(a series of short films that can only be told with words

written and directed by Matthias Jerome Weisensel)

toward THE embrace after THE last

an
OUR PRIVATE EYE, MAX FOOLISH

novel

The City is a monument to the wilderness it displaces, all gravestones and pedestals for the sycamores and jaguars. -Max Foolish, Private Eye

1 the I of the P.I.; fall, blood, body, crowd Witnesses say that she fell from the roof. Eyewitnesses say that she fell from the sky; she was pushed; she jumped. Eyewitnesses say that she had stumbled from the east and collapsed, from the west, from between the cracks in the brick wall that her body lies in front of. Gunshots had been heard: three, seven, nineteen, other prime numbers. Voices rise and fall through arguments concerning the appearance, attire, presence, absence of a culprit; the proposed villains seem to resemble portraits made in anger of ex-wives, errant husbands, long dead actors from films about the sea. Someone had seen the glint of a knife. Someone had caught the scent of burning almonds. Someone had heard the roar of a lion mournful and restless and low. I saw her land. I see her now. There is blood on my shoes. There is blood on my suit. There is blood in my mouth. Max comes down with something Curiosity seeps in like the chill of a cold wind, the memory of an old friend, the familiar symptoms of a soft and sacred virus. My mind involves me. Partly cloudy. Slight breeze. The scent of sandalwood, apples, cardamom, concrete. Twelve stories, no open windows, allantica motifs on the corners and sills, projecting cornice with rain spouts in the shape of narwhals, no visible railing, a blue light. The taste of iron. On the wall above the body: Her limbs can be agile when she flees from ghosts -- Jean Genet, robins egg against red brick, a uncial font atypical of the district. I make a note to get in touch with Miel about getting in touch with the graffiti monks. Radios and phonographs waltz and narrate and orate and croon at cross and complimentary purposes. The body. I swallow hard. The body is consistent with a fall from a great height, angles and blood. Bare bent feet,

2 long tweed skirt, off-white blouse mostly red, broken spectacles on a cord around her neck, eyes closed, long black hair with the curls of dead vines broken springs crashed waves. Her profile is delicate, seemingly fragile yet impossibly unbroken by the fall; the line of it seems to exist independent of foreground and background, to suspend itself in the air, to displace atmosphere and breath and space and time, to etch, to carve, to trace. The suggestions of her flesh transition from fresh bread and parchment toward newsprint and silence. Beneath her fingernails made jagged by the sidewalk: earth. I want to sit beside her, brush her hair from her face, gently hold her tattered hand, tell her lies about the future. The murmuring crowd: like a feather. like a stone; averted gazes, unbreakable stares; fear, disbelief, nausea. A relic collector arrives, summoned perhaps by the crackle and hiss of radio frequencies, or by the utterances of a skull perfumed and enshrined underground, or by chance. He signs, genuflects, recites, begins to gather. Fabric scraps and pen nibs are dipped in blood; occasional bone shards are collected then blessed then cradled in small boxes with fox fur, cotton, swan down; locks of hair are cut and cataloged and tied with ribbon; fingerprints are pressed in red upon glass slides and silk scarves, flower petals and tangerines. He whispers blessings across and between pantheons as he works, praying that we are all saints in our way, all prophets of our own small stars. He will finish, and he will wait for the police. He will wait until he has a name, and if neither will nor family nor lawyer nor loved one sends the body to an orchard, an aerie, a pyre, or elsewhere he will collect the body himself and inter it in the catacombs to wait for miracles. The taste of iron. The blue light on the roof waves her arms. the clue, its semiotic function The elevator is out of order. The staircase leaves me winded. The door to the roof is ajar.

3 The blue light is nowhere to be seen. The roof is nearly overrun with rosemary and sage, apiaries and weather vanes. A gravel path leads to a small lawn. A book of matches is centered on a pack of cigarettes in turn centered on a neatly folded knit jacket in turn centered on the patch of grass. Alongside in a small saucer, seven cigarette butts are arranged in an even row. Tufts of grass torn from the lawn make a small pile that is slowly disappearing in the breeze. There is a slight depression where she had sat and smoked cigarettes and dipped her fingers in the dirt. There are no signs of struggle; no blood, bullet casings, bow strings, lions. I take one of her cigarettes, light it with one of her matches, center pack and book for no reason I can think of, walk toward the ledge. The plot suggests itself: a too familiar story about order, disorder, and nervousness on bridges with little chance of mystery beyond the biography of melancholy; with nothing to decipher beyond the variations of ennui, anomie, agitation, alarm; with no case beyond the particulars of how the center failed to hold for her this one last time. There will be no client to speak of, and I do not feel curious enough today to follow fingerprints and the flashlight beam to a new sad tale to tell myself. There is sure to be a note somewhere. the City seen far from the ground The early-morning sun is welcome after days after days beneath the shadows and sorrows of buildings, after days after days of old bad ideas clawing at their coffin lids, of bruised hopes and black coffee and breakfast alone. I bask in the weightless light, the light breeze, the heavy scent. The City awakens to meet the sun, stretches. On the skyline across the street, traceurs from the Parkours' Guild sprint madly along ledges and over alleyways with morning deliveries strapped to their backs, tucked beneath their

