There was my stop.
I opened my eyes and slipped the letter back inside my suit coat. The gas can in the seat beside me rattled with a little song.
I pulled my things together and rose to my feet.
I left the gas can on the seat beside me and crept past the empty benches toward the front of the bus.
The door made a little hush as I stepped out. I was sure of it now. Nothing in that long lonely night seemed like it would ever change. I fumbled through my suit and walked straight into the dark.
An angel of lust spoke coldly:
“Lonely tonight?”
Even in a small town like La Harpie there were ladies of the night. Bus and train stations were where they flourished, I guess. They’d pick up men stopping in town for the night or husbands who had just seen off their wives. This girl was desperate, wide-toothed, pale, with a long jagged scar, waiting all alone.
“Bet a lonely ol’ jailbird like you wouldn’t mind a little company for the night.”
I just kept on walking, trying not to breathe in her perfume. Because then it would be over. Then the rest of my seventeen bucks in singles would be spent in lust and I’d be without food or a room. Morning would come and I’d see her sore face, without any of the thousand layers of makeup, then she’d tell me it was time to go and I’d feel worse off than if I had just spent the night alone.
“So how long were you in?” she asked.
“Almost three years.”
“And your girlfriend didn’t pick you up to welcome you home?”
“Don’t have a girl.”
“That’s a shame, good-looking boy like you.”
I just kept on walking. I didn’t want to stop. But this pale prostitute kept up with me like we had been walking together all our lives.
“’Cause, I’ll tell you, this town ain’t exactly kind to strangers. I’m just telling you as a little warning.”
“Thanks.”
The girl was maybe about seventeen. There was a long gray scar that hooked around from one eye to the corner of her lip. It looked like it had been carved deep by a straight razor. I could smell her sweat. I could smell her perfume, probably just some soap. I needed a woman.
I took a deep breath. I lit a cigarette and exhaled through my nose. The prostitute winked at me and patted me on the shoulder. I fingered a cigarette out of the pack and handed it to her.
“Do you wanna get a room then?” she asked. “We could do whatever you like.”
“Whatever I like?” I asked.
“Sure, baby, sure, whatever you like.”
“Could I go up to that hotel room and take off all your clothes?”
“Sure you could, sweetie. That’s usually part of the deal.”
“No, no, I mean, could I go up to that hotel room and undress you slow, so slow, piece by piece, right on down to your last little panty ho, then maybe wrap you up in a nice white towel and slip you into a warm little bath, a warm little soapy bubble bath, and wash your hair for you, then maybe soap up your back and your legs and your face and rinse you off clean, then dry you off nice and good and tie a soft white robe around your waist and kiss all your skin from your sweet little forehead down to your bare white toes? Then maybe tune the radio to a nice country station and wait for a sweet ballad by Tammy Wynette or Johnny Cash and kiss on you some more and more and maybe dance together without any of our clothes and then fall asleep together so tight they think we might have died right there? Could I do that? Could I do that for only seventeen dollars tonight?”
The prostitute’s face was all pale.
“You don’t want me dirtying up that kind of pretty dream.”
She flicked her cigarette into the dark, then turned down the street alone, biting her thin yellow hair. I watched as her shadow grew and then disappeared. I took a deep breath and turned around.
There were small green squares of lawn in front of each house and some gray trees that made a little shade. There were the railroad tracks that stretched out in the distance beside brown telephone poles, all of them curving along the horizon. It was a good dare to get someone dumb to walk along the train tracks right before a train passed by. Nobody I knew got hurt doing it, but it seemed kind of dumb anyway. There it was. La Harpie. A town. Not much to look at, I guess. There was something underneath it all, though. Something like blood or gold. Something small that might fit in your pocket. Like lung cancer or a lucky dime.
I walked a block to the St. Francis Hotel, where Junior Breen had a room. It was red brick with a black metal fence. Three floors and a patch of lawn with dark black stains of mud.
The streetlamps suddenly flickered on.
It was just beginning to get dark. Welcome home, Luce Lemay, on the worst night of your life. You lousy hayseed. I coughed a little, then opened the front gate with a squeak and walked up to the front door. I pressed the door buzzer that was hanging out by its yellow and red and blue wires.
