night? Do you like chestnuts?” He wanted her to tell him something, a word, a thought: “You know, this technology makes things so easy. You can get rid of all the faces, I mean all the portraits, that aren’t to your liking!”  She raised her head, stared at him a second time in the rear-view mirror and finally said, “You look like someone. But without the turban.”

He shivered. What she saw in the mirror was not him. Someone else behind him, beyond his face. She lifted her head and introduced herself, “I’m Olia,” and instantly went back to deleting pictures, the ones she found unsatisfactory, frenetically hitting the keys of her camera. They were caught in traffic near the Gibert Joseph bookstore. The passers-by were rifling through the books laid out on tables on the sidewalk, searching for buried treasure, their attention focussed on the volumes that they leafed through before dropping them back on the piles.

Askia was still stuck in the long line of cars with his passenger. She took the opportunity to lower the window on her side and, leaning out her thin body, to photograph the readers in profile.

5

For a long time he had sought to cleanse his mind of the memory of his father, that ghost, that stubborn shadow filling the film screen of his childhood, the screen-like wall at the foot of the bed where he slept in his mother’s hut. It was 1973 and already three years since the family had been reduced to the son and the mother huddled in their tropical shanty. The images that rained down on the windshield of Askia’s taxi—that was the father, this film that started up at the end of a run, when he found himself alone in the car. There it was, in the film—the father’s faithful shadow looming up at night in the hut, on the wall in front of him.  It would play with a clown who sported a broad pair of wings on his back. The father and the clown were part of his world. Sidi, the father, who must have become associated with the clown at a travelling circus, wore a large white turban and inhabited the world of the dreamy child that Askia had been. Time had passed since their flight from the Sahel. The father and clown did their routine:

“Where are you going, big turban?”

“I don’t know. I’m going.”

“You’re going.”

“I’m going.”

“How far?”

“I don’t know. As far as I can go.”

“You’re going as far as you can go…”

“That’s right.”

“And how far can you go?”

“If I knew, I would tell you.”

“You don’t know where you’re going. But you’re going.”

“But I’m going.”

“And how long have you been going?”

“I don’t remember.”

“If you knew, would you stop because you’d say to yourself: I’ve been going for a long time and I don’t know where, and I see this makes no sense?”

“Probably. Because it makes no sense.”

“No sense…”

“But maybe you can try right now to stay where you are.”

“Where I am…”

“Paris.”

dont you worry a bowt me im doin ok n evry thin her is fin

i luv u

Jake

~

dad

u always sed don’t get cort well I blew it n her i am . gess its changd abit sins ur day – loads ov corses n stuf 2 do n work evry day 2 .not evn enuf time 2 play cards n brew hooch, ha ha (joke guvnr) . gess the compnys the sam tho – most ov the guys r ok n im doin allrite.

Jake

~

dear mum

well ive got work as a clener . bet u nevr thort ud c me clen up hey, its allrite – betr then b/ing bord .   next wk ive got 2 start a cors wiv educashun ha, bet u nevr thort ud c me lern neever .its a lowd ov balls coblrs ov cors, but it kips the screws hapy

don’t u worry a bowt me im doin ok

luv Jake

~

Dear Mum,

Well I’m writing u this letter on my educashun education course. Good innit? They go thru it telling u a bout stuff. Capital Letters n Full Stops n Things. And Spelling. So I can,t tell u anything coz they read it all. (Did u Get That, Miss?)

Jake

~

Benny,

Tell Mum n dad i aint writ 4 a whil coz i been on the blok. Bloody Screw wound me up didn,t he . They r putin me on anover cors now calld En Somethink Skils wich is Screw Speke 4 How to Not Clobr Somewun Wen Ur Mad. Got 2 Play the Game tho innit.

Jake

How is Dale . That Bitch wont let him cum n c me. If u get 2 c him tel him i luv him n i miss him Big Time.

~

Mum

im sending Dale a cd . Don,t tel Stef or she wont let him hav it but he can play it at ur House .Don,t tell him, its a Surpriz, i don it her – these wimmin helped me read him a story. Shood b gd. Tell me if he likes it

luv

Jake

~

Darlin Dale,

Her is a Story wot i read 4 u. u cn listn 2 it wen u go to Bed.

i miss u Big Time

loads ov luv

Daddy

~

Dad,

gess whos her . remember old Simon W? hes got work making cds for kids, i bumpd in 2 him wen i did a story for Dale (does Dale like it.) He sends his hellos and seys he hops he dosnt c u soon – hes got annover 4 yrs (ha ha)

Take car ov urself , u always do.

n let me know if Dale likes my story

Jake

~

Mum,

Bloody Hell – sorry – i hopd hed like it, but nevver thort hed ware the cd player out !!!!! Glad 2 her hes sleeping bettr 2 n not U Know Wot so much . A boy his age shodnt be doin that no more.

Next week i cn go back to Educashun. Simon W (do u remember him) has got a job making these cds n he seys its relly gd. Hard Work but Fun . R u sittin down, yeah i didn,t know those wrds went 2gever eever . But he seys the time gos quik n sometimes u don,t even feel like ur in the Nick. Imagine. Anyhow it must b bettr then clening but u need a level 2 b4 they let u do it , so i gess i mite aswel   get a level 2 – after all i got plentyer time eh !!!!!

Tel Dale ill send him annover cd wen i cn . u have 2 wait 3 months tho.

luv u

Jake

~

Benny,

Im glad Stef lets Dale play the cd there now. Gess the Old Bitch didn,t have much choice did she? Tell her Im sending annover 1 v soon, he can pick it up from his nans.

About that ovver thing. U shoodnt lissen 2 dad 2 much u know. I did n look wer it got me. Ha ha.

Jake

~

Dear Mum,

Gess wot what? I got a letter from Dale yestaday! Stef helped him rite it and let him send it. A bloody miracle!

She said it don,t mean anythink but she was fed up with him naggin her. She says he takes that new cd to school and plays it 2 the ovver kids. And gess what? Their Jealous! Of me! Ha ha. Another miracle.

Another gess what 2? I got my level 1 last week. I got a certifikate n all. Not bad 4 ur worthles son Jake, eh? Level 2 here I come!

Loads of luv,

Jake

~

Stef,

Here is a book I made 4 Dale. I made up the story n pictures n everything. It goes with the cd I done 4 him. Don,t worry about it being a bad influence. I took real care with the spelling n everything. He,s got 2 learn it right hasn,t he? And I don,t want him showing me up if he takes it to school innit?

Hows u anyway u old hore (joke). Ive been better but I been worse 2 u know, strange 2 say.

Hope Dale likes the book.

Jake

~

Dale’s Day At the Zoo

Dale woke up very excited on Saturday morning. He was going to the zoo. But even better than that – he was going to meet his Dad there!

“Where’s Dad?” he asked, as soon as they got to the zoo.

“He’s not here yet,” said Mum. “First we’re going to see the Alligators.” So they went to see the 1 Alligator, which snip snap snacked at them.

“Where’s Dad?” Dale asked, as soon as they’d seen the Alligator.

“Here’s not here yet,” said Mum. “Next we’re going to see the Bears.” So they went to see the 1, 2 Bears, which grr graa growled at them.

“Where’s Dad?” Dale asked, as soon as they’d seen the Bears.

“Here’s not here yet,” said Mum. “Next we’re going to see the Camels.” So they went to see the 1, 2, 3 Camels, which hum ha humped at them.

“Where’s Dad?” Dale asked, as soon as they’d seen the Camels.

“Here’s not here yet,” said Mum. “Next we’re going to see the Donkeys.” So they went to see the 1, 2, 3, 4 Donkeys, which eee aahh ored at them.

“Where’s Dad?” Dale asked, as soon as they’d seen the Donkeys.

“Here’s not here yet,” said Mum. “Next we’re going to see the Elephants.” So they went to see the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Elephants, which trim tram trumpeted at …. someone standing behind them. Dale turned to see who it was – and it was ….

“Dad!” Dale shouted, running into his arms. “I love you!”

“I love you too, Dale,” said Dad, picking him up and swinging him round, and he hug hug hugged him all the way home.

The End

~

Dear Mum,

I know Stef told u not 2 tell me what she said, but Im glad u did. I hadnt seen it like that. I was just sore at the bitch girl for not ‘Standing by her Man’. (Ha ha). I guess she wasnt used to it like u r.

Ive got an interview with the cd team next week. The teachers say Im ready for my level 2 and theres a space coming up coz Joey Ts got a transfer. Ill let u know how it goes.

luv Jake

~

Darling Dale,

I’m dead chufed you like the book and the cd. I’ve got a job now making cds like that for loads of other little boys and girls so there dads can read them bedtime stories to. Its really hard. I have to learn loads of stuff on the computer – Ill be as good as you soon. Ha ha.

I miss you loads. All my love,

Daddy

~

Dad,

I’ve been thinking about this a lot and I know u won’t like it, but did you ever wonder if mum wasn’t too keen on the life you’ve given her?

Anyhow all I mean to say is lay of Benny if he wants to stick with Kylie and do what she says. She sounds like a good girl and god knows hes not likely to pick up many of them – what with having ur ugly mug and all!!!! No harm in him trying anyway is there?

Don’t get mad Dad u know I mean well.

Jake

~

Stef,

Guess what? I’ve got a job now as a Sound Engineer. I’m starting to get the hang of it and the women here say I can do an OCN in it later if I want to and get a qualifikation. Then maybe when I get out I could do some proper training. Maybe even get a job. (Did you just fall over?)

If u ever have the time 2 write u could let me know how Dales getting on. I do miss him u know. He must be getting a big boy now. 5 next month – fancy that!!!

Thinking of u both,

Jake

~

Dear Stef,

Well u could have knocked me down with a feather when I saw u come thru that door. U haven’t changed a bit u know except ur prettier than ever. (I know u thought I was flanelling u, but I want u to know I mean it.) Seeing Dale was like birthday and xmas all at once – 4 me, let alone him!!!!

I know it took u a lot of guts 2 come, and I know it wasn’t easy. So thank u babe. (Don’t worry, I’m not expecting nothing nor trying it on.)

Jake

~

Dear Mum,

Stef’s brought Dale to see me 3 times now. She says u’ve been a real support to her. She said u said I wasn’t as bad as I make out, n I said well thats mums 4 u (!), but I think she listened 2 u a bit 2.

Ur a brick mum.

Luv Jake

~

My darling Dale,

I can’t wait until I can see u outside of here 2 but when I get out I won’t come n live with mummy because she doesn’t it’s complikated. But its not because I don’t love you and don’t mean I won’t see you. I will see you lots. Every weekend and more if she’ll let I can. Maybe I can even take you to the zoo!

