<<Previously… so the real question is: are we the moth or are we the flame? And who says the flame doesn’t also yearn for the moth? Or that a flame can see anything beyond its own heat? Perhaps it desires to become two for a while, projectile-hallucinates the moth into its blurry version of the world, then recalls it back, back into itself, where all is one again, for a while.>>
this week’s theme: rainbow warriors
New Orleans, some time in the last or next three years.
Running through the streets of this city is never a task to take lightly, especially when you’re chasing someone. Your eyes have to move fast, back and forth between the person running from you and the street full of potholes so large you could curl up and sleep in them.
One wrong step and your foot’s facing the wrong direction and you’re stuck on the couch watching reruns of M*A*S*H, sans paycheck.
The one thing that I really didn’t need was for the person I was chasing to start shedding light into the air behind her, fragmenting the air between us like a broken mirror. She grabbed her face and pulled all the light off of herself at once and tossed it to the side. The her that was light ran one direction and the her that was lightless ran the other
“Scape, follow that one!” I yelled, pointing at the girl made of light. My associate hummed through the air after her, and I followed the dark shape of a running girl, a shape that was cut out of the world – a world currently made of shifting, jagged shards around us. She slipped swiftly in between two of the shards and I followed.
Then I was running through a room full of paintings, a museum of some sort. I followed her out of the gallery and onto a walkway that overlooked the other floors of the museum. She ran into a closing elevator.
“I just need to talk to you!” I said as the door closed. The elevator was going up, and I jumped into a second elevator and took it up to the only floor that was above me, which was the fifth. Inside the elevator I saw the name of the museum – the Ogden. All the galleries on the fifth floor were closed, and I walked out a pair of glass door onto an outside courtyard.
The sky was dim, and it took me a second to see her there, a shadow among the twisted sculptures, leaning against the railing. She was looking out towards the buildings of the Business District and the I-90 as it turned into a metallic spiderweb bridge and stretched itself over the Mississippi, car headlights streaming across it like an endless caravan of fireflies.
“Please don’t run anymore,” I begged her, my throat and lungs burning. I really wasn’t cut out for this whole chasing thing. I kept my distance from her and leaned against the railing. “Don’t suppose you’ve got any water on you?”
She sniffed, and I realized that she was crying.
“That’s not what I meant,” I said.
She wiped the tears away with the silhouette of a hand, pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one up. “I suppose you’re going to take me away now,” she said. “But I suddenly realized that I don’t care anymore. Nothing matters now.”
I laughed. “Nothing ever mattered. Oh, wait, how old are you? Fourteen, right? I guess things matter when you’re fourteen.” I turned around and leaned back against the rail. “You know, those cigarettes are the reason I could keep up with you. You really should have outrun me – I’m in terrible shape and more than twice your age.” I pulled a flask from an inside pocket of my jacket. “As long as we’re on the subject of vices… it’s not water, but it’ll do.” I took a swig, letting the herbal flavors of Chartreuse burn their way across my tongue and down my throat.
She looked over at me. Even though she was only a silhouette, I could feel her eyes there somewhere, trying to read into me. Then I saw that she hadn’t totally pulled the light off of herself – there was still color there, dangling from her ears. Two rainbow earrings hung suspended in the dark.
“Those earrings, they’re important to you,” I said. “They were a gift from him, weren’t they?”
“The way people talk about you,” she said, “it’s like you’re a hitman or something. A real tough guy. But you’re just a big dork, aren’t you?”
“Which would you rather me be?” I said, pretending not to be offended. There’s nothing quite like the sting of a fourteen-year-old girl calling you a dork. “And for the record, I did just chase you across fissions in time and space. Well, space at least. Not quite sure about the time part.” I checked my pocket watch, but it didn’t tell me much.
“So will there be a funeral?” she asked.
“I’m not really sure how these things go,” I said.
She looked back out at the freeway in the distance. “None of them realize that the sun’s not moving. None of them know that he’s dead. Someone who didn’t even know him will be picked to crawl inside, take his place and start it moving again. And no one will fucking know.”
“Ah, to be fourteen again and have it all figured out. Those were the days.”
“So where are you taking me once you catch your breath?”
“I told you, I’m just here to talk. I’m not taking you anywhere. Just had to make sure you didn’t do anything stupid.”
“What exactly is it that you do?” she asked me.
I looked out at the statue of General Lee standing high up on his overgrown pedestal, all proud-like among the buildings of the Business District. “Let’s just say I keep things from getting too out of hand in this city.”