Bzzzzzzzz.
Old Lady St. Francis answered the door. Lord. Her eye shad was a purple nightmare that ran all over her forehead.
Her breath poured through the screen door. She had a can of beer in one hand and a lit Marlboro in the other. She was a short, mean-faced woman with a poof of gray hair and huge flabby arms. After her husband shot her lover dead and then turned the gun on himself, she lost her mind. She thought she was St. Francis of Assisi. She laid the dead to rest right under her back porch.
“Do you have a room to let?” I asked.
“You know someone here?”
“Sure, sure. Junior Breen. He said I could find a room here.”
“He did, huh?”
“My name’s Luce Lemay. I talked to you before. I just got out.”
“Out? Out of where?”
“Pontiac. I’m on parole.”
“Another jailbird, huh?” she grunted. “You from town here?”
“Just outside of town, ma’am.”
“Hayseed, huh? Grew up on a farm?”
“Yes, ma’am. Hog farm.”
“Well, I thought you were here about the cat.”
“Nope.”
“Because it’s too late.”
“Too late? What’s wrong with the cat?” I asked.
“It’s dead.”
“Huh.” I let out a little sigh. “So do you have a room?”
“You heard me the first time.”
Old Lady St. Francis didn’t make a move. She just stood there and took a sip of beer, clinking her yellow teeth on the can.
“You gonna let me in?” I asked.
“Why? What the hell are ya up to? No-good bums coming in and out of the jailhouse … It’s a hundred fifty a month. How much you got now?”
“Seventeen bucks.” I frowned. I pulled the money out of my pocket and handed her the cash.
“That’ll do for the next few days. You getting a job or you all planning a heist?”
“I got a job lined up at a service station, same as Junior.”
“Lucky enough someone pays that fathead at all. A fathead and a hayseed. I don’t see how that station will stay in business.”
“I dunno, ma’am.”
Her deep bloodshot eyes moved over my face. She took a swig from the silver can and unlocked the door.
“Junior’s in his room. You can have the one next to his. Third floor all the way down to your left.” She dug into her pocket and handed me a key. “Thieves and liars, the lot of you!”
I took my chances and walked inside. There was a huge wooden staircase that rose in the middle of the building up to the other floors. There in the lobby was a tiny white cat all laid out on an old white sheet, lying there dead on a glass table, surrounded by white candles, wearing a red crocheted dress, in some sort of funeral. It lay there on its back, its head dropped to one side. Its two tiny front paws were bent down like it was begging one last time. I stared at that cat for a minute, then walked right through that awful front room and up the stairs to the third floor.
There were old paintings of different saints being massacred or put to death. Saint Bartholemew with hot arrows in his throat. Joan of Arc tied to a fiery stake. There were tiny dead birds hanging all along the walls, all wearing pink crocheted sweaters.
I walked down to the end of the hall. There was the last door. I patted down my hair in the back. The door was painted black, open a little. I took a breath and knocked a few times, holding my brown bag of clothing. That’s all I had, a brown bag full of underwear, a few socks, some pants and some T-shirts, the red suit I had on. My whole life fit in a garbage bag. Already I had a plan, though. Get a room for a while, get a job, save up some money, buy a car, and head out to Hollywood. Maybe work at a gas station out there. Fall in love with a movie queen and spend the rest of my days by the pool.
Maybe just work at a service station. You know they have to have them. Tinseltown. I had no real idea why I wanted to go out there. Maybe it was just a dream I had overheard in prison or on that crowded bus while I was asleep.
I gave a gentle knock.
“For God’s sake, go away!” Junior hollered from behind the door. “Just leave me alone!”
I pushed open the door a little more and stepped inside. “Junior?” I whispered.
Big ol’ Junior was curled up in a fleshy ball behind the door. There was a wad of snot hanging from his nose. His eyes were puffy and red and full of tears. He looked like a lost little kid.
“Jesus, pal, what’s the matter?” I asked.
There, carved into the wood floor by Junior’s big white hands, was a single darkly lettered word.
Perfidy.