Only 100 days to go. Less when you get this letter. You count the days down if you like, backwards like a roket taking off. I can tell you I’m doing it here!

Here’s a picture of the roket for you. Every day u can knock another day off. I done the first 1 for you.

100, 99

loads n loads of love

Daddy

~

Dear Stef,

I understand what ur saying. I’m not saying I’m not disapointed coz its only natural for a man to hope. But I can see how it puts u on the spot …. Hey – I was ennuf trouble last time, innit !!!!….

But guess what? Benny says that Kylie says I can move in with them for a bit, just until I get settled. Hes got a job now in that garage on Banks Street n he says he can’t promise anything but hell see what he can do.

So maybe I could come over sometimes n see Dale – or u could bring him round for a Cup of Tea like (very civilised). When I’m not working of course (ha ha).

Take care babe,

Ur Jake

~

Dear Sir.

I am writing to apply to your course on Sound Engineering, starting this September. I have NVQ levels 1 and 2 in English and Maths and an OCN in Audio Production (certificates enclosed).

I have lots of experience editing cds as my reference explains and I am very motivated. If you give me this chance I promise you won’t regret it.

Yours faithfully,

Jake Mathews

~

Hey Simon,

I hope things r going OK for u and time doesn’t drag 2 slowly. I’ve just started this course at the College. The 1st 2 bastards said No, but u can’t let em grind u down innit? So here I am in try no 3. It’s bloody hard and I feel a bit of a wally in with all these kids, but noones given me a rough time – well, not after I biffed the 1st bugger. (Joke.) Most of the teachers are really nice and patient – and some of the girls r really fit! (Don’t tell Stef I said that.)

Guess what? It looks like me n Stef might be getting back together. She wants to take it slowly, but she still wants to take it, if u know what I mean. Anyhow, Dale is doing allright. He says we see each other more now than when I lived with them!

Say hello to the crowd. Tell them I hope I never see them again. (Not a joke.)

ur friend,

Jake

She was one of those people who bears a little magical lamp,
but who will never be aware of the light it casts.
Marcel Proust

The garden had barely emerged from winter. At the foot of the cherry tree, whose white buds flecked with red were already on display, three delicate stalks of honeysuckle swayed in the breeze. She knelt, reached out, and cautiously stroked the soft stems. They left a pale blood in her hand, which she licked gingerly. “It tastes like the beginning of the world,” she thought. She closed her eyes.

“André-é-e, where are you?”

How he mangled her name, after all these years, his voice quivering strangely on the final, feminine “e”! She opened her eyes but didn’t turn around. “He’ll come and look for me. He’ll be forced to step outside in this spring weather and then, maybe…” She didn’t finish her thought, wary of getting her hopes too high. Patience, she knew, was the secret to all wonderful things, since only with patience can one retain an innocent hopefulness. “Wait,” she said to herself. “Wait a bit longer before speaking, before turning around, before putting a name to the young blue star of the grape hyacinth, the butterfly’s graceful pirouette, the clouds spun like fairy hair along the pink horizon.”

“I’m going in to make coffee.”

Which meant: “I saw you, kneeling in the chilly dawn, but I won’t be joining you; you will come find me instead, and we will sit across from each other at our table, and I will talk and you will listen.”

She smiled and closed her eyes again. “We’ll drink our coffee in the garden this time, like it or not. Today, André-é-e gets to have things her way!”

Two turtledoves, whistling and cooing, swooped down onto the cherry tree. She stood up without the help of her cane, which she left lying neatly on the grass, a magic wand surrendered to the ants.

Above the trees, the morning sky was still a fresh indigo blue. “Azure,” she murmured, squinting, pleased with the transparent, pure sound of the word. She moved forward in the short grass, reached the edge of the pond, bent down.

She winced as pain tore through her lower back like a blade. Looking around, she noticed three frogs crouched, motionless, in the silt along the shore. Their legs twitched. The new light and warmth were electrifying their nerves. “Everything begins and ends with a spasm. We are born joltfully and we die joltfully.” She laughed at the invented word, her hand covering her mouth, then felt a sudden sadness. It was like the abrupt descent of darkness over the sunflowers in August, instantly putting out their glow, exposing their fading suns as dry discs riddled with holes. “He’ll be thinking about death, of course. He thinks about it a lot—too much.” She turned to gaze at the house through the branches. This was how she liked to look at it, sectioned off by the willow’s complicated boughs, no longer large and anchored solidly in earth and grass, as it had appeared moments earlier, but carved into surprising parcels: a shutter hanging from the tree, a flying skylight, a veranda railing suspended amid the lilacs, an elegant ladder stretched horizontally between the birch trees, the small blue lake of a window—the one in her office—glistening behind the weeping branches.

She took a few steps along the trail leading to the shed, then stopped, dizzy. “My cane,” she muttered. Then everything was blurred, muffled. All she could make out was a bit of grass brushing against her arms and cheeks, then something tapping her lightly on the head. She had fallen. “He didn’t see me,” she said to herself, “so he’s not in his office yet. Or else he’s bent over his papers and when he looks up he’ll see me, and then…” She smiled. The last time she had fallen he had been next to her, but with his back turned, so he had continued talking for a long time—telling her, as it happened, how worried he was about her frequent falls—before he turned abruptly and saw her sprawled out on the carpet at the foot of the stairs, shaking with laughter. He grumbled as he helped her up, getting increasingly angry, while she just laughed—laughed so hard it left her weak. Furious, he had left her sitting on the bottom stair, and for a long time she could hear him in his office muttering to himself: “You’ll be the death of me! You’ll end up being the death of me!” But she couldn’t suppress her laughter.

She closed her eyes, but when she pictured his scowling face, she stopped smiling and realized that she would fall asleep unless she did something, whether it was to crawl through the grass to the plum tree and call out for him, or simply to stroke the cat that was passing by. Or, perhaps, to catch hold of the hand being held out by death and let herself be taken—be done, once and for all, with her dizzy spells, her fits of laughter, her garden, this difficult love.

When she opened her eyes again, he was bending over her, wearing his old safari helmet and carrying a bowl of latte. The helmet was a souvenir from Africa, a place he had never set foot in but had long dreamed of visiting, a place he thought would cleanse him. She stared at him for a long time, astonished to see that he was smiling. A few wisps of his silver-grey hair hung down over his eyes. She opened her mouth but had no time to voice her amazement.

“You fell again, I know.”

He knelt down, leaned toward her so she could grasp his shoulder, then heaved her to her feet. Once they were standing, he didn’t let go of her like he usually did. Instead, he let his hand slide gently onto her hip.

“I shouldn’t have.”

“Shouldn’t have what?”

“Lifted you up. I should have stretched out on top of you. It would have been like in the old days, remember? In the grass, surrounded by the spiders and the ants and the dew.”

“What do you…”

“Come here!”

He held her firmly. She leaned on his arm. The cat leaped ahead of them on the trail. She said to herself, “This is not him; this is his ghost, a young man who I remember perfectly and who is leading me to some unknown place.”

“You know what I just read?”

“When?”

“Just now, while the coffee was brewing.”

“How would I know, Aimé?”

“You’re always able to guess.”

“Well, this time I give up.”

He turned toward her with his funny half-smile, a mischievous, childish, irritating expression on his face. She thought, “You are a mystery, and you know it, too. When it comes to guessing the reason behind your sudden, rare good moods, I’ve always given up.” But she didn’t risk speaking these words aloud, since they might break the spell or the fit of madness, whichever it was.

“I was reading Maupassant, that dear old Maupassant.”

“Didn’t he die young, your Maupassant?”

He laughed. “You’re right, he didn’t even make it to fifty.” He stopped.

“Here we are,” she thought. “Death, via Maupassant. I was crazy to think he might stray from his topic of choice! To think that it was I who brought it up first.”

“‘Human thought is unchanging.’”

“What?”

“That’s the sentence from Maupassant that moved me when I read it and that I’m still moved by, even now, as I walk with you.”

He seemed slightly drunk, as though he had gulped down a large glass of white whiskey instead of a coffee.

“I don’t know why, but those words… They normally would have filled me with fear, but instead they’ve set me free.”

“Set you free? From what?”

“It’s hard to describe.”

“I don’t believe you!”

“You don’t believe me?”

“No. I’m the one who has trouble expressing things. Not you.”

“That’s what you think. But…”

He was leading her along at such an energetic pace. She had to take eight tiny steps for each of his strides, a sharp pain tearing at her hip.

“The thing is, I’m not changing, and I’m alone. Wait, don’t say anything! I know, Can you imagine? I know—”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“—that I’m old and alone and weighed down by my thoughts.”

She let out a laugh, which she quickly smothered. He patted her back mechanically, as though he thought she was getting hoarse. Far ahead of them, the blond cat leaped in and out of sight, pouncing on patches of light. Even immersed in the sparse shadow of the willow, the cat seemed illuminated, a small, reddish ball prowling through the grass.

“Depression. I’m suffering from depression, just like Maupassant.”

“Not so fast, Aimé, my hip hurts.”

“You’re hurting?”

“Yes, a bit.”

“Do you want to stop? Over there, under the pine tree?”

“No, no.”

“Let’s slow down, then.”

“Yes, let’s slow down.”

He let her catch her breath for a moment, and then began walking again, still too quickly. “Depressive but agile!” she thought, filled with sudden regret at having left her cane at the foot of the cherry tree earlier. Surely he knew that he would wear her out, and that when they reached the raspberry bushes, he would have to get the wheelbarrow—it had happened once before, the previous autumn—and cart her back to the house like a large bundle of deadwood.

“Aimé…”

“No, let me finish, it’s doing me good!”

“Yes, but…”

“Slower, I know! See, look, I’m going more slowly now. There, that’s better, isn’t it? So, what was I saying? Oh yes, this depression of mine…”

“Well?”

“Well, I’m done with it.”

“Done with it?”

“Yes, ever since this morning, since just now, when I was reading Maupassant and looked up suddenly to see you falling down in the grass, as though in slow motion.”

“I didn’t fall! I just lay down for a little while.”

“Oh, hush. You fell. Again. And just as I was reading those words: ‘Human thought is unchanging.’ You have no idea…”

“Why, Aimé, are you crying?”

“Yes, you’re right, I suppose I am. But it’s not because of that. I mean, it’s not just emotion. It’s… a kind of astonishment. I can’t think of any other way to describe it.”

“You’re crying!”

She couldn’t believe it. Only once had she seen him cry—or, rather, sob, his face buried in his hands. It was forty-three years earlier, when he had received the letter—now all yellowed, tacked to a wall in his office—informing him that his first novel would be published. Loud gulps of unexpected happiness which, he told her, “hurt as much as heart failure.”

