Read Online Eye of the Cricket by James Sallis - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: James Sallis
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the phone in a slurry of torn theater tickets, scribbled-over business
cards, Post-it Notes, postcard announcements of gallery openings, panel discussions and seminars, posters and playbills for
productions of Endgame, King Lear and something titled Jimmy Baldwin Disembarks for Heaven.
"You're in luck," she said.
I guess we both are.
"How so?"
Well, I see you got your play staged, for one thing, gesturing towards the Jimmy Baldwin playbill. What, a couple of months ago?
"No. That was last year."
It do okay?
"If you consider a week's run and half the house empty the whole time, it did. Actually I guess attendance was fairly good
the firstnight or two. It gave a false impression. Because of family and friends."
You have a lot of friends?
The phone rang. Watching one another, we listened to her voice.
Heard the beep, heaitl a mumbled message, heard a dial tone as the caller hung up.
"Not so many that I can't use another one. But what's the second thing?"
What?
"You said we were both lucky because I got my play staged—for one thing."
You're right. Other thing was, I really do need to get some flowers.
"I see. What kind?"
Well, I was thinking roses. Pink if you have them.
"Of course. A dozen?"
Why not.
"I'll even pick them out myself."
She disappeared into the back room and emerged minutes later cradling thirteen baby-pink roses and sprays of baby's breath
in green wrapping paper.
"And how would you like to pay for this, sir?"
Cash okay?
She punched it in on the computer (I heard a printer start up in back) and told me that would be $9.98.1 pushed a ten across
the breast-high table. She went back and got a copy of the printout for me.
"You'd like these delivered to what address, sir?"
Oh, you don't have to deliver them, I said.
She looked up. "I'm sorry?"
They're for you.
9
WE LIVE METAPHORICALLY, striving always to match our lives to images we've accepted or imagined for them—family man, middle
American, tine believer, gangster—contriving these containers, a succession of them, that preserve us, define us, that keep
us from spilling out and give us shape, but rarely fit.
Kendall Cibbs lived this way more than most: everything about him expressed itself inrelationship to one piece of land or
another.
Using the number Deborah O'Neil gave me, I firsttried toreach him at what was apparently an office. A woman answered "White
House Properties," and when I asked for Mr. Gibbs inquired, "This was in regard to a listed, or a potential, property?" Listed and potential instead of selling and buying. Pure class. Admitting that Mr. Cibbs was out of the office (her tone implying that he was rarely,
perhaps never, in the office), she suggested that I try another number, which proved to be a Garden District tour service. There, they thought
Gibbs was out looking at a commercial plot on Bayou St. John, after which, to the best of their knowledge, he had no further
appointments.
Once again I explained my interest: that I was handling a missing-persons case and needed to speak with Mr. Gibbs in regard
to a recent acquisition, a donut shop at Jackson and Prytania. Former donut shop. I never implied any connection with the
police, but the young man to whom I spoke assumed police business and, being authorized to do so, at his discretion, in such cases (ends of words neatly tucked under, a moment's pause before any new sentence began),
decided he could give me Mr. Gibbs's beeper number.
I punched it in and within the quarter-hour had The Man himself calling from what sounded like a very busy street.
"Kendallgibbs," he said. All one word.
I told him who I was, what I wanted.
"I got a brother on the force, you know, fourteen years. Gerard Gibbs? Last four or five of them behind a desk. Light went
out on Poydras, he's doing emergency traffic direction and gets run down by a drunk never even noticed he hit him. Worst job in the
world. They put a muzzle on you, draw targets on
cards, Post-it Notes, postcard announcements of gallery openings, panel discussions and seminars, posters and playbills for
productions of Endgame, King Lear and something titled Jimmy Baldwin Disembarks for Heaven.
"You're in luck," she said.
I guess we both are.
"How so?"
Well, I see you got your play staged, for one thing, gesturing towards the Jimmy Baldwin playbill. What, a couple of months ago?
"No. That was last year."
It do okay?
"If you consider a week's run and half the house empty the whole time, it did. Actually I guess attendance was fairly good
the firstnight or two. It gave a false impression. Because of family and friends."
You have a lot of friends?
The phone rang. Watching one another, we listened to her voice.
Heard the beep, heaitl a mumbled message, heard a dial tone as the caller hung up.
"Not so many that I can't use another one. But what's the second thing?"
What?
"You said we were both lucky because I got my play staged—for one thing."
You're right. Other thing was, I really do need to get some flowers.
"I see. What kind?"
Well, I was thinking roses. Pink if you have them.
"Of course. A dozen?"
Why not.
"I'll even pick them out myself."
She disappeared into the back room and emerged minutes later cradling thirteen baby-pink roses and sprays of baby's breath
in green wrapping paper.
"And how would you like to pay for this, sir?"
Cash okay?
She punched it in on the computer (I heard a printer start up in back) and told me that would be $9.98.1 pushed a ten across
the breast-high table. She went back and got a copy of the printout for me.
"You'd like these delivered to what address, sir?"
Oh, you don't have to deliver them, I said.
She looked up. "I'm sorry?"
They're for you.
9
WE LIVE METAPHORICALLY, striving always to match our lives to images we've accepted or imagined for them—family man, middle
American, tine believer, gangster—contriving these containers, a succession of them, that preserve us, define us, that keep
us from spilling out and give us shape, but rarely fit.
Kendall Cibbs lived this way more than most: everything about him expressed itself inrelationship to one piece of land or
another.
Using the number Deborah O'Neil gave me, I firsttried toreach him at what was apparently an office. A woman answered "White
House Properties," and when I asked for Mr. Gibbs inquired, "This was in regard to a listed, or a potential, property?" Listed and potential instead of selling and buying. Pure class. Admitting that Mr. Cibbs was out of the office (her tone implying that he was rarely,
perhaps never, in the office), she suggested that I try another number, which proved to be a Garden District tour service. There, they thought
Gibbs was out looking at a commercial plot on Bayou St. John, after which, to the best of their knowledge, he had no further
appointments.
Once again I explained my interest: that I was handling a missing-persons case and needed to speak with Mr. Gibbs in regard
to a recent acquisition, a donut shop at Jackson and Prytania. Former donut shop. I never implied any connection with the
police, but the young man to whom I spoke assumed police business and, being authorized to do so, at his discretion, in such cases (ends of words neatly tucked under, a moment's pause before any new sentence began),
decided he could give me Mr. Gibbs's beeper number.
I punched it in and within the quarter-hour had The Man himself calling from what sounded like a very busy street.
"Kendallgibbs," he said. All one word.
I told him who I was, what I wanted.
"I got a brother on the force, you know, fourteen years. Gerard Gibbs? Last four or five of them behind a desk. Light went
out on Poydras, he's doing emergency traffic direction and gets run down by a drunk never even noticed he hit him. Worst job in the
world. They put a muzzle on you, draw targets on
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