Eye of the Cricket (6 page)

A Swamp Tours van stopped out front to retrieve dropped-off clients, backing up traffic for blocks. Across by Jackson Square,
carriage mules shrugged shoulders in their livery, flicked tails and snorted. A young man bantered at passersby on the sidewalk
outside, periodically breaking off to perform solo versions of a cappella hits.

The next mission on my list lay well beyond the Quarter, on Der-bigny out near Elysian Fields, a formidable hike. I had another
cup of coffee to fortify myself.

They didn't know it, neither did I, but three guys hanging out at a comer store same as every day, wearing oversize jeans
and backwards baseball caps, were waiting for me out there, along with a brushup on my arithmetic.

That's how life happens: angles, sharp turns, snags. Never what we expect. Never the stories we tell ourselves ahead of time.
So we're always having to make up new ones.

One morning maybe six years before, he had shown up on Clare Fellman's screen door, claws anchored in the mesh, hanging there.
She shooed him down and away but he kept coming back, till finallyshe let him in. He was little more than a kitten then, mostly
skin and bone, with just these huge ears sticking straight up—which was how he got the name.

I'd kind of showed up on Clare's doorstep, too. And when I wouldn't go away, she let me stay.

We'd had a little over a year together, fourteen months almost to the day. With Clare, I'd been able for the firsttime to
say things that, before, I'd always waited too long, too late, to say.

Then one night I came in and found her lying on the couch.

The night before, we'd attended a performance of the Kumbuka African Drum & Dance Collective at Loyola's Roussel Hall. Women
meet to go about their daily work, scrubbing clothes, preparing food. One stays behind when night begins to fall and the others
depart. Shortly she is set upon by a faceless demon. The others returnand findher body. Their wailing and lamentations weave
together into a hard rhythm that's finally picked up, almost unheard at first, by drums offstage. The women begin to dance
as, slowly, the drummers come into sight—as together, ever more frantic, they drum and dance the woman back to life.

In the time we'd been together, Clare had discovered a flair for writing, and an unsuspected joy in it. The words that came
to her so reluctantly, so haltingly, when she spoke, poured out in a flowwhen she wrote. She had started off writing op-ed
pieces; soon she was doing reviews for local alternative papers.

I just don't feel very good, she told me when I asked what was wrong.

I . . . feel... really bad . . . Lew... you know... ?

I'd been with her so long that I no longer noticed the pauses, the gropings, the way she drew lines around a word and waited
for it to settle in place.

Come on, we're going to Touro, I told her.

Somehow I even managed to drive her car there. Because it was specially outfitted, with brake, gearshift and accelerator on
the steering column, I'd never tried before.

In ER I raised enough hell to get her seen immediately. Neither the residents nor the attendings I insisted upon their calling
in could find anything wrong. They suggested, nonetheless, that Clare remain overnight for observation.

I'd gone home to pick up a few things for her, pajamas and robe, toothbrush, underwear, makeup, her purse. Back in thirty
minutes, I told her.

I knew something was wrong the minute I stepped inside the ER doors. People were rushing into Clare's room from all over.

Another cerebral aneurysm, I was told minutes later. Like the one that hit her when she was twenty-two, the one she wasn't
supposed to survive, that scrambled her speech and caused her to have to learn all over again how to stand, walk, reach for
things, grasp them.

Massive and sudden, a doctor said. Nothing they could do. They tried, of course. But... She was sorry.

So I moved out of Clare's, back again into the old house where I'd lived with LaVeme, taking Bat along. Where often I would
stand looking out the window above the kitchen sink to the slave quarters, to the makeshift, long-forsaken office out there,
its roof covered with grass.

Hours earlier, as I stood over a body I thought might be Shon Delany's, I'd been thinking about Clare.

Maybe I wasn't so bad after all.

I put on water for myself, set out a cup and a bag of Irish Breakfast tea, began rummaging through mail.

Cut-rate and presorted first-class advertisements from book clubs, record clubs, video clubs. An offer to provide me with
a subscription to a catalog of catalogs. A refund check from the electric company for fifty-nine cents.

The kettle called, and Bat followed me back into the kitchen, thinking something more by way of food might happen there. Hope
springs eternal. People drop things. The alert cat pounces before Providence has a chance to withdraw its offer.

That afternoon I myself had decided that Life, Providence, Chance or Whatever just might be sending me a message and, following
the scuffle on Derbigny, returned home to shower off blood, grime and stray bits of skin and street tar, eat cold Dinty Moore
beef stew out of a can, put on new clothes and head back out in pursuit of Shon Delany.

Signals we are set here to read. You must learn to put your distress signals in code. Move along, Griffin.

I did.

On foot, to the donut shop where Shon Delany had worked. By then it was almost four. And by then the shop was closed.

Not just closed. They'd pulled the rug out from under it. Tast-T Donut was shut down like a clam. Gone, abandoned, deserted,
defunct.