“I said to myself—or rather, an unfamiliar voice inside me murmured, ‘I’m seventy-eight years old and I think of nothing but my death, even though my health is actually quite good. Meanwhile, she’s eighty-two and falls more and more often—in the grass, on the stairs. From one day, one moment to the next, she could…’” He stopped, his eyes filled with tears.

“Die?”

“What I mean is –”

“Die, pass away, disappear, cease to exist, run out of steam, casser ma pipe, as the saying goes!”

“Oh, come on now, break your pipe? André-é-e…”

“Why not? Maybe I smoke a pipe on the sly, in the shed, while you spin out sentences.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m being serious!”

“I know.”

But now she was laughing, shaking with laughter; she could no longer hold herself back. She pictured herself at the back of the shed, filling an old corncob pipe, taking a big puff of yellow, acrid smoke that made her choke, then abruptly flinging the pipe onto the bench, where it broke into a thousand pieces. She laughed so hard that her ribs ached.

“Stop! André-é-e, stop, for God’s sake!”

She stopped, with difficulty. She collapsed onto him, out of breath, and he caught her as easily as one would catch a sheet falling from the clothes line where it was drying in the wind.

“You’re crazy!”

“If you say so!”

They took a few steps, he with his back straight and shaking his head, she bent in two, still nodding and hiccupping with laughter. The mocking bird complained in the leaves overhead. They stopped at the edge of the woods. The cat emerged from the undergrowth, a mole in its mouth, its ferocious, green gaze now sunny and calm.

“Now there’s a creature that died well. That’s how I’d like to die.”

“André-é-e!”

“What?”

“How cruel. Why say such a thing?”

“Cruel? Not at all! I’d like for my life to be taken from me in a single bite. I would be happy to be breakfast for a murderous beast with gentle eyes.”

“Well, that’s lovely, I have to admit.”

“What is?”

“What you just said: ‘a murderous beast with gentle eyes.’”

“You think so?”

“Yes. But…”

“No buts! Let go in. I’m hungry!”

“André-é-e!”

Swiftly stretching out her arm, she grabbed hold of a dead branch from an oak tree, ripped it from the tree trunk, and, using it as a cane, trotted quickly down the path, the cat at her heels. Aimé remained motionless in the tall grass like a scarecrow that would frighten no one, smiling and murmuring to his shadow, “A murderous beast with gentle eyes…”

~ ~ ~

After breakfast, while she weeded Black-eyed Susans from the path behind the house, Aimé crept up to the bedroom, which was bathed in morning sunlight. He undressed and stretched out on the bed, naked, without pulling back the sheets. He closed his eyes and listened to his heart pounding, amazed at the new, unexpected strength of his desire. Moments later, he heard the cane strike the staircase railing.

We’ll look out in front but not in back, if that’s all right.

It’s just an old driveway. And an old Ford. I’ll take you out front. Why don’t we go take a look and walk around out front? It’s really something, my collection. Maybe we’ll even see some deer or that coyote. You don’t need to worry, she never hurt anyone. So if you’re afraid you don’t need to be.

I’ve got a Kent cement mixer out there. And an AEC 1953 fire engine. And two semi-truck cabs and the sort of front-loading John Deere combine they don’t make anymore cause a few fellows found theirs on fire but that was a great machine nonetheless. Some people say it’s all a waste, but it’s not.

You can spend a lot of money on what they call art. I’m sure you’ve seen it. Like naked pictures sometimes, or sometimes just bits of paint in no real picture at all and sometimes, if it’s meant to be a sculpture, just a pile of wood or metal that just looks like a pile of wood or metal. I don’t mind that. I think art is important and spending a lot of money on it if you want to is okay too. So my collection is my art. I spend hours out there looking at it, just me and it.

And sometimes this one coyote comes up. She’s not afraid because I never wanted to hurt any coyotes, ever. Not even when I had chickens. So this one coyote comes up sometimes and walks back and forth watching me watch my machines or sometimes sits down in the dry dirt and licks or sleeps. I’m not afraid of her and she’s not afraid of me. It’s silly to be afraid of animals. Though it’s not silly for animals to be afraid of people.

I know it can’t be the same one but sometimes I like to think it’s the same coyote what I found once on this land, fifty years ago I guess, or almost, licking and licking and licking at its fur. It was wandering round the yard almost crazy-like licking its fur which was covered all over in something awfully sticky. It was night, that kind of heavy summer night we get round here, you know, so black being so far from the city, so that the only light really was from our front porch light. Anyways, since it was like that, you know, dark as death, I couldn’t see what the coyote was licking at, only that she was going almost crazy doin it. I was scared back then. I was scared of the coyote. Because, see, I’d been out at Palmer’s helping with a job and stayed on for drinks after and was walking home cross the field when I saw that coyote all crazy and thought oh God that coyote’s gonna cause trouble. And I was scared. But I shouldn’t have been. Because that coyote wasn’t looking to hurt me. Because there was nothing was the fault of that coyote.

I sometimes see deer too. Though they stay farther away. They like to play around the old school bus I got out there. Some people say I’m crazy for not shooting them when I could so easy, when they’re so close, but of course I wouldn’t. Nobody ever says to those deer, why don’t you shoot that man when he’s so close.

Sometimes I wonder if maybe I would like to have had kids. But that’s a hard kind of question, isn’t it? Like, on the one side having a kid would mean bringing more people into this world where that’s the number one problem, but then on the other side a kid might be able to live on in this place after I go, you know, and be sure it doesn’t get turned into a highway or Shell station. I’ve lived here thirty years. I mean eighty. I’ve lived here eighty years.

Even though I was pretty drunk because Palmer still remembered how to do things from way back during prohibition, even though all that, I couldn’t get myself to sleep that night I saw the crazy coyote. I just kept hearing her howling. And I’m used to hearing coyotes, of course, I like hearing them, I can even do a sound pretty much like one of them if you want to hear, but this coyote sound I kept hearing wasn’t like normal. It wasn’t a normal sound. So, maybe because I was drunk or maybe because I was scared I said to myself, bugger this, Herb, let’s take the rifle and find out what in hell is the problem.

Out front I found some pieces of a ripped shirt and that was really mostly all. A ripped shirt and a bit of some stains, like a bit of a trail of some stains on the gravel drive that could have been anything really, cause it was so dark out.

I walked round a bit more in front and didn’t find anything ‘cept this torn shirt and this trail of stains and I thought well heck, how about going round back cause the more I thought about it the more it seemed like that’s where the sounds were coming from anyways. So I tried to be sneaky and step quiet, even though you know how quiet that really is, when a man’s drunk and in his boots and out on gravel, but I was trying anyways. So I sneaked round back with my gun raised cause God I was getting scared, and I was right about the noises cause they were getting louder and louder.

And then I saw her. She was up in the cab of my Ford, up so that her face was right at the same level as mine and she was licking and licking and looking at me like crazy. When she saw me she opened up her mouth and let out a whole other kind of new sound I never heard before and showed her teeth and lunged my way and God I was scared and thought shit shit and I kind of forgot where I was but then I remembered the rifle in my hand, and without even aiming or anything I pulled back on the stiff trigger with my eyes closed.

And then, because my eyes were closed, I remember things in sounds. The tiny click of the trigger against the metal, the sound of exploded gunpowder, my own grunt as the rifle thrust into my shoulder, and the wail of a baby, of a very small, very young baby. God, I thought. This coyote’s attacked someone’s baby.

And I opened my eyes.

And like the way you can suddenly see when a light’s turned on I could suddenly see really good even though it was so dark out like I said. My eyes adjusted from having been closed. That works, you try it.  I could see in the dark, like an animal.

The coyote was gone. And right where she had been, or behind it just a bit I guess, were four tiny animals, all round and closed-eyed and mewing like children. Three of them mewing. One of them not mewing. This fourth one’s mouth was openin and closin like drowning or like looking for its mother maybe, but it wasn’t making any real sound with it. On the side of this animal a mouth of a bullet wound gaped too, leakin and leakin but not making any sound either, the liquid pouring out, mixing with all the fluid already gathered in the low grooves of my truck.  I picked him up, he wasn’t bigger than my hands, I picked him up and held him in my hands like communion and held him and held him still as stone. After some time the mother came back and started licking and feeding the others. She sniffed at me first but I was still as stone so she moved back into the cab after a couple of minutes of that. I watched her and felt my hands gettin wetter and colder but I just held them and watched her and stood still as stone.

I guess you have to go back to town. Be sure to go out through the front, right, not out back. You know I’d give you a ride but I don’t drive.

Fred took a warm shower and, as he’d watched James do countless times, placed the metal hose that was attached to the showerhead inside him. He stood still until his stomach cramped. After emptying in the toilet, he crawled into bed, lay flat on his stomach and waited. When James arrived, he didn’t speak. He climbed into bed and with only a slick of saliva, penetrated without prelude. Fred bit into the pillow. The next morning while lying alone in bed, sheets tangled around his aching body, Fred knew it was not enough.

Fred and James met more than thirty years before at a college in Port-au-Prince. Fred, 37 at the time, had been hired to tutor the young sons of the city’s elite in economics. Fred’s pregnant girlfriend, Lamercie, the daughter of a banker, used her family connections to get Fred the tutoring work because she did not know about the movie theaters and after-hours parties Fred attended in the city. She didn’t know the 18-year-old boy with the brown skin and soft hands was this type.

Fred hadn’t intended on making a move then. He only responded when his young charge put a hand on his lap. He felt at home with this boy, who kissed him with a tenderness he had experienced before only with women. And James had taken him in his mouth so easily, had accepted this unnatural thing as if he were born to it. Perhaps this is what drew Fred to him, why Fred asked James to come with him to America when his visa application went through. That first night in America, Fred would finish first. Still unspent after what felt to Fred like hours, James asked if Fred wanted to try reversing their roles. Get comfortable with fingers, James said, but one finger was too much.

Back home, they say the gay one is the man who would let another man fuck him, turn his ass into a pussy like a girl’s. Fred had not been “that way.” Once, Fred’s younger brother Marlo, a Baptist minister, said he would pray for Fred to get better. “But for the sissy,” he’d said about James, “I don’t even pray because Satan already has him.”

Now, to salvage the only family he had left, Fred had given himself over to the devil. At 72 years old, he could find no other way to satisfy this man he … loved? He didn’t know if he believed in that emotion. He couldn’t imagine starting over at his age, though pushing a hose into his ass for the first time when he was old enough to be a grandfather was starting over.

The hose, at least, took care of the shit. The force of the fucking was harder to deal with. His doctor told him too many pain killers could damage his kidneys.

2.

James didn’t speak to the man across the hall, nor to the man’s wife and son, but he watched them go in and out, living what appeared to be lives separate from one another in their two-bedroom apartment. Sometimes there was shouting. If the man was anything like Fred had been, James thought, he’d probably given the woman cause for suspicion.