Junior heaved himself to his feet. He gave me a big hug, nearly lifting me up off the red carpet floor.
“You made it. You made it OK.”
“Sure I did, pal. What’s the matter with you?”
“Strange things have been happening, ol’ pal. Strange things.” His round face got all serious and grave. “Been hearing things in my closet all week.”
“Things in your closet?” I smiled.
“Then I heard Toreador got paroled and I thought he’d catch up with you and put a bullet in your back before you ever made it here.”
“Paroled … but … I thought he had been transferred … I thought he was gone.”
“Guy Gladly told me last week. He said it was good as a done deal.”
“Maybe he still thinks I’m in the joint.”
“Sure, sure, pal, you’re probably right. You know I’m just out of sorts when it comes to those kind of things. Sure.”
Junior gave me another monstrous hug.
“It’s good to see you, pal. I’m sure we’ve got a mighty bit to talk about.” He grinned.
“This landlady is crazy, huh?” I asked.
“She’s the one giving me all them nightmares at night. All her dead animals all over the place. Got me thinking there’s ghosts hiding in my bureau and under my bunk.”
“Guess I’ll take a look at my room then.”
“She said you could have the one next door.”
I stepped out into the dark hallway and slid the key into the doorknob. The door creaked open a little as I stepped inside. The Virgin Mary frowned right at me, holding her lips together in the saddest smile I’d ever seen.
“What is that?” I mumbled.
There was a huge painting of the Virgin hanging along the wall. She stood in sweet white and blue robes, with her hands clasped above her red sacred heart, as the flames of perdition burned around her, surrounding her in a red-orange glow. Her skin seemed so pale and soft. It really was the saddest, most real looking painting I had ever seen. It was lit by the light from the streetlamps outside. From the draft along the thin wood walls, its canvas flickered like she was taking a little breath.
“What is this?” I asked.
Junior flicked the light on.
There was a long parade of the dead running from that lost little room. The room itself was really some kind of storage closet, about five-by-eight. There were crickets and pale-winged moths scattered everywhere, all over the walls and ceiling, these crickets, hundreds of them, chirping. There were about thirty thin cigar boxes—Te Amo, Royale, Havana Maduro—all different-colored boxes lying on a little white bed. Caskets. Caskets for the dead. All these boxes were filled with tiny dead animals, all white and browned skeletons rattling in their empty tombs. There were all kinds of other unfortunates left in several little piles along the floor. All kinds of other little birds and squirrels and chipmunks and even a tiny tabby kitten lay still and dead and in the open without proper burial arrangements. This room was a kind of warm, stuffy nightmare, some sort of shrine to little dead things everywhere.
“My god,” I muttered, closing one of the yellow cigar boxes. “Jesus, what is all this?”
“St. Francis has been busy lately, I guess,” Junior mumbled. His eyes widened a little like he was walking in a dream.
“But where the hell did she get all these dead things?”
“I think she’s been going around the neighborhood late at night and doin’ them in herself. There’s no way there’s this many a dead animal lying around town.”
I kind of smiled as Junior grabbed a stack of tiny cardboard caskets. He slung them under his arm as all the bugs scattered and flew about. He dropped a few to the ground. Thin yellow skeletons full of gray hair and feathers spilled on out, disappearing into the darkness under the bed.
“Sorry ’bout that.” Junior said. He gently pushed the remains all into one box and shoved it under his arm. “We can go bring these downstairs.” He nodded, dragging the dead out.
It was all right. It was a place to sleep. Just for a few months. Maybe even a few weeks. At least I had good company. I thought about Junior and smiled. I didn’t feel like such a hood around him. Maybe that’s why people have friends at all. Not because they like them so much but because they don’t make them feel so much worse.
The both of us took a seat on my bed when we were done relocating the deceased.
“Me, I’m kind of wondering how the ladies in town are looking since I’ve been gone,” I said.
“They’re all pretty as can be.” Junior grinned.
“You make it with any yet?” I asked.
“Not just yet.”
“Know any we can call on at least?”
“I know this one place. It’s not too far away. Guy Gladly told me where it is. I can spot you some money if you need it.”
“Just until I start getting paid.”