4 arms, tossed ahead and calmly caught. Markers in bright colors signal sanctioned routes, treacherous railings, zip lines, catch nets. The runners yell out destination and company, hoping to find a race for a block or two. Intersections and landmarks cut the buzzing air like poems of the City. Rapture and Vine. The Neon Depths. Copernicus and Eighth. The Windmill Skyline. Montague and Capulet. The Church of the Bated Breath. Circle Square. The Seventh Step. I hear a voice I recognize shouting out the names of places that do not exist, not in this city, not in the City. Synchronicity. Curiosity in spite of all, because of all. With hands cupped and raised, with my head thrown back, loudly: Miel! Foolish! Her voice is clear, joyful but unsurprised, unsurprised as only she has ever had the nerve to be. Nine tonight! The Magritte! She runs, somersaults, disappears down a fire escape. The City breathes. The whispers and sparks of streetcars, the traceurs yells, the cries at ground level selling knowledge and fresh fruit, the accordions organs shamisens saxophones playing songs at corners about the meeting of two streets who once fell in love years ago, radios on window sills rumbling out the Shadow knows, sirens and prayers, alarms and bird song. In between the buildings between distance and myself, through a corridor in the Monolith Rampart, between Gargantua and Kraken, I can see a sliver of The Forest of Streetlamps. A few hours remain until its belated dawn, and the Forests lights are still aglow. The lights of the Forest are the eyes of an Argus to guard the City while she sleeps. The lights of the Forest are a swarm of small fires lit by strange darker dreams of the City gone feral, gone savage, gone sentient. The lights of the Forest are glass globes lit from within by electricity, kerosene, will-o'the-wisps.

5 The bells of a shrine ring out from an other direction with the trilling of flutes, chanted sutras, an ascension of sparrows and parakeets. The City lives and breathes and seems to sing the stories of her buildings upward. The hum of electricity and bumblebees, the percussion and whistle of pneumatic tubes, an aria being sung, distant machinery, the trolleys bell so much like a typewriters, the phantom of a voice behind me. A blue light. There is blood in my mouth. Sophie and the earth are blue like an orange She is biting her lower lip. Her eyebrows are raised. She is beautiful. She is naked. She moves her mouth and hers is the voice I might have almost heard; she is the blue light I think I saw. Her voice, too quiet to put together, is a rhythmic silence pressed firm against the purr and growl of the City. I mime deafness. She scowls. My name is Max Foolish. Im a private eye. Her lips move, she touches her sternum. Her lips. Her sternum. She mouths the word again. Again. Sophie? She nods. Silence. She is a blue light defiantly her eyes are the vibrant blue of dark brown eyes ringed with the blue of amber, her hair the blue of blue-black hair, her flesh the blue of her flesh before the fall. Her translucence clouds and pales and stutters and swells and moves between hues as though blown by an uneven wind, as though stirred from within by the rush of thoughts rising and falling to and from the surface. Overcast skies, storms, choppy seas. Cataracts and hurricanes. An effect like an effect of the light. Sophie; a ghost.

6 She looks at me as the white light of her blue teeth sinks ever deeper into the red light of her blue lips. The silence between us seems to spin like a zoetrope of a deer standing still in the rain, seems to ricochet and echo, seems to take on adjectives as though it were the absence my thoughts rise out of. I should speak. I am silent. She turns her head. meanings unfold as the sign pirouettes Her profile, so delicate down on the body below, reveals in movement an intensity infused with curiosity, vitality, shy madness, a displacement more refined and more fierce. She shivers; she shifts; she seems haunted. Her eyes flee from and chase images in her periphery as though frightened of and hungry for every damned thing. Perhaps she is seeing things. Perhaps I am not seeing things. She stands still in a clock's worth of movements; the movements repeat. Her hands shake. Her stance wavers. I should speak. I should ask any of the questions that rise out of wonder. Her gestures echo and ripple across the echo of her flesh. Her shaking hand holds to still her shaking hand; the blue light of a sky dark with storm. She passes her fingers over her lips to map the taste of a poisoned apple; her blue skies clear. She buries her face in her hands; the blue light of a sea beset by whirlpools and dangerous waves. She passes her fingers over her lips to trace the trace of some strange stolen kiss that woke her; her blue seas calm themselves. She speaks to herself with small bits of theater. I should speak. Did you jump? She turns as though startled, as though pulled to the surface. She shakes her head (her left, my left, her left, center; 4/4 time, affettuoso). She pauses, bites her lip, looks down. She raises her eyebrows, lowers her eyebrows, wrinkles her forehead, bites her lip. She folds her arms across her chest. Tightly. Tighter. She shrugs her shoulders. Were you pushed?