It would be easy to understand how a man like that could make someone jealous. Lashes he probably got from his mother, the smooth skin. But the cause for suspicion was the mouth, James knew, full and feminine, perpetually rose-colored. Kissable, is what he thought each time he and the man shared the landing in the stairwell where they smoked cigarettes. How he licked his lips, puckered into the cigarette, puffed lightly, leaned back into the wall, his Adam’s apple dancing when he swallowed.  James could understand why a mouth like this would bring suspicion. If he were younger, maybe, if he were still running, playing soccer, if he were as bold as he had once been, when to simply ask was enough.

So when the note arrived the day before – “Dear neighbors, please join Steven, Janet, and Nathaniel for soup jumu to celebrate the New Year” – he hid it in his back pocket. In earlier years, he and Fred bought their soup from a Haitian restaurant around the corner. Sometimes they ate with other patrons, talked about where they would be if they were not in Miami and still back home. They could laugh about past mistakes with a bowl of soup in front of them. Whether pumpkin, as it was intended, or butternut squash, as they had it in this country, soup jumu meant luck and good things, a washing away of the sins of the previous year.

But after so many years and so many sins… The smallest transgression was the apartment in this building, a daily reminder that what Fred had brought James to was not a life of comfort but something else entirely – an elevator that had not worked for eight years, a view of a MacArthur Dairy bottling facility across a cracked highway, and the people of the provinces and the slums who hung clothes over balconies and used brooms instead of mops to wash the concrete slabs outside their front doors.

Steven, Steve. Fén. Étienne. As he dressed, James wondered which name the man might prefer. Finally, after slacks and jeans, he settled for “Steven” and the brown corduroys that he never found appropriate for any occasion. With the invitation stuffed in his pocket, he walked across the hall.

The door was open. Still, he knocked twice. When no one answered, he let himself in. The living room was a hodgepodge of furniture that didn’t fit together. Glass-top coffee table with wrought-iron legs. Overstuffed sofas with floral patterns. Hard-back armchairs that looked more suited for someone’s dinner table. Faux-wood bookcase, chipped at the base. A low entertainment centre painted black,,the only modern piece in the place. The ugliness made him shiver, but the smell made him nostalgic.

James started to follow that smell into the kitchen, then said, “Hello?”

When no answer came, he walked to the small kitchen. The pot was half empty. He washed a bowl in the sink and helped himself. At the dining room table, he sipped slowly and tried not to bother himself too much with the photos, each in a different type of frame, hanging crooked along the wall. The family, at least, was a handsome bunch. Shapely, brown-skinned wife, the husband who towered over her, so pale in pictures he looked almost white. The son had taken after his mother, slight of build, brown-skinned, hair braided in thick coils.

“What are you doing, man?”

James turned around, spilling some soup on his shirt. Steven stood in an undershirt, hands on his hips. By the sweat on his brow and the cut on his lip, he looked like he had been fighting or making love or both. James put a finger up, and then he pulled the crumpled invitation out of his pocket.

“Soup very good. Thank you for invite me. I’m James. Number 11. But maybe I come too late?”

Steven shook his head. He handed the card back. “You want more?” He took James’s bowl. “We didn’t think anybody else was coming, you know. All the old ladies from the building came right after church.” He took James’s bowl to the kitchen.

The wife, Janet, came into the room, her hands busy tying a knot of hair into a scrunchie. James mumbled hello.

“Soup la pa frèt?” she said.

James shook his head. “Bon. Mesi.”

Steven returned with a bowl of more soup. “So y’all just gone take this whole conversation into Creole, right? You know I barely speak that.”

“Cold, I said.” Janet threw her hands up.

“If it was cold, he wouldn’t have just ate a whole bowl,” Steven said.

“Just wash what you mess,” she said. Then she returned to the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

Still holding the bowl in his hand, Steven went to the kitchen. A moment later, he returned holding the pot. “Your homeboy might want some. That way I don’t have to hear shit about dirty dishes.”

3.

Early in their relationship when Fred and James fought over the cheating, the fighting would end with Fred promising fidelity, and though there were tears, James would allow Fred to make love to him anyway. Fred believed the force with which he’d fucked James was enough proof that he cared despite the straying. He couldn’t pin-point exactly when he could no longer will himself to erection. Three months, five, a year. Perhaps the arrival of his son triggered the decline – the boy he’d neglected because he’d been too consumed with arriving in a new country, working at a post office, juggling the boys in the street and the boy at home.

His brother had called from Haiti to tell him of Daniel’s arrival in the States.

“I don’t know this Daniel,” Fred said.

“You were a man once,” Marlo said.

“Stop talking in circles,” Fred said.

“Maybe to see your son’s face, you can remember you were created for something better than the life you live. I gave him your address.”

When Daniel arrived, they sat in the front room for less than ten minutes. His eyes were his mother’s. His dark brown skin was Fred’s. If Fred hadn’t known, if Fred were twenty years younger, he would have delighted to have the young man in his apartment. Daniel told of Lamercie’s health, which had diminished so much she rarely spoke or got out of bed, and of his new wife, pregnant with his twins.

“It’s hard starting a new life here,” Daniel said. “They told me I had a father here. I thought maybe that man would want to be a father for the first time and help me support my family.”

Fred had $14,241.43 in the bank account he shared with James. They’d talked about buying a house, something to make James comfortable when Fred had lived as long as God would let him.

“Things are hard in this country,” Fred said.

“See what you can do,” Daniel said.

They embraced quite awkwardly at the door as James was coming up the stairs. Perhaps a year before, there would have been a misinterpretation of the embrace, Fred and James would have argued about the young man, they would have thrown dishes, James would have threatened to leave, and Fred, holding him down in their bed, would convince him otherwise.

4.

James was unsure exactly how to entertain, so he allowed Steven a wide berth to amuse himself. Steven, for his part, took sideways steps around the room, his hands folded behind his back. When a photograph caught his attention, he rocked forward on the balls of his feet, scrunched his bottom lip over the top, and nodded.

“You, what, twenty years younger?”

Steven picked up a photo that sat on top of the television. In the photograph, James stared straight into the camera, smiling broadly, and Fred looked away, at the white couple who ogled them from afar, whispering things, he’d supposed.

Steven set the photo down and took a seat diagonal to James. “You look like you could be nephew, son even.”

James shook his head and shoveled food into his mouth.

“I mean, I’m not judging you or anything. You do your thing. By this picture, you been doing your thing for a good while now.”

“That picture was a long time ago.”

“Let me ask you something.” Steven leaned in as if he were preparing to share some kind of secret. “Me and Janet been together for about twelve years. Shit feels like a lifetime.”

“You look good together,” James said. “You have the boy.”

“But how fucked up do you think this kid is gone be if we stay living like we living?”

“I don’t –”

“I know how it is in Haitian families, believe me. My moms was Haitian. You stay for the kids, right? But, I mean, sometimes I feel like snapping her neck.”

“That’s … I don’t know.”

“Serious shit, right? It’s not like I didn’t know what I was getting into. Pussy make you do crazy shit, you know. I mean, I guess you don’t. No offense or anything. I mean, think about it like this. You get with a cat. Shit is mad tight. You fucking delirious thinking about it all the damn time you never take a minute to figure out if what’s attached to the ass is actually what you want. Feel me?”

“Sex is just one thing of many things.”

“Don’t front like you don’t know,” Steven said. “You might be on the funny-funny…”

James had a difficult time concentrating on the words—black English was always difficult for him—but in such close quarters, in his house, at his table, with Steven tapping his forearm every so often… .

“We boys right now, so I can come at you straight with this, right.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t tell me when you and homeboy first got going, shit wasn’t mad crazy, like y’all wasn’t fucking all over the place whenever y’all got the chance? I’m not asking you to describe the shit for me, ‘cause that’s your business. But tell me, as a man, you wasn’t thinking about your dick when you scoped him out.”

James nodded, though he found himself uncomfortable with this conversation about fucking and erections with a man he had no realistic hope of touching.

“But I got caught up. I mean, don’t get me wrong. She’s fly, and when we do work it out, I get embarrassed for the kid, because these apartments got some thin-ass walls. But that’s it. That’s all we got. The only thing that keep me where I am is child support. Can’t afford child support taking pictures. That, or she’d probably disappear to Haiti or some shit. Throw voodoo on me when I sleep and make my dick fall off, and I can’t live without my little man. Well, little ain’t exactly right.”

Steven sat back in the chair, rubbed his neck and folded his arms. He seemed to retreat into himself. James sipped the soup.

“That’s some good shit, right,” Steven said.

“Very good soup.”

“You got anything to drink here?”

“Some water, juice.”

“Finish this up. I’m meetin’ some people for drinks.”

They took Steven’s car. The radio didn’t stay tuned to any one station for more than a few bars. They talked some about children, how Steven didn’t like to admit it, but he was a bit disappointed his son wasn’t a scrappier kid, and James said he was unsure if he was ever strong enough to be a father. Steven asked if James had kids. James said he didn’t know. Steven found this funny, slapped James’s knee as he laughed.

5.

Three years after they’d come to the United States, when Fred was having sex on Thursdays with a 17-year-old he’d met at a bookstore, he and James were on the Interstate at noontime and he asked James to stroke him. James said he wasn’t in the mood, but he did it anyway. It’s what he did back then, whatever Fred asked. James told Fred once that he had a low sex drive. This didn’t bother Fred. It only meant he didn’t have to worry that James gave other men hand jobs during the lunchtime rush. It meant that when they went to clubs (on the rare occasions James agreed to go) they could sip drinks and watch men without Fred worrying that James would respond to the advances from other men. It wasn’t in him. James was more like a woman that way, Fred thought: instinctively monogamous.

6.

The men greeted one another with bumped fists, slapped palms, embraced with fists together and arms as a bar between their chests. There were women too, most black, but one white with red hair and a small mouth. She took the seat next to Steven, so that when everyone was seated, James stood awkwardly over the table like a waiter.

“Everybody, this is my man James from my building,” Steven said. “Take a seat, man. This is Paulson, my homeboy from way back, and this is my friend, Cam.”

James sat on the other side of Cam. She wore a yellow blouse, black jeans and flip-flops. The other girls wore heels and jean skirts that barely covered their bodies. They had extensions. Were pretty, even. While Cam sat silently, the others jumped into the men’s conversation, steered the talk from time to time. It seemed they spoke about everything, these women: jobs, children, other men, sex, and in the kind of frank way that women sometimes spoke on TV. Decent women, Haitian women, rarely ventured there when in the company of men, especially older men like James. He found this fascinating, even though he missed some because of the speed of their English.

Steven and the men decided on a game of pool. James didn’t play. Neither did Cam. So they held the sofa.