“But you don’t actually care about the city. Not really, I can see it in your eyes. You like what you do, even when you pretend that you don’t. You work for someone, and they hired you because deep down, if the whole city vanished or blew up, you’d just walk to the next city. They needed someone like you – someone who’s afraid to really commit to something. Someone who doesn’t get attached to things.”
I grimaced and took another swig from my flask. “You’re a pretty sharp girl. I can see why you were his favorite, and why he picked you.”
“What do you mean he ‘picked’ me?”
I pulled out the keys and dangled them in the air. There was a yellow foam sun dangling from the key chain, as well as a brass fleur de lis. I tossed them to her and she caught them. Next to us the world broke apart into floating shards and the girl that was all light walked out from between the pieces, followed by my mosquito associate. The two half-girls locked eyes, the her that was light and the her that was everything else, and some kind of communication passed between them. Then they merged into one again, and she looked down at the keys in her hand, the rainbow earrings dangling below her mane of hair.
“I know you might not believe me,” I said. “But I am sorry for your loss.”
She nodded and looked out towards the horizon, not saying anything.
“The sun’s parked about fifty miles west of here in Bayou Alcide,” I told her, “out in Assumption Parish. I’d give you a ride, but it seems you’d travel faster on your own. Once you’re out there, it shouldn’t be hard to find. Big, yellow, round. Gives off a lot of light.”
The shards of the world shifted back and forth around us. The girl with the rainbow earrings took a drag of her cigarette and walked up to me. “I won’t tell anyone. About you being a dork.”
“And if you could… maybe throw in some intimidating dialogue that happened between us. Doesn’t have to be too dark, but -”
“Oh, I’ll make you sound really scary. How you held me over the railing, all threatening-like.”
“Holding a young girl over the railing?” I glanced down at the sidewalk far below. “Hell, I’d be scared of me.”
She laughed. “Maybe there’s a raise in it for you.”
“That’ll be the day.”
She looked at Scape, who bobbed his feathered antennae in the air. “And thank you, for what you said back there.” Then the girl passed between the shards of the world and was gone. The world pieced itself back together like it had never been fractured, leaving Scape and I alone on the courtyard.
I took a swig and passed my flask to Scape. “Hey,” I told him, “no one got mad at me that time. I think I’m averaging one in three now.” We both leaned on the railing, looking out at the freeway cutting across the horizon. “You know, from here it kind of reminds me of a river. Cars flowing, people flowing. Kind of nice in a strange way.” We sat there in silence for a while, sipping on Chartreuse and watching the city.
next sub-entry \/\/ previous sub-entry
story and photos Copyright 2010 by Andy Reynolds
for more stories and a menu of the episodes, visit my website: AndyReynolds.net
sub-entry 4> episode 27.21\/\/on the destination of roads
<<Previously… you know that thing they say about snowflakes? Wouldn’t you think that it’s the same with leaves? Or rocks? Or grains of sand? Isn’t everything absolutely unique? Then why have the saying about snowflakes? Are they supposed to be more unique than everything else?>>
theme of the week: aliens
New Orleans, next week.
Decatur Street. Some think that it starts amidst all the hotels and street cars of Canal Street, but this is just a clever deception of the street’s own doing, involving numbers and the way that the human mind is addicted to ordering them.
Decatur Street really begins at St. Ferdinand Street, at the foot of a side entrance to NOCCA, and like an old man with a bad leg (and, as it happens, an impeccably well tailored suit) it limps up through the Marigny, 
past the potholes and the piles of broken glass, past the fancy houses and the abandoned warehouses, eventually making its way to Frenchman Street - if only to stop on the corner for a spell to peer at the live jazz music dancing with the wind along the sidewalk - before making its way into the quarter. Once it passes Esplanade, it takes on the monicker Lower Decatur, 
and suddenly half the people on the street sprout metal trinkets from their faces and ears like seeds that will fall into the cracks of the sidewalk and grow more of them, and the ink that spirals across the surface of their skin in so many patterns and shapes moves to the beat of the rock music, which pours like whiskey from overturned barrels out of the open doors of the dive bars. After several blocks, Decatur drops the “Lower” like a leather jacket in the spring, and continues on past the countless, identical T-Shirt shops and “Voodoo” grocery stores and daiquiri shops, lighting up a cigar as it limps along. 
Then the street reaches the point where its fame exceeds the boundaries of the city, and there is Cafe Du Monde to the left and then Jackson Square to the right, with the St. Louis Cathedral lying just beyond the silhouette of Andrew Jackson atop his rearing horse (that horse is rearing because it never liked him much, but that’s a very long and entirely different story). Decatur nods to the mules as he passes, and perhaps remembers a time when all the carriages were pulled by horses.