7 Tightly. Tighter. She shrugs her shoulders. It will likely be a sad story. There might still be a note, drafts for a note, lengths of rope, hoarded pills, hesitation marks. But I may have jumped to the wrong conclusion, and the movements of the color blue sit like names on the tip of my tongue, and Sophie bites her lower lip when concentrating. My curiosity is aroused. I want to help. A quick inhale, a long and slow exhale. She studies me. Approach. Retreat. Folding, unfolding; nervous origami. Suspicious, studious. She is the slow burn of a long fuse. Her heart beats faster than most. Calm skies, choppy seas. A long slow inhale, a long slow exhale. I do not know what to do with my hands. I shift my weight. She smiles weakly. She frowns. She smiles. She studies me. Again. Again. She stands more firmly now more often. When she smiles: the camaraderie of the lost, of the destitute. What she sees that I do not she looks at with a calmer air judicious, shrewd, inquisitive. I can see now how lost she was, and how lost still; and how less lost she is to me, yet lost still, the object of her scrutiny. She nods. She continues to shiver. I pick up her jacket. Yours? She nods. I hold it out to her. She shakes her head (her left, my left, her left, center). You look cold. Sophie pulls the ghost from the camera; sad thoughts for the detective who cannot read lips I am cold. I nod. I cannot stop shivering. He has no way of knowing, to be fair. I tell his raised eyebrow, his quizzical expression, that the jacket is too heavy, that everything is too heavy, that I cannot smoke a cigarette, that I

8 am afraid a passing bee may tear through me. I ask him if he really thinks I would have left the jacket there without a damn good reason. He stares at my lips. I tell him that I am well aware that he has no idea what I am saying, that I can see it in his face. I tell him that I would like to apologize, in part, for my behavior. I tell him that I have been out of sorts, not quite myself, under the weather. I tell him, in a whisper, that I do not know what day it is. Whispering still, I tell him that I am afraid. I tell him that seeing one's own body fall through empty space without knowing how it got there can take a lot out of a person. He stares at my lips with his brow furrowed. I tell him, perhaps too sternly, that with everything that might have happened I am doing my best to stay optimistic. I tell him that it isn't easy, that it is, in fact, a very involved challenge. I tell him that I am not myself in a way entirely alien to me. I tell him while thankful for the company, for the knowledge of being seen that I am a little disappointed in him for not being able to read lips. I tell him that it does not inspire the greatest confidence. He stares at my lips with his brow deeply furrowed, his lower lip between his teeth. I relent. I tell him that his ridiculous expression has mitigated my discontent. I tell him that there are some things, not too many, that I am afraid to tell him. I tell him that I am sorry for my earlier criticism, that a man who stares at a strange alphabet for so long without blinking may turn out to be a worthwhile detective after all. I tell him that I will try to explain in a different language. the I of the P.I. returns; Colombine of the roof top Sophie brings her feet together. She straightens the ghost of her spine. She raises her arms above her head. She sets her expression. The curtains open with the slow downward flight of the

9 birds of the ghosts of her hands. She plays it for laughs at first. She is a tightrope walker, tracing the edge of the stage being built from gesture, from movement. She moves quickly. She knits a jacket, sews on the buttons, drops it in center of the stage. She constructs a coat rack, places it upstage left. She leaves the stage by an invisible door. Feet together, back straight, arms raised, second act. She enters from stage right. She sees the jacket. She sees the coat rack. She slows her pace. She shakes her head, exasperated. She shrugs her shoulders, resigned. She is precise in her pantomime. She is fluent in motion. She tucks the fingers of the ghost of her right hand under the collar of the jacket. She cannot lift it; it refuses to move. She uses the ghosts of both hands and cannot move the jacket. She is startled, then curious. She becomes frustrated. She grows angry. She pounds the ghosts of her fists against the jacket. She sits still, stares straight ahead. The only movement: the arrhythmic rise and fall of her breathing, the flashes of panic across her expression. I clear my throat. The sounds of the City seem to rise up suddenly from a place I have never been. You are very well spoken. She stands, smiles sheepishly, bows proudly. The grass does not bend beneath the ghost of her feet. in search of the flashback Do you remember any of what happened? She shrugs her shoulders. She extends the thumb and index finger of her right hand and holds them parallel with scant space between. She moves this hand from point to point of an imaginary constellation. She remembers a little bit here and there. Anything definite?