“You’re like me,” she said.

He offered no response.

“We don’t really belong here. He was supposed to come to South Beach with me and my friends last night. But then something with his wife. I turned into one of those women who” – Cam leaned in, her breath full of Vodka – “cry and whine. So here I am.”

“Yes, yes.” He didn’t know what else to say. “Family important, no?”

When she finished her drink, the waiter came by with another.

“So, we’re like jilted girlfriends here, brought out by the man and left to sit on the sidelines while he hangs with the homies. Fucking pathetic. I only come to this side of town if my editor at the paper tells me I’m stuck covering crime on the weekend.”

“Steven and me are just friendly neighbours.”

The group trickled back to the table, but they didn’t sit. They topped off drinks, collected bags, said goodbyes until the only ones remaining from their party was Cam, Steven, Paulson and a woman who hadn’t been introduced properly. With the group smaller, Steven seemed to unwind a bit.

“Real talk,” he said. “My man James may be a little old, but homebody be running things.”

“I thought you said he was. . .”

“Paul, this is real talk. Like I was saying at the table when your wack-ass homeboy cut me off, a man is a man no matter who he fucking. All that matters is he’s running shit.” He turned to Cam and, raising his voice a register, said, “He’s in control of his environment at all times.”

“Sucking dick ain’t control, dawg,” Paulson said.

“Y’all Negroes is stupid,” the black girl said. “James, what he trying to ask is if gay dudes pick who gone be the man or who gone be the woman or if they go back and forth.”

James looked from Steven to Cam to Paulson and the black girl. They were all looking at him. Then Steven started laughing, and like dominoes, the others were laughing too.

Cam leaned in. “They’re ribbing you. They’re not serious. This is what they do when you’re new.”

“Yes, we’re ribbing,” Steven said, his voice nasal. Then he kissed her, open-mouthed. Pulling away, he licked his bottom lip. “You’re cool, man.”

James raised his glass. “I just now ask for condoms, then I show you.”

“So you got jokes,” Steven said. He reached over and tapped James’ shoulder. They ordered more drinks.

By the time Steven had his fifth or sixth drink, he seemed completely unhinged. He leaned into Cam, kissed her, ran his hand up her leg. “This is the kind of chick I should have at home,” he said.

“You don’t think you’ve had enough?” she said.

When he inched a hand up her inner thigh, she peeled herself from the sofa and announced she needed to use the restroom.

Steven slapped her behind as she walked away.

“What you think of that?” he asked.

“I don’t,” James said.

“I think sometimes it would be better if I leave that bitch at home and chill with Cam full time.”

“You love this girl?”

“Fuck love, dawg.” He sipped from Cam’s glass. “You did your shit, right. You told all those motherfuckers in Haiti to fuck off, and you went where you would be happy.”

“Don’t forget your son.”

He thought for a moment he saw pain in Steven’s face, some resignation, even through the alcohol. But the look quickly faded into a grimace.

“Even that,” Steven said, “ain’t what it should be. That little nigger take after his mamma. He too sweet.”

He finished the drink, tapped James’s cheek and let his body fall back to the sofa. When Cam returned, he pulled her onto his lap and held her there despite her protests. She didn’t hide the relief when a waitress came by to tell her that her cab had arrived.

“I thought we was gone do this,” Steven said.

“Early day tomorrow. I got morning cop calls,” she said. “I’ll see you in the newsroom.”

“So you gone leave me like this?” He stroked his erection through his jeans.

She kissed James’ cheek and said, “Watch out for this one.”

7.

Fred had examined the address he’d written on a small slip of paper and had determined, based on the street number and avenue, that his son lived somewhere in Overtown, “Black Power” as his friends called it. In the thirty years he’d lived in Miami, Fred had never ventured to this part of town. It didn’t make sense for a lost Haitian man to find himself there. People were robbed in this part of town. People had been killed, like the German tourists a few years back. Why his son had chosen to live there, he didn’t understand. Perhaps he wasn’t wrong to take the money from the account. James would understand. And if he didn’t, this act would at least make James see him, instead of past him or through him.

Fred put $5,000 into an envelope, which he slipped under the band of his briefs. A second envelope, with $2,000, he wrapped around an ankle with a rubber-band and covered with his sock and pant leg. So much preparation for what seemed a simple thing, what people did all the time. So many things about his life had turned into a series of pent-up anxiety. Like sex with James, anxiety that there will be a mess just as there had been the first time he tried this new role, and despite the stench of feces on the bed and between his legs, James would continue in the act, oblivious to Fred’s pain and the smell. Even when he was clean, he feared things would be messy. Perhaps if they shared sex, and it wasn’t just something they simply did. Perhaps if things were as they had once been, when their embraces, even after fights, were opportunities for them to get closer, this fear would subside. But now, when he felt like nothing more than a receptacle, he suffered the humiliation of the act in solitude.

In this act of reconciliation, Fred’s anxiety was without merit. The neighbourhood didn’t take notice of his arrival. He found the apartment without a problem, and when he pushed the small yellow button in the doorway, he heard the chime from his side of the door.  The men shook hands in the doorway, then Fred went about unpacking. After Daniel counted the total, he asked Fred if he wanted to sit.

“If I could see my grandchildren’s mother, that would be nice,” Fred said.

“Yesterday, maybe,” Daniel said. “Today she’s with her family.”

8.

James draped one of Steven’s arms over his shoulder and dragged him out of the taxi. He felt the heft of the load all down his back. It took them fifteen minutes to make it halfway up the stairs. James’s constant pleas to “help yourself,” went unanswered. At one point, Steven started slurring rap songs, “You see double, bust your bubble, you in trouble,” and only laughed when James reminded him of the hour.

The old woman from number 6 emerged from her apartment with a bag of garbage. She put the bag at the bottom of the stairs and lumbered up to help.

“What happened to this young man?” she asked.

“Too many things,” James said.

“He smells like he’s been drinking all day,” she said. “He was fine when I saw him for soup.”

“Madame, please,” James said.

“Really, I didn’t come to carry all the weight,” the woman said. “Lift on your side.”

He had been lifting, but his side hurt, and the sweat made it difficult to keep his grip. At the door, he and the old woman fumbled through Steven’s pockets for keys. Before James raised the key to the door, Steven mumbled that he didn’t want to go home.

“This is your house, Steven,” the old woman said.

“I don’t want to see that bitch.”

“Too many things,” James said. “Take him here.”

“You have the key. He’s drunk. I think his wife can care for him.”

“Take me over there,” Steven said.

James shifted toward his apartment. Then all of Steven’s weight crushed down on him. The old woman stood at number 11 as he and Steven fell to the ground in front of number 12. James felt something pop in his shoulder.

In the apartment, the old woman apologized for losing her grip. She advised James to put a bucket near the couch. She said she’d leave a message with Steven’s wife about where he was spending the night.

Before heading to bed, James took a Tylenol and showered.

Fred arrived an hour later. The rustling sheets woke James from his sleep. They whispered to one another in Creole.

“You’re home,” James said.

“That’s the neighbour?”

“I think he and his wife are fighting.”

“You don’t have to say,” Fred said.

When James thought Fred was asleep, he slid out of bed to watch Steven on the sofa. Sometime in the night, Steven had thrown up. Some of the vomit had made it into the bucket, but the rest was down his shirt and down the sofa. James got a wet hand towel and a basin from the bathroom. He wiped Steven’s neck. Steven stirred some, stretched, yawned. In the dark, James could see Steven’s eyes flutter open, narrow. Then, just as quickly, he grabbed James’s wrist and held it there.

“The fuck you doing, man?”

“Helping you,” James said.

“You think I roll like that?”

“I’m helping you.”

There was something practical in James’ desire to wash away the vomit, to clear away the stench. But something else too. Steven’s hand fell away, and James noticed that his own hand had begun trembling. He worked slowly, concentrating through the dark to see what he felt. Stubble on chin, the round of Steven’s neck where the Adam’s apple rose and fell, arms rising to remove a shirt, the quick pounding in Steven’s chest. James could see none of it, but he could feel Steven rising in his hand, then the taste of him, then a hand on James’s head, pulling him down so that he was gagging and coughing, the heat of Steven’s stomach against his face, on his tongue. What he didn’t swallow, he spit into the basin.

James felt paralyzed where he was. Steven stood, his pants were up, he was saying something about an early morning, that he needed to go. He needed his keys, he said. He said it again, maybe a few more times. Then he found them on the coffee table.

9.

The smell woke Fred, something like vomit and musk only masked slightly by soap. James lay on his side of the bed, facing the wall. Fred put a hand around James’s waist. He kissed James’s neck like he used to do when they were younger, when news of infidelity or disease wasn’t enough to keep them separated. This gesture was one of James’s favourites then, a kiss on the neck and his body would relax, he’d turn, they’d kiss, and Fred would climb on top, make James ready.

At the memory of this, he kissed James’s neck again.

“Sit down,” says Anthony, pushing up the loose sleeves of his ratty grey sweatshirt.

“Watch.”  She points to one pale aureole on her flat chest then to the other,  “Milk, milk…” then to the protruding cleft of her genitalia, “…lemonade…” finally sticking out her bum, “…  around the corner fudge is made.”  She throws back her head with an explosion of shrill, staccato laughter.

“Krista, sit down please.”

The laughter continues as her tiny feet stamp and splash the shallow water.

“You’re going to slip and fall,” says Anthony.  “Now sit.”  He’s kneeling on the tiled bathroom floor, a bar of soap in one hand and an oversized yellow sponge in the other.

“But you would catch me, wouldn’t you?” she asks.

“I’d try.”  He dips the sponge in the water, soaping it up.  “But let’s not leave anything to chance.”

Grasping the side of the tub, she sits.  The water barely covers the tops of her thighs.  Pink knobby knees protrude above the surface like slippery stones in a narrow brook.  “What’s chance?”

“Sort of like an accident.”

“Uh, uh.”  Her head swivels vigorously, threatening a 360-degree turn.  “It means like if you take a chance.”

He hands her the lathered sponge.  “Okay, wash yourself well.”

“Do my back first.”

“After you’ve done the front.”

Squeezing the sponge behind her head, a soapy river cascades over the small bumps of her spine.  “My mom always does my back first.”

Anthony is sitting on the floor, leaning against the toilet.  “So this time you’ll do the front first.”

“Uh, uh.  Back first.”  Her voice rises to a grating whine.  “That’s how it’s s’posed to be done.”

Anthony presses the heels of his palms against his eyelids, summoning greenish-white circles.  What was Pauline thinking, asking him to do this?  Is it supposed to be some kind of test of his commitment or what?

“I’m getting cold.”

