Free Ghost of a Flea by James Sallis

This was in the early Nineties, and I was living, more adrift than usual, in a constant shuffle back and forth between furnished rooms and LaVerne’s. David had vanished, I thought for good, leaving behind a few moments’ silence on my answering machine. Putting in his own time (I imagined) walking back to dreary rooms and standing by windows. Watching the world pass by just out of reach, acceptance, participation, understanding.
    We always have to understand, don’t we, the two of us? That’s another thing I must get away from.
    Closer to home I passed a neighborhood grill and looked in to see a waiter who at first appeared to have been in a terrible accident, his arm a clutch of raw meat. But it was merely bacon he held, draped over the arm (much as in movies fancy waiters hold towels over their arms) preparatory to cooking.
    Five or six blocks further along, a homeless man had deposited his jumble of bags beneath a tree in an empty lot and lay knees up among them as though reclining in a field of high grass or flowers. Person and possessions, man and baggage, were indistinguishable, equally still, equally serene, in perfect lack of expectation.

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