10 Her lips part, close. The up-from-under look with an eyebrow raised. She shakes her head. Silence. Max takes the case, talks too much I do not know what questions to ask. I clear my throat. I speak. I do not know what questions to ask. I wish I could be more helpful. I wish I could growl and sneer and assure and assert, but all I know of ghosts I learned late at night at the cinema, late at night around a campfire. I don't know where the clues will lead. I don't know where the clues are to be found. I will do what I can. I am stubborn. We will manage to decipher something. It amounts to almost nothing at all, but it is the closest I can come to a promise. She listens. She nods. She speaks. I stare, yet again, as her lips move a strange penmanship, a fluttering cryptogram. She speaks through a smirk. Her eyes seem full of mischief as though she is getting away with something. I cannot read a word. I might be a fast learner. The red of her blue tongue. like a rabbit from a hat, like a sparrow from an egg, like a letter from a friend I sit down on the grass to think. I pull out a cigarette, one of my own. I light it. I hold the pack out to her out of habit. She looks disappointed. She looks disappointed in me. She points to her jacket. I give her a look. I retrieve a cigarette from the pack. I break it between my fingers. I owe you one. She is a sudden statue whose eyes widen, who rushes over, who motions me to be still. I comply. She motions me to be completely still.

11 She studies the pieces of the cigarette in the palm of my hand. She kneels down, stares intently. Before my eyes: the ghost of her hair held behind the ghost of her right ear by the ghost of her left hand. She looks back and forth between the cigarette and any number of invisible things. She looks up and smiles in a way that catches in my throat. She moves the ghost of her hand slowly ever closer. She is shaking; now steady. She is certain; now frightened. The cigarette is an emerald; now a scorpion. With the precision of a surgeon for finches, she reaches forward, and she pulls out the ghost of the cigarette. I know no other words for it. I light a match, hold it out, shield it from the wind. She lights the ghost of her cigarette at the tip of the match, the base of the flame, the point where the fire burns blue. the camera rests near a beehive at a distance; the human brain is a magic lantern Max Foolish, our private eye, watches Sophie smoke. He watches the ghost of an ember glow like a sapphire held to the sun, he watches her exhale small clouds of a faint and pallid indigo. He watches her sit down, watches her draw and hold her knees to her chest. He watches Sophie watch her cigarette and watch the world around. Max thinks of objects, tries to remember a quote from Proust, stands up, begins to pace. Max is tall. At this moment the top of his fedora is twelve stories, six feet, and five inches above the ground. Max favors tweed and corduroy, earth tones. Collar button undone, loose half Windsor. Four pocket vest. Modified shoulder holster containing: one small writing pad, two pens, extra nibs, a small bottle of ink, one pencil. Selections from other pockets: two additional writing pads, a book to read while waiting for trolleys or appointments or anything at all, wallet, P.I. license, loose coins, cigarettes, matches, pocketknife, envelopes, stamps. Max, though he tends to mask his superstitions behind ill-defined notions of semiotic therapy, also carries on his person a few small nostalgic talismans read as able to ward off misinterpretations of the hunch,

12 mistakes of the gut, stomach aches, missed connections. Max paces. Max is a man who craves solitude and time to think because he feels his most rational when he feels like an orphan. Max is a man who fears solitude because he craves solitude and because he craves as well: friendship, company, compassion. Max paces. Max knows that it is difficult to go a day in the City, a day in any life he has known, without tripping over evidence of something thought impossible, without crossing and recrossing the border between knowledge and speculation, between speculation and disbelief. A ghost is believable because he feels haunted around Sophie. He has felt haunted before, via metaphor, by the ghosts of other women who have appeared and, less often, reappeared. A ghost he believes; the idea of it falls in the same space between maybe and maybe not as any number of things he has less than adequate proof for kismet and coincidence, miracles, meaning and knowledge, vetiver and orris root, love that remains. The cigarette, however, changes everything. It places ghosts as constants in his life, as a new spectrum of nouns till now outside his knowledge. Max paces toward the rearrangement of his thoughts. He walks through a labyrinth. He thinks back. Max thinks back to being haunted by the ghosts of childhood homes, the ghosts of once-read books, old gifts, letters in drawers unopened for years, the promises unkept of unkempt and thought-forgotten theories. Max moves ideas around. Ideas move Max around. Max marvels and savors, smiles and sighs. Max paces. Max is as mad as any of us, and this is a madness of his, this hunger for crises of ontology, for the enchantments and entanglements of knowing, unknowing, reknowing, new knowledge; this quest to make of himself a better microscope; this strange conviction that everything is a clue for a least one mystery. Max paces. Max stops pacing. Max looks out on the City. He thinks about what ghosts she holds in her ruins and renovations, her histories of disaster and demolition, her stories of wars and broken