He was sure Pauline wouldn’t normally have asked him to do this, except she switched shifts as a favor to one of the other cashiers.  He lives here now, so how could he say no?   Even so, the way she just said, “And tonight is Krista’s bath night, okay?”  He merely nodded and she was out the door, adding, “Make sure she washes her hair.”

Krista’s whining reaches a new pitch.  “When my mom gets home…”

“Fine.”  Anthony kneels by the tub.  “Give me the sponge.”

He gently lathers overlapping circles up and down the girl’s thin back, splashing water to rinse her off.  Krista laughs, “Do that again.”  His protest goes unspoken as he repeats the lathering and splashing, then hands her the sponge.  “You do the rest.”

Clutching the oversized sponge in both of her small hands, she tries to copy the overlapping circles against her chest and stomach.  “Taking a chance is when you don’t know if something is gonna work out or not.”

“Don’t forget your legs and feet.”

Pauline had waited a couple of months into their relationship before she would let him meet Krista.  He liked her from the start, a good kid, a smart kid.  Obviously there’s no reason Pauline shouldn’t trust him, but he can’t help feeling a line has been crossed somewhere.

“Finished.”

“Your mom said you have to wash your hair.”

“Could you get me started?”

He turns on the water, adjusting the temperature.  “Okay, stick your head under.  And don’t forget the elastic first.”

She pulls the elastic from her hair, freeing the topknot and ducks her head under the rushing water. Anthony takes the plastic shampoo bottle and squeezes a green, apple-scented glob into his palm, working it into her wet, stringy hair.  “Okay, you take over now.  And keep your eyes closed.”  He rinses his hands in the bath water, dries them on a towel hanging over the rack and turns off the tap.

What would Pauline’s parents have to say about this?  They didn’t seem to have any problem with him moving in with Pauline and Krista after nine months.  The five of them even went out to dinner to celebrate.  True, Mr. Corcoran’s toast to “instant families” was followed by a brief glance between Pauline and her mother, but then glasses clinked all around.

Krista hums as she works her hair into lathered shapes and slides back and forth in small jerking movements.  When Anthony twigs to what is going on his face flushes from embarrassment to irritation. Pauline once confided to him:  “I think it’s her way of acting out emotionally because she’s still dealing with Warren disappearing.”  As an only child from a broken home, Anthony summoned up the requisite nod of empathy.  What more could Pauline expect?

“Okay, that’s enough shampooing.”  He turns the tap a couple of times, hoping the loud rush will let her know he means business.  “I said that’s enough.”  He’s not sure who he’s angrier with, Krista or Pauline.

She feels around for the tap.  “I can’t see.”

Anthony guides her head under the gushing water.  After turning off the water, he pulls the plug from the drain.  Eddying suds leave a stubborn ring of foam.  He grabs the fluffy green towel on the rack and wraps it around her shoulders.

“The other one too,” says Krista.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Please.”

Anthony gives her the matching smaller towel.  She quickly dries her face and wraps the towel turban-style around her dripping hair.

“Very stylish,” he says.

“What’s stylish?”

Anthony helps her out of the tub and onto the mat.  “Hurry up and dry off before you get cold.  I’ll go get your pajamas.”  He strides out of the bathroom and hears her calling out: “I want the yellow ones.  Please!”

On the way to her room he stops at the glass doors that lead onto the balcony.  Outside the blunt angles of buildings are softened by the first shadings of dusk.  Some windows across the way already have their lights on.  He lingers a moment, tapping a fingernail against the plastic dimmer switch, until Krista calls out once more.  As far as he’s concerned the darkness can’t get here fast enough.

It’s a few minutes after 10:30 when Pauline carries two glasses of white wine onto the balcony.  “I just looked in on her.”

Anthony is standing at a corner of the railing, an ashtray in one hand.  From the other a cigarette points upward like a sixth finger checking for any sign of wind.  A thin contour of smoke rises into the stillness.

Pauline places both glasses on the circular patio table and sits in one of two folding chairs.  “She’s fast asleep.”  Out of the corner of her eye Pauline watches Anthony exhaling ghostly halos through extended lips.  “She usually waits up until I get home,” says Pauline, taking a sip of wine.  “I guess I was later than I thought I’d be.”  One by one the smoke rings fade into shapeless wisps and disappear.

“I ended up reading her two books,” says Anthony.  He puffs away and Pauline studies the glowing red tip inching its way along his cigarette.

“You can sit down and do that,” she says.  “It won’t bother me.”

He takes two more deep drags, crushes the butt in the ashtray, then sits in the other chair and gulps down some wine.

“You know, it’s okay to enjoy your cigarette with your wine.”

“It’s not going to help me cut back if I start enjoying them with a drink,” he says.

Pauline looks up at a patch of night sky dotted with stars, a small reminder of the summers her family used to spend at their cottage in Ganonoque when she was around Krista’s age.  She and her older sister, Martha, would stand outside late at night in their bathing suits eating Popsicles, listening to cricket music, naming all the constellations.  By their teens they both lost interest in family time at the cottage in favor of summer jobs and boyfriends.  Eventually Mr. Corcoran sold it.  Lately Pauline wishes they still had the cottage so she could take Krista there.

“Everything go okay tonight?

“It was fine,” says Anthony.  He downs the rest of his wine gets up from his seat.

Pauline cranes her neck as he sidles past her, sliding open the balcony doors.  “Look, it’s not going to happen a lot.”  She watches him disappear into the apartment. “Next time I’ll bring her to my parents.”

Anthony returns with the bottle of Riesling, purchased at a winery in Niagara-on-the-Lake when the three of them went for a drive a couple of weekends before.  Krista kept nagging for a taste from the available sampling glasses until Pauline finally relented, letting her have a sip of sweet ice wine.

He pours himself more and tops her glass.  “You don’t have to take her to your folks.”  He sets the bottle down and has a sip.  “Obviously I want to help out.”  He is still standing, unsure of something.  Putting his glass down, he takes the ashtray from the table and goes to the corner to light up a second cigarette.

“Please sit down and smoke,” says Pauline.  “You’re making me nervous.”

As a concession, he moves his chair a bit farther from the patio table and sits.   Holding the ashtray close to his chest with that air of guilty self-preservation peculiar to some smokers who are mentally preparing to quit.

Pauline still remembers the feeling.  She quit almost seven years ago when she and Warren decided to try for kids.  She’d been thirty-four and Warren was six years younger.  Not long after Krista’s third birthday Pauline found his terse apology on the back of an envelope wedged behind the kitchen wall phone.

Anthony rests the ashtray in his lap and reaches for his wine glass.  Pauline tries not to notice, wishing she could get up and go into the apartment to let him have his privacy, assuming that is what he wants.  Cutting back is entirely his idea.  When they were in the discussion stage of his moving in, he said he wanted to quit smoking as a way of showing his commitment to her and Krista.  Pauline has suggested the patch or nicotine gum, but he wants to try it on his own first, weaning himself off little by little.

“She was sliding around in the tub tonight.”

Pauline’s eyes are closed, trying to feel the faint glow of the stars.  “Sliding around?”

Anthony stubs out his cigarette.  “You know what I mean.”  He places the ashtray on the balcony’s concrete floor.

She opens her eyes, sees that he is not smoking but has not moved his chair back closer to her.  “Did you say anything?”

“I just told her to get out and dry off.”  He is looking right at her now.  “She ignored me and I had to tell her again.”

Pauline nods, sympathetically she hopes.  “You did the right thing.”  She wants to tell him not to take it personally, that kids are always testing boundaries.  “Thank you.”

His finger absently circles the rim of his glass, as if trying to coax a hidden music.   Pauline listens carefully, imagining she can hear a faint rubbing sound, expecting it to bloom any second into a haunting melody.  She stares up at what stars are visible through the city’s light pollution and counts them silently.  Anthony stands up and sets his empty glass all too gently on the patio table.  He edges past her and slips into the apartment, not bothering to close the glass doors behind him.

The ashtray remains on the balcony floor, cradling the two filter-ends crushed almost beyond recognition on a bed of ashes.  She doubts Anthony will ever be able to quit completely, not even with the patch or the gum or whatever.  What she’s never admitted to him is that she actually likes the smell of tobacco.  It doesn’t tempt her to start smoking again.  She never worries about that.   Sniffing the air, she pours herself another glass of wine before getting up to close the glass doors.

The next night, a Friday, Krista has supper at her grandparents’ house.  She is allowed to draw on her big pad for an hour before going to bed.   Her mother and Anthony are having a special night to themselves: a movie and dinner at a restaurant.  They have promised to take her to see Wall-E and then out for pizza on Saturday.

She lies on the living room carpet with colored pencils spread out carefully in a fan shape.  The pad is open to a clean white page.  Her grandfather sits in his big leaning-back chair watching a baseball game on TV.  There is a special pocket in one of its arms where he keeps his glass of beer.  Her grandmother is doing dishes in the kitchen.

Krista turns the pad sideways and chooses a light blue pencil to draw a rectangle almost the whole length of the blank page.  She carefully colors in the rectangle, starting from the top left corner, shading with the side of her pencil the way her mother showed her.  That morning her mother bent down on one knee to ask if she had been sliding in the tub.  Krista turned away to read a book.  Her mother took the book from Krista’s hands.  “You know what I’m talking about.”  Krista only stared at the brightly patterned patch on the knee of her mother’s blue jeans, letting her eyes go dead so that the pattern slid into blurry colors.

She takes her time shading in the rectangle, enjoying the repetition of her hand moving back and forth.  The first time Anthony came over to the apartment she spent most of the time sitting in her yellow plastic chair reading one of her books.  Sometimes she looked up and could see her mother and Anthony sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee.  Later she heard footsteps and kept reading her book, pretending not to hear.  When she did look up Anthony was sitting cross-legged on the floor.  He asked her to read him a story.  As she read to him she looked up every now and then and saw that his eyes were closed as he listened.  He said he did this to picture in his mind the story she was reading.  She liked that, his imagining everything she was saying.

Her grandmother comes into the living room.  “Come on, my precious, it’s time for bed.”  Her grandfather’s chair is all the way back, his slippered feet propped high on the footrest and both hands folded over his big stomach. His head is tilted back with mouth wide open, snoring deeply.  “See?” says her grandmother.  “Even Poppie knows it’s bed time.”  She gives the footrest a gentle kick.  “Ray, wake up.”

He opens his eyes and reaches for his glass of beer in the armrest pocket, taking a large swallow.  He watches the baseball game on TV as if he had been doing that all along.  Krista kisses him goodnight and wrinkles her nose at his sour breath.  She sniffs the beer in his glass and puts her lips to the rim, trying to tilt it toward her mouth.  “No, no, no,” he says and switches the glass to his other hand, holding it high in the air where she can’t get at it.  “That’s not for little girls.”

