Dreams Underfoot: A Newford Collection (61 page)

I don’t wonder about her origin. I don’t wonder whether she was here first, and the city grew around her, or if the city created her. She just is.

Tallulah. Tally. A reckoning of accounts.

I think of the old traveling hawkers who called at private houses in the old days and sold their wares on the tally system—part pay-ment on account, the other part due when they called again. Tally-men.

The payments owed her were long overdue, but we no longer have the necessary coin to settle our accounts with her. So she changes; just as we change. I can remember a time when the city was a safer place, how when I was young, we never locked our doors and we knew every neighbor on our block.

Kids growing up today wouldn’t even know what I’m talking about; the people my own age have forgotten. The old folks remember, but who listens to them? Most of us wish that they didn’t exist; that they’d just take care of themselves so that we can get on with our own lives.

Not all change is for the good.

I still go out on my rambles, most every night. I hope for a secret tryst, but all I do is write stories again. As the new work fills my notebooks, I’ve come to realize that the characters in my stories were so real because I really did want to get close to people, I really did want to know them. It was just easier to do it on paper, one step removed.

I’m trying to change that now.

I look for her on my rambles. She’s all around me, of course, in every brick of every building, in every whisper of wind as it scurries down an empty street. She’s a cab’s lights at 3:00 A.M., a siren near dawn, a shuffling bag lady pushing a squeaky grocery cart, a dark-eyed cat sitting on a shadowed stoop.

She’s all around me, but I can’t find her. I’m sure I’d recognize her
I don’t want you to see what I will become.

—but I can’t be sure. The city can be so many things. It’s a place where the familiar can become strange with just the blink of an eye. And if I saw her

You wouldn’t recognize me and I wouldn’t want you to.

—what would I do? If she could, she’d come to me, but that mean spirit still grips the streets. I see it in people’s faces; I feel it in the coldness that’s settled in their hearts. I don’t think I would recognize her; I don’t think I’d want to. I have the
gris-gris
of her memory in my mind; I have an old sleeping bag rolled up in a corner of my hall closet; I’m here if she needs me.

I have this fantasy that it’s still not too late; that we can still drive that mean spirit away and keep it at bay. The city would be a better place to live in if we could and I think we owe it to her. I’m doing my part. I write about her

They’re about me. They’re your stories, I can taste your presence in every word, but each of
them’s a piece of me, too.

—about her strange wonder and her magic and all. I write about how she changed me, how she taught me that getting close can hurt, but not getting close is an even lonelier hurt. I don’t preach; I just tell the stories.

But I wish the ache would go away. Not the memories, not the
gris-gris
that keeps her real inside me, but the hurt. I could live without that hurt.

Sometimes I wish I’d never met her.

Maybe one day I’ll believe that lie, but I hope not.