13 windows. He closes his eyes and looks out, feels the buzz of his thoughts, hears the hum of the bees, smiles deeply. And, as the sun paints his eyelids red, Max sees blue. Max opens his eyes, turns around. He watches Sophie finish her cigarette. Perhaps, he thinks, he watches the ghost of Sophie finish the ghost of her cigarette in the ghost of the early morning sunlight. A new confusion, a new query to savor. He sees sage and bees and apiaries and imagines by way of metaphor the ghosts of sage, the ghosts of bees, the ghosts of apiaries. Max watches Sophie crush out the ghost of her cigarette, watches her place it on the saucer, watches it disappear. Sophie breathes more calmly now, more evenly. Max notices this. Sophie had watched Max, had glanced over during what brief spaces there were between her own thoughts and trauma, had watched him pace and stare and pace and grin, and the ghost of a smile had played across her lips. Max did not notice this. Sophie shivers despite her arms around her knees. Max notices this. the I of the P.I. returns; murder in tweed I take off my suit coat; I empty the pockets. I cut strips out of the back, tear the sleeves, slash the lining, rip the seams, remove the buttons. I wonder why I didn't use her jacket. I hold the mangled remains out to her, and she a serene smile, eyes gone bright stands up, bows, reaches forward, and pulls out the ghost of my coat. Her lips move: Thank you. She folds herself tightly into the ghost of my coat and seems to disappear within: an ocelot in a bear pelt, eyes ardent and calm, closer to patience than pouncing. She breathes more easily, shivers less often. She looks down at her bare knees, bare calves, bare feet, and she blushes a redder shade of blue. She is calm enough for modesty now, which is no excuse for wolfishness. It is not cause enough to recollect with care the curves arcs indents graceful and blue against the skyline. It is no reason to mine the past in the interest of appetite.

14 I think instead the strange thoughts of the case. A la recherche du temps perdu I still do not know what questions to ask. I-will-do-what-I-can echoes as a mumble in retrospect. The strange thoughts of the case. Questions like hornets, currents, wolves. Sophie moves to the spot where she had smoked seven cigarettes and dipped her fingers in the earth. She sits down. She closes her eyes She breathes. She stands. She takes steps and retraces them. She walks from the patch of grass toward the ledge a step/back-step/half-step at a time. She makes small adjustments to pace, poise, posture, gesture, expression. She revises further with each iteration. She holds her bottom lip between her teeth. I move closer, unseen as though invisible. The rhythm is distilled; Sophie's eyes slowly close; she walks back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth. The light of her translucence is unlike any sea or sky, and, without being able to defend the recollection, I am reminded of a woman met years past or years hence with a live bird in her chest that struggled or will struggle to escape in times of danger. I move closer. With her knees against the ledge, Sophie stops. She stands still. Her head tilts toward her shoulder. She moves increment by increment. She adjusts her phantom limbs as though trying to nestle, nest, take root within a series of shapes in the air. She moves slowly, leaning out over the ledge. She leans further, moving slowly. Her arms stretch out toward the street below, reaching, pulled, compelled. She moves slowly. With my arm around her waist, I pull her from the ledge. Peppermint. approximating the ineffable The ghost of her body, the body of her ghost, the ghost of Sophie, Sophie against the

15 palm of my hand has no weight. There is no impression of pressure, of solidity, of density, of surface. What I feel, the stimulus of my hand against her stomach, the sensation at our point of contact, does not conform to any known tactile syntax, does not translate transfer relate to any memory I hold of anything nor anyone my hands have held. The taste of peppermint. I feel. I seem to feel. I infer the taste of peppermint in my fingerprints, in the lines of my palm. Feel, infer. Intuit, savor. Her breathing is rapid. Fits and starts. Choppy seas. Are you okay? I seem to feel infer intuit savor movement in the taste of peppermint. The taste of peppermint storms about; it surges and swells like a dove in flight from an arctic strange and marvelous and newly made. The taste of peppermint trembles against my life line. Classification. There are three rhythms. 1: Sophie-as-ghost against the palm of my hand. 2: My own stuttering heart and lungs. 3: The ghost till now unconsidered, the ghost inside, my very own caged bird in flight. The ghost of her body is pressed against the ghost of my hand. The ghost of my suit coat against the back of the ghost of my hand feels like my suit coat made weightless against the back of my hand. Repetition: Are you okay? She nods and turns quickly from the ledge. The contours of peppermint, the projection of flavor onto three-dimensional space her stomach, her hip, the small of her back. Perhaps I am quickened less by wonder than the ghost inside me is by the ghost of her body against him. Perhaps I am uncertain of pronouns. Perhaps I am uncertain of most things. She feels like peppermint tastes. Calm seas. Cloudy skies. Birds in flight. What do you remember? The ghost of her body quickens differently against the ghost inside. Thunderheads gathering on the horizon in an uncertain wind; an owl or lark steps from a branch with blood on its wing; a red sky at morning. The ghost of her body shivers against the