She gathers up the drawing pad and pencils and follows her grandmother to the bedroom where her mother and Aunt Martha used to sleep and crawls under the covers.  Her grandmother looks over her drawing.  “Is this you?”

Krista nods and confirms, at her grandmother’s patient questioning, that the rectangle she is standing in is a bathtub.

“And what are these things coming out of the tub?”

“Those are arms.”

“Oh?”  Her grandmother runs a hand down the back of Krista’s hair.  “Is there somebody else in the tub?”

Krista slips away from her grandmother’s hand and slides back on the bed, pulling the covers up to her chin.

“It’s okay, you can tell me who else is in the tub.”  She moves her ear closer to Krista. “Whisper it to me.”

Krista turns aside to show she is ready for sleep.  Her grandmother puts the drawing pad on top of the bureau next to the colored pencils and leans over to kiss the top of her head.   She closes her eyes until she feels the room go dark, only opening them to make sure the bedroom door has been left slightly open so there is light from the hallway coming in.

Eyes half-opened, Anthony watches Pauline tug a pair of bikini underwear up her thighs.   She snaps the waistband against her hips.  He’s bundled under the covers.  A ray of Saturday morning sunlight edges laser-like through a crack in the curtains, bisecting the bed and accentuating the bump of his body.   Severing his upper and lower halves.   “Where are you going?”

“It’s quarter to eleven,” she says without turning around.  “I said I’d get Krista at 11:30.”

She is pulling on jeans.  Anthony snakes an arm out of the blanket, crooks two fingers in the elastic of her underwear and pulls her toward the bed.  She teeters slightly off balance and allows herself to fall onto the bed.  His hand cups her breast.  “She’ll be okay with your folks for another half hour.”

The phone rings.  Pauline glances at the call display and picks it up.

“Who is it?”

Pauline sits up.  “Hi.  I’m just on my way out.  How’s Krista?”

Anthony rubs the small of her back and she stands up. He pulls his arm back under the covers.

“No, just me.  I’m letting him sleep in.”

He wonders if he should get up and put on some clothes too.

“Okay,” says Pauline into the phone, flashing Anthony a puzzled look.  “I’ll be there in forty-five minutes.  Bye.”

She hangs up the phone and leaves her hand there.  “Hmm.”

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah.  She just wanted to know when I was coming.”

“Is Krista okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want me to come with you?

Pauline pulls a T-shirt over her head and brushes her hair.  “No, sleep a bit more. We’ll be back around 12:30.”

After she is gone Anthony realizes he has to pee.  For their date night they went to see Mamma Mia, happily hating it so much they left the movie theatre warbling shrilly at the top of their lungs: “Honey, I’m still free, take chance on me.”  They shared a late and leisurely platter of fried noodles at Lucky 7 then back to the apartment to kill off a couple of bottles of wine in bed.  By the second bottle they dispensed with glasses altogether. Pauline straddled him and took the first swig, then poured wine into Anthony’s open mouth.  After the first swallow, laughing uncontrollably, she tried to pour more, but he pushed the bottleneck away.  Then he tweaked one nipple, “Milk…” then the other, “…milk…” bucking his crotch against hers, “…lemonade…” and reached around to give her ass a playful slap, “…around the corner fudge is made.”  Her momentary shock spilled into more drunken hooting, followed by a few retaliatory tweaks and slaps of her own, erupting into a wrestling match that managed to shift the mattress halfway off the bed.  The memory of it embarrasses him a little.

Ever since bath night that stupid rhyme had been running through his head, buzzing around like a housefly trapped in a jar, or an inane song one can’t shake off (take a chance, take a chance, take a chance). While Pauline was driving Krista to her parents’ house, he found himself on his knees with a scouring pad and a can of Comet, laboring over the tub’s porcelain as if trying to scrub away a phantom stain.  His arm churned like a piston to the childish rhythm in his head (milk… milk…) until his raw fingers finally forced him to give up: the rhyme somehow morphing into something his mother used to say after the divorce, about being dealt lemons and making lemonade.

The bisecting ray of sunlight moves closer to his chest.  If he gets up now he can pee, take a shower and still have time for a cup of coffee and a smoke out on the balcony before they get home.  That’s the game plan in his head, a mantra he repeats over and over again (pee, shower, coffee, smoke, no need to fix what ain’t broke) as he empties the bureau drawers and bedroom closet of his things into an old knapsack.

~ ~ ~

His day begins sharply at 4:43am, and he is nothing if not punctual, our Doorman.  It’s at this time that he ends his trek from his leaked and rotten hole somewhere between 517 Mountain View and 715 Vista Hill, address of little importance even to himself, and takes ownership instead of the modern, intentionally homey but ultimately claustrophobic, lobby. It is there and in twelve-hour increments (sixteen on weekends) that he wins his daily bread, finding something akin to fulfillment along the way. When not ensuring the invisibility of rodents, he is tasked with compliance and servitude receiving in return gratitude that he occasionally mistakes for the amicability of an equal.  He considered, for instance, the crisp dollar bill obtained from Mr. Donavan each Thursday to be a personal gesture, this despite the fact that valet, driver, and homelessman Gill all found themselves equally rewarded Monday, Tuesday, and Friday. And while he would never venture to ask Lady Lavish, the preserved 3rd floor beauty, why she insisted, July or February, on wearing an airtight scarf about her neck, it was in good form to compliment her on the various styles and knots with she would experiment.

~ ~ ~

“Here, Caesar chicken; barely touched it. So, you’ve seen her right?” He received, alongside the massacred platter, the creased and perfectly torn corner of what could only be the tackiest of gossip columns. On it were the barely visible features of a woman blurred by her own fiery mane as she stepped out of a still limousine.
[…]
“‘Donavan’s new paramour.’ Sweet chest and even wider hips from what I hear. You believe that?”
[…]
“First local sighting too. Before that it was Acapulco, Africa, Paris; The old fart’s giving her the ride of a lifetime and we’re not talking airfare.”
[…]
“Really? Story has it that they met right here in this very lobby, though. Real surrenderpitus shit… Man, can’t believe you didn’t catch that.”
[…]
Don’t you pay attention to these things, sitting here all day anyway? Gimme that sandwich back!”
[…]

~ ~ ~

It took two dictionaries for the Doorman to fully understand what a pitus was, and how such a thing could be come to be surrendered. And though he still could not define the exact nature of the encounter he had witnessed—lacking both the education and pessimism to do so—the Doorman was quite certain that it did not fall into the category of “accidental and fortuitous encounters in the confluence of unrelated events.” Were they a part of his vocabulary, the words “meticulous” and “artifice” might have come to mind.

~ ~ ~

She, as we will now be referring to her in deference of the Doorman’s wounded sensibilities, was a person he had met on numerous occasions.  The first of which had occurred at a particularly busy time, when he had grown concerned about the increasingly noticeable number of rodents around the lobby.  His usually pristine faux-marble counter had for those few days gained the clutter of a notepad as he planned new daring layouts for the seventeen monthly rattraps the lobby was allocated. It was in such a distracted state that he had first been approached by her.

~ ~ ~

The average residential building in the greater urban area contains no less than 4,700 rats; the equivalent of fifty-three or so nests.  It is, one could say, cause for concern that between the slums (where their ubiquitous presence on every surface, horizontal, vertical, or otherwise, is nothing short of an uncomfortable certainty), and the skyline domains of bidets and walkthrough showers (where the sight of a single such parasite creates intolerable panic), the mean stands at such an elevated number. Understand the severity of this 4,700. Take a moment to appreciate these 18,800 clawed paws crusted in blood, feces, and mud, each accompanied by a pair of voyeuristic eyes impeding upon your person at night. Viler still are the claustrophobic lobbies where rodent and human maintain an implicit agreement of avoidance. Failure to conform to this can lead to drastic actions including, but not limited to, extermination. It is in those mid-range accommodations that you will find a suited man alternating between the laying of traps and the offering of hardened cheese, this depending on the severity with which the contract has been breached.

~ ~ ~

“Oh, hello,” she had smiled, in hindsight perhaps a bit too earnestly. “Do you work here? Well of course you do. What I meant to ask was how long you’ve worked here?”  She had not belonged, that much was clear; her tone too involved to be that of a visitor and too eager to imply any administrative purpose to her presence. Addressing him was neither an act of habit nor an effort for her but rather the very purpose of her presence.

This was a disposition he had previously only seen in the vagrants who wandered past his doors on harsh winter nights, hiding their pursuit of warmth in stilted conversation. So striking had this first impression been that, had it not been for her attire, free of ragged ends and life experience, he might have thrown her out.

What he recalls of her has little to do with breasts or hips. It was that hairdo of hers, naturally rusted and overly meticulous, that lingered in his mind.

~ ~ ~

The assistant superintendent, Ugly Casanova, as the Doorman had come to label him, favouring the use of monikers to anchor his surroundings to his being, was an odd one. The Doorman doesn’t remember there being a functional rumour mill on the premises until the unappealing little man who chewed gum at the front of his teeth had taken it upon himself to lay the proper foundations for one. Struggling finances, bad habits, past marriages, and other healthy vices were to him the raised sand of the many beaten paths that lead to life among the Heights and therefore perfectly suited to the public forum.  The man, whose own lack of personal affairs was palpable, took a visceral interest in tracing the six degrees of indiscretion that separated tenants and had come to see the Doorman as a great untapped resource. An open and invisible eye unto every drunken fumble, friendly chit, and lustful chat that passed through lobby. That is why he made a point of strolling by the man’s desk after lunch, bringing with him a side salad or the untouched point of a sandwich as an understood form of bribery. The Ugly Casanova admittedly ate surprisingly copious meals and on any other day, the Doorman would have surely completed the transaction and rewarded him with the extent of his knowledge that, as he was now realizing, was quite substantial.

~ ~ ~

Upon repeated encounters (for she made a point of visiting his desk every other day) the Doorman had noticed her face, though pleasant, to be slightly pointed, as though the inside of her cheeks were coated with something sour of which she was permanently enjoying the taste.  She asked him how well he knew the tenants. Who were the “best ones.” Explained herself to mean those remembered from those too dull to be addressed by anything other than their unit number. Where they went when not wearing ties and carrying briefcases. Her face unnaturally eased itself whenever he would venture a purpose to her inquiries.

“Here to visit a friend? Me? Oh, don’t be silly; these women wouldn’t see me fit to hold the napkin they bite into.” […] “No, but I do know their types. That is all they are, y’know; Old. Lonely. Well fed. Blander than hay for the most part. Walking clichés eager to prove themselves otherwise.” […] “Me? The nubilest of Nadines. People person through and through. Working on it. Not since I prayed to Saint Lillian and grew three cup sizes.”

