Ghost of a Flea

Chapter Eleven

Thing is, I walked out of the building and the cops were standing there waiting for me

There was this sort of gate at the entryway, and I froze just outside it. The gate was cast iron and once had something written on it in art deco script, but now only two letters were left, an L and an I, spaced far apart.

“Don’t s’pose you live here,” one of them, the older one, said.

“Don’t rightly see how anyone could. Back home our barns’re better’n this shithole.”

I held both hands up in plain view.

“You been drinkin’, boy?”

I shook my head. Best, always, to say as little as possible. That was true back home, even more true here in the city. I’d been in New Orleans a year or so at the time, and was learning fast.

“Here to buy dope, then.”

“No sir.”

“Damn. You’re one polite nigger, ain’t you?”

They walked me over to the squad between them. I made to lean against it and spread my feet.

“No need for that,” the older one said. He smiled. The smile reminded me of alligator gars into whose mouths we’d jam sticks, then watch them sink and fight their way back to the surface and sink again till they died. “You been up to the third floor by any chance?”

I shook my head.

“You sure ’bout that.”

I nodded.

“’Cause there’s a man up there makes his living selling dope to kids. We don’t like that much.”

“No sir.”

“Maybe you don’t either.”

“No sir.”

“Maybe if we went up there right now we’d find he’s given up his former occupation.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that, officer.”

“No … no, of course you wouldn’t.” A car sped by on the street. He followed it with his eyes, then looked back. “I haven’t seen you before, have I?”

“No sir.”

“New in town?”

“Right new, yes sir.”

“Got family here?”

“No sir.”

“Heading back home soon, then?”

“I ’spect so, yes sir.”

“So I won’t be seeing you again.”

I shook my head.

“Good.”

“You’re free to go,” the younger one said. “He’s free to go, right?”

“Free as he’s gonna git, anyway.” They had a good laugh over that.

“Thank you, officers. You take care now, you hear?” And I walked away.

Away from apartment 321, where Harry Soames lay fouling pale blue tile with his blood.

“What the fuck, let ’em kill each other off,” the younger cop said behind me.

Two months after I’d come down from Arkansas, I met Angie at a Burger King on Carrollton. You could get a dinner there, burger, fries, drink, for about two dollars. She didn’t have it. And though I didn’t have much more myself, I sprang for her meal. I wasn’t so hardened back then, I hadn’t seen a lot.

We lived together for six, seven weeks. Didn’t take me long to find out Angie was an addict. But long as she got her stuff, she was good. And slowly over those days and weeks, without giving it a name or thinking much about it, I was falling in love with her.

Then one night-I’d started doing collections, which tends to be nighttime work-I came home and found Angie stretched out on the couch. She looked perfectly at rest. Some detective show was on TV, light from the screen washing over her. She’d popped corn and the full bowl sat beside her on the coffee table, along with a full glass of lemonade. She was dead.