16 ghost of my hand. Flashing lights, for accordion: Through the Mondrian of trolley wires: two streetcars in the emergency lane: red and blue, red and white. The crowd has grown. There will be questions, maybe answers. I have to go. What is the ghost of a red light spinning? I have to go. Sophie pulls the ghost from the camera; evidence and movement, evidence of movement He does not move. I should not be surprised that his hand did not pass through me like a ghost through a wall, like a hand through the air. The weight of touch, the warmth. He has neither died nor been broken. I should not be surprised; I am. I should not be thankful. He does not move. The weight of his hand is heavy against me an anvil, a mountain, a red velvet curtain wet from rain or waves. It is a weight, but a weight that responds, that reacts, that I can breath against without suffocating. His hand trembles against me like the gentlest of earthquakes. He looks startled, shaken. Moving my lips above the sirens I tell him that I am okay, a little fuzzy, but okay. I tell him that, despite what he may think, I am not the sort who jumps off buildings. I tell him that my memory came, went, left no trace. I tell him that he can move his arm. He doesn't. A bit too fierce at first against the sirens I tell him thank you, and that I can be stubborn too, and that, if he gets any ideas, he should keep them where I can see them. I tell him that it would be far too ridiculous for both my body and I to fall to pieces. I tell him that I am quite fine, that he is quite free to move. I tell him that his hand is warm. I tell him that if he thinks that I am

17 of the sort who swoons, then he is a hopeless bungler who couldn't find a clew in a ball of yarn. I tell him that I should move. He does not move. His gaze dashes outward and inward, like a small child struggling to find words that he won't know for years. I do not move. I do not know the words. A quick shrill chorus of screams rises above the sounds of the sirens below. I turn. We look down. His arm is still around my waist. I am so small down there in a red blouse, running through the crowd. I'll be back, he says, running through the blue toward the fire escape. I'll be here, I say, running nowhere at all. the I of the P.I. returns; toward a classification of the coincidence, the clue Ghosts and agile limbs. Nine o'clock. The Magritte. winded, tightly wound, at ground level I stagger out of the alley out of breath. I run along the path still etched in the crowd, through gazes still frozen in fear and disbelief, along the trajectory of gazes still frozen in disbelief and wonder. The relic collector is kneeling in the center of the intersection, his hands folded, his eyes closed, his lips moving. The City stretches out. Building after alley after building. Entrances, exits, elevators. Staircase landing staircase. Hallways and doors. Fire escapes. The iron mandalas and elaborate roundels of manhole covers. The stained glass and topiary hedges of subway entrances. Cross streets. Trolley tracks and rickshaw stands. Crannies and shadows and nooks. Distance. Spectacle has swelled the crowd; the surrounding streets are deserted. She is twelve stories ahead of me. I turn back. Damn it. The crowd wakes, murmurs, speaks. The narrative shifts in its telling and retelling. On

18 and on. Noise and mutations. Did you see...? No. Yes. Did you see...? This much is agreed upon: she got up, she ran away. Damn it. at the scene of no crime The sirens and lights are silenced, stilled, dimmed. The dispersing crowd: those who walk away and do not look back, those who walk away while looking back, those who stagger, those who bow their heads and clutch their chests and try to feel their red hearts beat quickly against their warm hands. The coroner cowers from his broken arm as the paramedics apply salve and splint and sling. They get into the ambulance. The driver puts down his comic book, stamps out his cigarette, backs the trolley to a junction, and takes all inside from the scene. A police officer in mirrored glasses and a pristine uniform takes notes like a stenographer, turning the page of his notebook for each version of she got up, she ran away. The insignia for the Trolley Guild, buffed and bright, shines above his officer's shield. Miel may have said, years ago: A man with two Dreamings... The remaining crowd: those who huddle and murmur and wait. The streetcar sits there. Its dark and polished surface is the looking glass of Nostradamus reflecting a dim view of the scene, as though nothing will change by dusk. I see my reflection. I look troubled. The relic collector returns from his prayers with his case of talismans and artifacts held close, with his eyes wet with tears above an expression frozen in beatitude. A miracle, he says. He stands on the outskirts of the remaining crowd, closes his eyes, moves his lips, returns to his prayers. A second cop leans against the wall, a tangle of caution tape in one fist, a cigar in the

