Half-Resurrection Blues_ A Bone Street Rumba Novel - Daniel Jose Older Page 0,39
pulled my mostly dead ass off the street and brought me here to become whole again is on the brink. And all I can do is pace the room. “Go home, Carlos,” Mama Esther had said. “Rest yourself. You’ve had a long and terrible night.”
* * *
She was right, of course, but I don’t go home. I’ve had a long and terrible night. Home means nothing to me. I have no interest in wallowing, and I know Herodotus and the poets will never eclipse the image of Dro falling to the ngk swarm. And then the ngk swarm turning to me as one, those myriad hungry eyes glaring through the darkness of the basement.
No.
Home is not the place for me. My mind knows where it wants to go, but I let my feet carry me on their own. It’s easier that way, not allowing the conscious desire to surface. Do what you have to do, feet, and soon we’re ambling through the park, and the thousand late-night spirits and birds howl their creature songs and the songs mingle with my crooked heart and its off-tempo scampering, my swirling fears and the regrets and wonders, my aching head. I’m just a park spirit too, at the end of the day. Housed in this crooked body with its crooked heart, off-tempo gait, and deathlike swagger. But inside, I’m just a ghost like the rest of them. Don’t be fooled.
It’s so dark here. I’m sure I’m a holy terror to any late-night sojourner, this limping half phantom fleeing from a long and terrible night into the arms of some unknown disaster. Fuck. I haven’t even drunk anything and my mind’s moving too fast for its own good. I forsake the path for those blessed with the full breath of life and trundle through the underbrush, upsetting a family of birds. And then I’m out in the sudden clutter of Flatbush and then I’m on Ocean Avenue and my finger’s on the buzzer of her door and I’m slumped against the wall, waiting, trying not to think too hard.
“Carlos?”
She’s in pajamas. A light. She’s probably not really glowing—I just haven’t seen anything that could make me smile in what seems like years but is really only hours. I find I don’t know what to do with myself, how to carry this strange body. Fortunately, my face says it all. Sasha takes one look at me and opens the door. It’s startling, how instantaneous her decision is. I see it flash across her face. It’s not that she didn’t think about it at all, but . . . she brings me inside, leads me to an elevator, down a hallway, into a cozy little dim one-bedroom. She helps me out of my jacket, collapses me into an easy chair that seems to have been waiting there just for me, and puts on some water to boil.
I’m doing everything I can not to look like a complete zombie when she comes back in the room. “Do you want to talk about it?” she says very softly. I have no words for what happened. And I’m not in a storytelling mood. And the more I say, the more likely I’ll fuck up, and this night will come crashing around me even more than it already has. I shake my head. She nods and goes back in the kitchen to fuss with the tea.
“Milk and sugar?”
“Uh-uh.”
She returns with two steaming mugs. “I hope peppermint’s okay. It’s all I got.” She’s wearing flowy pajama pants and a tank top. You can just make out the shadow of her nipples through the shirt. Her clavicles slide beneath the straps and meet at her neck, where the tiny shadows of her jugular veins triangle up and away toward her ears. I stand and take the teas out of her hands. She reads my expression and, with the slightest of smiles, says: “No.” I give one of the teas back to her and sit.
“You can show up at some ridiculous hour of the morning with death etched across your face and I’ll lend you my couch. I don’t even know why I trust you that much, but I do. But don’t overplay your hand, Carlos.”
“Fair enough.” I’m elated just to be here and not in some delirium of sorrow. I sip at the tea, which is pretty bland, and allow contentment to displace confusion. I don’t know how we settled into a conversation, but we did. She knew I was lost and