Free Street of No Return by David Goodis, Robert Polito Page B

morning.
The feeling grew in him and he tried to make it go away but it stayed there and went on growing. He was walking slowly down a very narrow alley and seeing the darkness ahead, just the darkness, nothing else. Or maybe there was something down there that he could see but didn't want to see. Maybe he was trying not to look at it. He blinked hard and told himself it wasn't really there.
Then he blinked again and focused hard and he knew it was there.
He saw the faint glow pouring thinly from a kitchen window, floating out across the alley and showing the color and the shape of the moving figure.
Bright green. That was the cap. Black and purple. That was the plaid lumber jacket. The shape was very short and very wide, with extremely long arms.
Hello, Whitey said without sound. Hello again.
He stood motionless and saw the short wide man standing there in the back yard under the dimly lit kitchen window. The distance between himself and the man was some forty yards and he couldn't see clearly what the man was doing. It seemed that the man wasn't doing anything. Then Whitey noticed the tiny moving form at the man's feet. It was a gray kitten lapping at the contents of a saucer.
The glow from the window showed the short wide man stooping over to pet the kitten. The kitten went on with its meal and the man knelt beside it and seemed to be talking to it. Presently the kitten was finished with the meal and the man picked it up with one hand, fondled it with the other, held its furry face to his cheek to let it know it had a friend in this world. The kitten accepted the petting and Whitey could hear the sound of its contented meow. The man put it down and gently patted its head. It meowed again, wanting more petting. The man turned away and moved across the back yard under the glow from the kitchen window, opening the kitchen door and entering the house.
Whitey moved automatically. He wasn't sure what he was thinking as he walked down the alley toward the lighted window. He tried to tell himself it didn't make sense to move in this direction, just as it hadn't made sense to follow the man when he'd seen him earlier tonight on Skid Row. It just didn't make sense at all.
It had no connection with now. It was strictly a matter of past history. Something from 'way back there, seven years ago. There was no good reason for going back. And every damn good reason to stay away from it, not let it take him back.
Check it, he said to himself. Stop walking and check it and forget about it. Let it rest where it is. For Christ's sake, bury it, will you?
But the lighted window said no. The lighted window was a magnet, pulling him closer. He moved on down the alley, his feet walking forward and his brain swimming backward through a sea of time. It was a dark sea, much darker than the alley. The tide was slow and there were no waves, just tiny ripples that murmured very softly. Telling him all about yesterday. Telling him that yesterday could never really be discarded, it was always a part of now. There was just no way to get rid of it. No way to push it aside or throw it into an ash can, or dig a hole and bury it. For all buried memories were nothing more than slow-motion boomerangs, taking their own sweet time to come back. This one had taken seven years.
He went on down the alley and came to a loose-nailed fence with most of the posts missing. He gazed across the small back yard, seeing through the kitchen window a stilllife painting of some empty plates and cups stacked on a sink. The background was faded gray wallpaper, torn here and there, some of the plaster showing. Then some life crept into the painting, but it wasn't much, just one of the smaller residents of the Hellhole, a water roach moving slowly along the edge of the sink.
He stood there waiting for more life to appear in the kitchen. Nothing appeared and there was no sound from inside the house. It was a small two-story wooden house, very old and with a don't-care look about it.