19 other. His shoes are scuffed; his uniform is wrinkled; his face is set around the following adjectives: disgruntled, weathered, mean. With each inquisitive glance from a witness wanting to narrate, he sets his features more sternly, sterner still; the witness opts for patience. I walk around the blood on the cement. I walk up to him through a steadying glare. I hold up my license. Whats the story? A raised eyebrow, a grimace, a rough voice: There isn't one, shamus. Someone fell down. Someone got up. It happens all the time; it could happen to you. He relights his cigar. You want to be a gumshoe? Go find a woman without any pearls; maybe they were stolen. His eyes sparkle. He smirks, sneers, spits on the sidewalk. The latest issue of Black Mask, rolled up but recognizable, is stuck in his gun belt. I take my time pulling out a cigarette, lighting a match, lighting a cigarette. I steel my gaze. I think about gravel. I think about whiskey in a bottle. I inhale. I think about the fire at the mouth of a pistol. I think about an archer, a hammer, a spade. I think about a tiger in a cage in the jungle. I exhale a mouth full of smoke into empty space. I smirk. I sneer. Ease up, flatfoot. We're on the same side; we've read the same novels. It's been a long day already, and I have no idea what shape you're bending me out of. Just play the public record, and I'll let you go back to looking unapproachable. I smirk. I sneer. He tries not to smile, fails, becomes human. A rough voice, softened: To hell with it and to hell with you. It's been a long day already all around. What's your stake in this? Curiosity. I saw the body land. I know it came from the roof. I don't need to know your secrets, just fill me in so I can sleep at night. What's the story? Officially: there isn't one. Unofficially? It's no story I've heard before. We get here, rope off the mess she made of the sidewalk, and start to ask questions. That asshole of a coroner goes

20 about his routine true to form, and, before I get two stories remotely similar, there's a pop like a whip crack, the rustling of fabric, bare feet running on cement, screaming. It doesn't make sense to me, and I'm glad it doesn't have to. No body, no story. No corpse, no case. Maybe she got a liver transplant from Prometheus, maybe she sat for Basil Hallward. These are not questions I get paid to ask. It's all outside my genre. I'm just going to stand here not lifting a fingerprint, and my partner is going to stand there, nodding his head at just the right moments while taking notes all the while for a poem about wires and rails and law and order in shorthand. Not soon enough, we are going to leave and go do whatever it is we do fight crime, take bribes, put our feet up on desks. And the coroner... He had it coming. If he tries to file a complaint, he'll have two broken arms. He wears the worst connotations like a uniform, and he can go to hell. It's a dead end even if I have to stand in the way. So it goes. I say nothing of ghosts. He says nothing of the blood on my suit, shoes. I give him my card. I ask to be informed should the body's description recur in any context over the official frequencies. We shake hands with the strange camaraderie that comes from being raised through the reading of similar books. Officer Lucien Dixon sets his features around a scowl. Have a good day, half-badge. To hell with you, officer. We tip our hats. I walk back toward the fire escape. a treatise on the capriciousness of signifiers A body fell, rose, ran off. I know nothing. There had been a flash of robin's egg blue on the way down the fire escape. Three stories up, on the opposite wall, in a uncial font: An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself Charles Dickens.

21 The flipped switch, the knife edge, the precipice so early. I take more and more steps more quickly. I know nothing at all. I find myself once again trying to read a strange novel encrypted in invisible ink, trying to decipher detect devise some possible path back home from out of my element. More and more steps. There are no clues to read; all I'm given are strange poems in strange alphabets. More and more steps. There are too few clues, or too many the City is overrun with signifiers, with echoes and omens scurrying about, lying in wait, ever on the verge of meaning; life is overrun. More and more steps. For the clue to function, it must exist as part of a subset of signs in a wider system. For the clue to be revealed as such, it must first be read as a clue. More and more steps. I will need to stockpile some coffee. I will need to talk to Miel, talk again to Lucien, talk to his partner, find some true story that won't get me committed, sift through the eyewitness accounts, talk to the neighbors, cross my fingers. More and more steps. I will need to eat breakfast. I'll talk to Stella tomorrow. The coroner, the collector. Miel tonight. More and more steps. Words on walls. Peppermint. A ghost without a body; a body without a ghost. The color blue. More and more steps. The spinning compass. The invisible path. More and more steps. Sophie pulls the ghost from out the camera; the birth of the lioness Today is not the day to stand on rugs. I am still here, of course. My body is far away. I am still here. Above all though it is strange to have seen myself grow distant; and though it is strange to have seen my body flee with my too small hands, its knobby knees, my heart beating in our chest; and though all is strange I must not lose my shit. What I want: I want to be heard. I want to sing through the air vents. I want to curse at passersby. I want to compliment the hats of children. There are fewer and fewer people. Eventually, soon enough, someone will come out to