A hand-lettered cardboard sign on the door read Sorry Were Not Here. The parking lot was full—employees' cars from the hospital
and surrounding medical facilities.

Next door was a florist's shop. Stucco, a converted single-family residence with diminutive arches out front, every bit as
charming as they were nonsensical. Recently painted light green and peach.

A bell tolled as I ducked through the entryway and came up against a trestle table behind which stood a woman at least six
feet tall. Red hair everywhere, thin, wearing a black sheath. She was on the phone and, though motionless, somehow gave the
impression of swaying. Willowy. She nodded to me, smiled. Be right with me.

"Yes, ma'am, I understand that. But if you could just come by the store? We'd be able to do a lot better job for you then....
Great."

She put the phone down. Bare arms slim and lightly downed. Wrists narrow as a ruler, fingers long when she reached across
the table to shake my hand. Late thirties? No perfume, but a smell of soap and, behind that, the faintest trace of sweat.

Her earrings were tiny sharks with the lower halves of men's bodies hanging from their mouths.

The phone rang again.

She shrugged. "Let the machine get it. People don't bother anymore even to bestir themselves."

Bestir themselves?

"They call from home in their pajamas or underwear and expect you to drop everything. Deborah O'Neil," she said, taking away
her hand. "What can I do for you?"

She smiled, instinctively turning her head a few degrees to the side and lifting her chin. Incredible profile.

I asked her about the donut shop.

I said she seemed to know a lot about the situation over there, an amazing amount really,and she shrugged.

"I watch people, notice what happens around me. Always have. Things get slow here off and on during the day, you understand;
it all comes in waves. And our office in the back has a window onto the alley. Employees take, took, their smoke breaks out
there. I'd be doing the books, shuffling through piles of sales slips and invoices, and I'd hear them talking."

Did they know what was going on?

Any idea whatfinally shut the doors?

"Well, I don't know, of course. But I think it may have been what happened last night."

The phone rang again. Low voices from the back of the shop as the answering machine took the call.

"End of the month. Extra loads of paperwork to catch up on—even more, now that my partner never seems to be around for these
things anymore. I've gotten used to being here late. Store closes at six, I'll get dinner and a glass of wine up the street
at Sweet Basil's then come back and have two or three uninterrupted hours. So it must have been close to ten, maybe a little
past. I was getting ready to leave."

This is last night.

"Right. I hear voices in the alley, someone saying 'Motherfuck,' someone else saying 'Be still, girl, don't you move or talk
no more.' So I look out. This huge black car, Lincoln, something like that, 's pulled up out front. Four guys in it, all of
them in black, too. And black. Driver stays in the car. The three that get out have automatic weapons. One stands by the car,
watching up and down the street. Other two go inside. They're in there four, five minutes, come back out and get in the car.
When the car pulls onto Jackson, people start running out of the donut shop. Lights are still on inside, but no one's there.
This morning when I come in, I see the sign."

Robbery, you think?

"Who'd bother? Best day it ever had, that shop never netted two hundred dollars."

This town, it could happen. A few weeks back, an eleven-year-old knocked off a motel over on Claiborne. Walked in with a .38,
pistol-whipped the desk clerk (though he had to get up on a chair to do it), and walked out with eighteen dollars. Still,
she had a point.

You never saw anything like that before?

She shook her head.

They were looking for someone.

"That's the only thing that makes sense, yes. Way they went about it, the weapons, car."

Who was it in the alley?

"I don't know names. Just voices."

But you looked out, through the window?

"Yes."

You saw them?

"Not the woman. She was at the back, in the shadows. I remember the man sounded black but wasn't—that surprised me, when I
saw him. Average height, fairly thin. Hair shaved to above his ears, then really long. Kind of a topknot. Like Woody Woodpecker?"

I asked her if by any chance she knew who owned the shop.

"Oddly enough, I do. He came by and asked if I'd mind keeping an eye on the property, maybe pass along any inquiries from
prospective buyers. I have his name and phone number back in the office, if you want it."

I did.

"Assuming I can find it."

"You're in luck," she said.

I guess we both are.

"How so?"

"No. That was last year."

It do okay?

"If you consider a week's run and half the house empty the whole time, it did. Actually I guess attendance was fairly good
the firstnight or two. It gave a false impression. Because of family and friends."

You have a lot of friends?

The phone rang. Watching one another, we listened to her voice.

Heard the beep, heaitl a mumbled message, heard a dial tone as the caller hung up.

"Not so many that I can't use another one. But what's the second thing?"

What?

"You said we were both lucky because I got my play staged—for one thing."

You're right. Other thing was, I really do need to get some flowers.

"I see. What kind?"

Well, I was thinking roses. Pink if you have them.

"Of course. A dozen?"

Why not.

"I'll even pick them out myself."

She disappeared into the back room and emerged minutes later cradling thirteen baby-pink roses and sprays of baby's breath
in green wrapping paper.