a story with water in it . . .
People were shouting somewhere, just far enough from us so that their drunken yells and harsh laughter seemed faint, almost drowned by the buzz of the bug zapper a few feet from my head. It was one of those typical hanging death to insect-type things, crackling quite often whenever a particularly sizeable bug meet its end in a tiny electrical storm. Even now, in the middle of winter, there were enough crackles to make me feel a bit creepy and avoid peering too closely into the dark corners of the little alleyway we were currently standing in. Winter is an unpredictable thing in Louisiana, though, (really all the South, for that matter)—bugs seem to be hanging (and flying and creeping) about all year. Despite the below freezing temperatures of last week, most of the heat had come back with the rain that had just ended, leaving the air so thick I could see a haze hanging motionless around and within everything. For a few seconds, I imagined myself drowning here on the sidewalk, just from breathing so much outside. Streets that in the daylight showed themselves to be cracked, dirty and packed with gaping tourists, now shimmered under the yellow-orange light from wrought iron street lamps. The air clung to the light, twisting it until timelessness was almost a visible entity here where people had walked and lived and loved for so many years. I stood there in the humid semi-darkness and a part of me is still there, will always be there.
Milo had been talking softly the entire time we had been walking, ever since we left Troll and Cynthia back in the park where they were talking compassionate visitors out of their spare change. During these late night rambles, I saw a side of him so different from the open, laughing, rather psychotic person who moved with a spastic energy through the day, when everyone could see him. Alone, he kept his generally happy outlook on life, but everything about him shifted, transforming into a surprisingly calm, thoughtful individual, whose public armor of chaos had fallen away. Even his laughter became sweeter, losing its usual bright edginess. We talked about the universe, being little kids, deep things, irrelevant, fleeting things. He told me once about his mother, who had at one time been a fifteen-year-old homeless prostitute. He told me many times about how to exist day-to-day without a roof. He told me about the Great Gatsby two years before I found the book by the same name. Milo could say what it was like to be a heroin addict, editing nothing out of his stories of personal wretchedness, always keeping the same smiling tone because he could also tell me how it felt to crawl out of an entire way of life and be able to see the world with a nearly forgotten clarity. Tonight he was describing a beautiful old woman who used to sit on the same park bench every morning for years making sure the pigeons never starved.
"all these bags heaped around her. Like, totebags, purses, and even this old plaid suitcase. I’d go over and sit next to her sometimes and after I’d been talking for a while, she’d take some object out of one of her bags and tell me about it. This one time she pulled out a glass paperweight, you know the kind with a flower trapped in the middle—this one had purple petals—and explained how it was the only remaining piece of an empire. See, the imperial family realized that their realm was at the very highest peak of its wonder and power. Things could never get any better, only worse. So, they looked around at all the marvels they had and decided the only way to keep it beautiful forever would be to preserve it all, piece by piece, and freeze that moment of time. Everything was enclosed in glass, the entire capital city of this empire. She said that was thousands of years ago, in another dimension and after. . ."
While he finished his story, a misty drizzle began to fall and, without pausing, he took my hand and lightly pulled me in the direction of an overhang in front of a storefront at the end of the street. Leaning against the glass display window, Milo watched to see my reaction at the story’s ending, his eyebrows slightly raised. Grinning crookedly, I slipped my arm around his and asked if he had ever heard of the Stairway of the Twig People.
"The one in Indonesia or Budapest?" he asked.
"Indonesia," I replied.
"In that case, no," he said, his face suddenly deeply serious. "Although I have heard vague rumors of their upcoming migration."
"Oh, yeah," I said, softly shaking my head. "Such a tragic situation has rarely come about. Ever since the Book was written. . "
"I almost forgot about the Book," he interjected quietly, his face showing sadness at the state of the world, except for a slight twitching at the corners of his mouth.
"Ever since the fateful day when. . ." I continued through the history while the rain picked up until it neared a downpour. Water rushed along the streets in the world outside of the overhang and thundered on the roof, running to form miniature waterfalls from overflowing gutters. Somewhere people moved their yelling parties indoors. Somewhere at the other end of the street insects were dying tiny deaths. Somewhere behind all these nameless walls people were sleeping, wandering through thousands of dream worlds. Somewhere I am always very awake within an island of shelter, standing there with my friend describing dream landscapes of our own.