After several more blocks of shops with skeletons wearing T-Shirts and giant petrified alligators hanging from the ceilings, Decatur Street grows tired and starts to shrink, the buildings stretching up to either side of it, blocking any sunlight from reaching the old street. It limps past an old fire station and an Irish Pub, a few bars and restaurants.
Its cigar is nearing the end, and the street feels its own life flowing out its mouth along with the smoke. It raises an eyebrow as it passes the row of tour buses stopped outside the House of Blues, then it walks up to the corner of Canal Street, where the French Quarter ends and the Business District begins, and where Decatur Street will die and give its breath to the infant street named Magazine. It steps off the corner, limping down the crosswalk to the large median that’s lined with streetcar tracks, where a covered bench and trash can materialized out of the air, like they seem to do around that time of day.
Decatur Street put out the stub of its cigar on the lid of a trash can, threw it away, then slowly sat down on the bench, taking off its stetson hat and setting it on its lap.
“Mind if I take a seat?” I asked.
He looked up at me with those old, dark eyes. “It’s a public space,” he said in a voice left raspy by so many cigars.
I sat down, pulled out my flask, then slipped it back into my coat. My eyes passed back and forth over the people walking in and out of hotels and shops. All the cars and buses, the shopping bags that dangled like fruit from the arms of tourists and not-tourists.
“What’s eatin’ you, boy?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
“You’ve been following me a while now. I seen you. Watchin’ me from between the buildings.”
“Yeah.” I pulled out a cigar and handed it to him with a shaking hand.
He looked down at the cigar, then took it and lit it with a match. A cacophony of thick smoke escaped his mouth. “Why? I ain’t got nothin’ for you.”
“I know. But something inside, it draws me to you. I feel like I shouldn’t be here anymore, like I never should have walked into this city. And everyone, all the locals and tourists and the strange entities here, they all look at me like I’m some kind of alien. Like I don’t belong.”
He shrugged. “What does the word ‘alien’ mean in this place? The first aliens that came here were French, then there was the Spanish, the Acadians from Canada, the Africans, the Haitians along with others from the Caribbean, then aliens from the United States. Not to mention people from just about every other country you can think of. These years, most of the aliens coming here are from the states – they’re coming to help, in one way or another, to bring their soul-water to the growing and healing city. To pour their life-blood into the soil, adding themselves to New Orleans and its many wonders.” The end of his cigar glowed orange and red, then smoke crawled out of the corners of his mouth. “You are an alien, as I am. But we are all drawn here for reasons the city may never tell us.”
I opened and closed my fists. “My hands don’t even feel like my hands anymore.”
“That’s ’cause you’re looking at it all backwards and inside-out.” He smiled, and the teeth set amidst his wrinkled mouth were white and gleaming in the sunlight. “Everyone here knows. You stuck out your foot and tripped up Mr. Hourglass, and he got himself all shattered, throwin’ his sand every which-way.”
“That’s a matter of opinion,” I said quickly. “If I could remember more clearly what happened, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t completely my fault, and quite possibly not my fault at all.”
He leaned closer to me, his breath carrying with it hints of tobacco and herbs. “Then how come you feel it running through your bones more than anyone else? It’s up to you to put things straight.”
“Alright, then. How? I’ve been fixing problems in this city for so many years now, but this one swims away every time I reach out for it. Everything shifts around too much for me to get a foot hold.”
“I’ll give ya a hint,” he said. “But then you’ve got to promise to give an old man his peace and quiet as he sits on the edge of his death.”
I nodded, and he held out his open hand as if to take mine in it. I gave him my hand, and he latched on and said, “Don’t move,” then proceeded to press the lit ember of the cigar into the back of my wrist. Now I’d like to say here that I gritted my teeth and didn’t scream or try to pull away, but I’m a better liar than that.
Afterwords, with the scent of charred me in the air, he put a finger to his lips to tell me that the conversation was over with. I sat there next to him, my arm feeling like it was covered in flames, as we watched the streetcars and the cars and taxis and buses, the tourists and the waiters and bellboys and valets. The whole time, only one, simple thought coursed through my mind: I can’t believe I just let some old man burn a hole into my freaking arm.
After a long time had passed, he got to his feet and donned his hat. “This is my car,” he said as a bright red street car came to a squealing stop in front of us. “Remember that,” he said, smiling and nodding to my wrist. Then he got onto the street car and was gone.
next episode – sub-entry 5
previous episodes…
sub-entries 1
That was so beautiful, the passion and obsession in the writing is just terrific, I absolutely Love it
Love it, it’s really great!
The stuff of great writers.
The endless caravan of fireflies you can see at night from up high is probably what I love most about living in a city. Welcome to the family — I’m looking forward to reading more!