She would then laugh and touch his sleeve, mindful not to recoil at the wetness. She was from Nebraska and had three brothers. She had no problem slipping in and out of the Midwestern accent, and regretted having spent the bulk of her teenage years on parked cars which was why she had moved to the city in pursuit of ambitions greater than corn. Her exact contact information however remained to him the most engrossing of mysteries.

~ ~ ~

Damp to the touch, his uniform is freshly pressed, steamed by a broken radiator and flattened with efficiency between mattress and floor. He also takes to wearing his hat at a slight skew as to make it his own. Initially chastised for such an initiative, he had been forced to earn this distinction, moving the cap the length of an inch every other week and then back to the front once more whenever this came to be noticed by his superior until it found its rightful throne on his head—off to the side with the right edge grazing his ear— noticeable but permissible.

~ ~ ~

Further still among his transgressions was the fact that he wore a red tie rather than the mandated navy, as to match the stitching of his blazer’s cuff. With his rather attuned sense of fashion, our Doorman might have been, in another life, a respected tailor who collects holiday cards from satisfied clients. He knew this defiance to have been the right choice the day nouveau artiste Rainbow Renoir, 5^th floor, always on the foreground of haute couture, had given him a glance of approval.

~ ~ ~

She laughs in an unnatural manner her head thrown back like a loosened prosthetic waiting for a snapshot to go off. Later comes the well-timed admission that she considers herself partly deluded for visiting him as she often as does. She admits her fondest expectation of city life to have always been that of a sassily dressed doorman such as himself present to greet in the evening. It is with the bombastic motions of the struggling starlet that she dramatizes the disappointment she felt when she’d instead been greeted by an empty two-door hallway the day she’d moved into her first apartment across the street. An awkward silence then sets.

~ ~ ~

The doorman across the street, for there very much was one, is a portly black fellow by the name of Oscar who, unlike our own, lived on the premises in basement quarters the height of three barrels and the length of two. They had exchanged numbers early on that year if for no reason other than it seemed appropriate for equivalent men such as they were to have one another’s information. Neither expected, given the complex divides that separated them, a greater connection to emerge from this and, indeed, none ever would.

~ ~ ~

She is in the administrative field and works odd hours, she says. They discuss the folly of the rich and voice a mutual pride at earning a daily living, he a doorman and she an administrative facilitator with odd hours. She tells him, in the most disdainful of tones, of a man she has repeatedly seen come out of this building. “Short. Positively balding. Walks sideways with wealth.” The Tycoon, the Doorman confirms, hoping this moniker will further bond them. She, however, insists on confirmation of his real name. Mister Donavan. Mister Donavan who never leaves the building without an electronic device to his ear and another somewhere on his body, making his girth pulsate. Mister Donavan who believes the crisp dollar bill to be salvation for the working class. Mister Donavan: for whom oil was not a cancerous liquid dripping from pipes but a matter of equity, cufflinks, and luncheons.

~ ~ ~

The Doorman describes the various girls he sees in the Tycoon’s company and the kept promises of steak dinners and weekend gateways with which he goads them, his contempt growing whenever he speaks. Having caught her seemingly undying interest, he exaggerates their descriptions, adding torn stockings and stained skirts so short, they could double as belts, noting the mogul’s seemingly fetishistic interest in talkative Mary Janes and other such lost causes. She in return flawlessly mimics the presumed inflexions of such a ditz for him. “A necklace! Why dear sir, I must simply fellate you in return. S’just how my daddy raised me.” They infer the Tycoon’s debilitating loneliness and share hearty laughs.

~ ~ ~

The Doorman’s entire world shifts the length of an inch to the left as he begins to look tenants in the eyes rather than at the convergence of their brow as he was trained to.  An ostensibly small change, we’ll agree.

~ ~ ~

He is not quite at ease yet being at ease when he rehearses himself to casually ask Lady Lavish about the nature of her signature piece. He is careful to frame the inappropriate inquiry as a compliment, stroking her flair for fashion and variety. Though startled, and more than somewhat affronted, the woman shuffles her rectangular bags, freeing one hand with which she touches the triple-knotted maroon abomination of the day.

“A lover once bit me,” she says curtly. “It healed poorly.” Her elevator arrives and she declines help with her multi-colored boxes, heavy with wrapping paper and perhaps a few grams of gemstones at their bottom. “I like your tie,” she supposes in reciprocal politeness.

~ ~ ~

He doesn’t see her for quite a few days afterwards. Seventeen to be exact. In the interim, he pays more detailed attention to the moneyed maladies of the residents, preparing a vast array of material with which to entertain her. His thorough observations and impeccable penmanship once again denote that he would have made a fine student had his father not made the fatal mistake of a weak-boned purebred with his college tuition all those years ago.  It is in that mode, scribbling notes in his otherwise empty notebook, that he learns, without confirming, that the Batista on 3^rd is into heavy hallucinogens, that Victor/Victoria on 5^th is reversing the procedure and that the purple eye of The Captain, 7^th, is in fact the work of his sturdy daughter. The rats take advantage of this distraction. They disinterestedly scurry past him, some preferring the altitude of the mailboxes and others congregating right under his counter subsisting on an increased number of delectable sandwich crumbs.

~ ~ ~

The next, and in many ways last, time they meet is on a Wednesday afternoon with the working elite rushing in from the uptown offices and their social counterpart heading out for aperitifs.  It is a fascinating time of social confusion during which the Doorman’s invisibility reaches its zenith. Vague attempts at networking are made among the top floors, and nods of acknowledgment are exchanged in the midst of last-minute maintenance complaints about low shower flows and slower-than-usual-though-not-really elevators. He nevertheless sees her, standing near the entrance with the glittering crowd acting as a buffer between them.

Her hair is different, definitely larger, the clear result of some oil-based aerosol.  He waves to her—breaking the Doorman’s decorum—and she throws him a side glance before tripping herself.

~ ~ ~

“Oh, terribly sorry! I simply didn’t see you there!”
“Why that’s perfectly all right. A disturbance I could use I assure you, Madam….”
“…Holloway. Or Miss Holloway, rather. Though that’s not an unpleasant thought mind you; me with a husband, hahaha. Alice Holloway.”
“Ah, is that a southern accent I detect?”
“Midwestern actually.”
“I say, this might be terribly forward of me but have you eaten yet, Miss Holloway?”
“Oh, nothing substantial, Mister–?”
“Donovan. Bertram Elliott Donavan.”
“Why how do you do, Mister Donovan. The pleasure’s all mine.  And dinner sounds positively lovely. I love your cufflinks by the way, very distinguished.”

~ ~ ~

Surrenderpitus? Hardly. Rehearsed. Coerced. He had, he now realized, only been that circumventable obstacle between country mice and cheese. You didn’t expect him to be of sharp wit, did you? He was naturally a doorman. She naturally falls into the category of those who do not address the doorman. The rats seem aimless and the Doorman cannot bother to reign them in. His confused and accusing glare is of little effect to her ambitions. Hers is a private matter entirely, denied to him by sunglasses that did not pay for themselves and exquisitely complement her high-end gowns that nevertheless know the quick discard to the floor. Her visits increase to the point that she no longer requires to be signed in and when his glare becomes unsustainable, it is his superior’s attention he reignites.

~ ~ ~

The note, dictated but not read, carried in its short sentences the warmth of a telegram. There had been a terrible lax in both service and courtesy among the staff.  Stop. Guests, especially female, often felt uncomfortable and objectified in presence of the help. Stop. The building dress code was also not respected. Stop. Immediate remediation of these issues is expected. Stop.

~ ~ ~

“Cob salad; has lettuce; can’t touch it.”
[…]
“So I hear you got yourself a pretty stern talking to, didn’t you?”
[…]
“Don’t be so glum, mate. Happens to the best of us; s’why you got to learn to check the ladies out when they’re going and not coming.”
[…]
”Just eat it, alright! No quid pro today; you’re skin and bones for Pete’s sake.”
{…}
“You’re welcome. Finally caught a glimpse of her yesterday myself; spank bank’s so full they’re offering me a joint account.”

~ ~ ~

Simple and ruthless was the approach that had been adopted. There were seven installed under his desk, and just that morning he had found two snapped necks and a third fully decapitated. Instead of simply mimicking the hurried glance of the exiting tenant the building and the languished step of the incoming one, he had this time aimed for total extermination, making sure to tighten the wire for maximum efficiency. The vermin had, as presumed, recoiled from the lobby but this did not satisfy him. He invested thirty-five of his own dollars in the most potent raticide on the shelf, one whose label warned for the safety of not only child and pet but also that of furniture and plant. He scoured the basement, generously spreading the red paste wherever he could.  The rats hid away in confusion, meeting only in small pockets to revisit the treaty by which they had thought to be abiding. Somewhere in the crowd, an elder rat raised its fist, signaling the end of peaceful coexistence and rallied for youth to stand up and take charge. They unanimously cursed this status quo of invisibility and their historical subservience to frozen cheese. The war bell rang as it had never before and foot soldiers hugged their wives. It was understood now that each side would be merciless.

~ ~ ~

Miss McAllister nodded to him as she headed for the exit only to, once her hand was on the door, backtrack to his counter where he noticed her brow to be particularly well trimmed that day. “Would you like to know the why of the bite?” she asked prematurely, resting a hand on her tightly bundled olive pashmina, ready to unleash the visual in question. “It’s quite a tale. There was blood everywhere, even on the curtains.” Just then, another rat’s neck was heard snapping beneath the counter and startled the woman. “Just the pipes, ma’am,” said the Doorman before going on to decline her offer. She resumed her day and he proceeded to collect the corpse.

~ ~ ~

There would be, over the subsequent forty-eight weeks, what could qualify as further developments to the situation. Reports of a faked pregnancy, notions of entrapment and accusations of either blackmail or extortion, whichever one best suited the demand for cold hard cash, would be thrown across long desks and in the presence of neutral parties. Heightened security procedurals were put in place in the building to deal with the more unscrupulous paparazzi that would take residence outside the building. At the height of the frenzy, the media would capitalize on the public’s infatuation with her mane and label her the Ruby Digger and the resulting settlement would go down in infamy as being one of the costliest in State history.

~ ~ ~

Husband and wife both readily took to life among the clouds. She was reborn Jolly Gigi and his foyer was soon heightened by various Bison pelts. Though her dreams of a trim figure quickly disappeared under deposits of top-shelf cider and cured lard, her hats were indeed large and flamboyant. She would frantically pat them every morning as she passed the Doorman, growing frustrated at her inability to incite the slightest reaction on his part. Though they were, in fact, noticed. Equally noticed were her furs, shawls, pearls, and the string of young and trim business partners her husband made a point of inviting home on evenings when she fancied a late opera. Through it all, the Doorman’s perspective remained firmly at ground-level, ever vigilant to the growing infestation.