22 clean the sidewalk. It will happen. Nothing ever un-happens. I will not snap my fingers. I will not wake up yesterday. All is strange. There are the ghosts of bees on the rooftop that are the blue of my face in my hands, and one lands softly on my cheek, another on the inside of my left wrist. There are the ghosts of bees of a fainter hue that form fly and vanish among falcons and doves, a pterodactyl, moths and pigeons, a zeppelin and pass through me like nothing through anything at all. There are bees of fainter and fainter hues. Perhaps I will fade, fade and fade, come to look with envy at the newly dead. Perhaps I approach closer, closer still, to a vanishing point. First act, last act, epilogue. Perhaps I will become nothing at all. What feels like my heartbeat beats too quickly. I am afraid of disappearances. What my fingertips crave: A ceramic mug hot with coffee. A new book yellowed with age. Unspun wool. Spun sugar. Papier-mch. The flesh of a pear. Warm earth. Cool marble. Cool iron. Warm honey. The vane of a feather. A red velvet curtain. A strange life I must live as best I can with what strength remains. The distance must be closed, changed. I must be stubborn. I must not disappear. I must make plans. An ice cube. A lace curtain. The fur of a tiger. A letter in braille. A papercut. Footsteps crescendo up the fire escape, and Max, though differently, returns. He pulls my keys from my jacket pocket. He moves with purpose. Saucer cigarettes matches in hand, our jackets slung over his arm, the door from the roof held open: Let's go break you something to wear. the camera follows Max who follows Sophie; the stairwell's narrative arc The staircase was born with the construction of L'Hotel de Santiago. It moved without

23 being moved to The Poseidon Apartments. It is dimly lit. The door to the roof closes. As Max and Sophie blink rapidly, their pupils dilate slowly. Sophie, a blue light more vibrant in the dim light, puts one foot in front of the other and descends the staircase. Her arms are folded across her chest. Her fingertips move along the cuffs of the sleeves of the ghost of Max's too large suit coat. She stares straight ahead. She holds her bottom lip between her teeth. Sophie worries that perhaps she is not breathing, that perhaps through habit and whatever muscle memory is left to her she is miming without meaning to, acting a lie she tells herself. Sophie wants to breathe. She inhales and exhales as proof she is not drowning. Sophie works to control her breathing, to put one foot in front of the other. She is determined to descend the staircase one step at a time despite wanting to run, despite wanting to kick out at the scattered ghosts of objects broken in the stairwell years ago (a faint blue vase, tea cup, typewriter, cobwebs). She is determined to stare straight ahead despite wanting to walk backwards, despite wanting to make faces at the turtles and whales and old men of the sea looking down from the molding. She is determined to keep her arms folded across her chest, despite wanting to run her fingers along the railing. She moves forward. Max is startled by the staircase, by the dim light, by the echo of his footsteps. He tries to walk quietly, fails. He waits too long to speak. He wants to walk faster and faster until he is thundering down the stairwell. The pace, the dim light, the tense attempt at silence. His legs ache. He sees Sophie's fingers as they curl to be hidden within the sleeves of the ghost of his coat. He sees the small mists and maelstroms of the blue light that she is but does not cast. He sees the hesitations in the rhythm of her heels, her ankles, the backs of her calves. His legs hurt. He has waited too long to speak. He tries not to hold his breath. He gasps for breath.

24 Sophie takes steps, each easier for being yet one more in which the walls do not close in, do not pierce cut tear with the idea of their weight. She knows that she is moving ever closer to her apartment with its decorations, souvenirs, appliances, artifacts, their anchored density, their infinite weight, books she cannot read, doors drawers curtains windows she cannot open, flowers she cannot rearrange when the light changes in the evening. She inhales, exhales, step by step. Sophie tries to adapt to a world made strange. Sophie thinks certain thoughts: the black hammer in the red tool box in the green cabinet below the white sink, the pair of scissors on the pile of fabric in the bedroom closet on the second shelf from the top, the scarves of various colors in various places. Max sees Sophie stick out her tongue at an old man of the sea looking down from the molding. He sees Sophie trail her fingertips along the railing. He sees her tapping her foot impatiently while he tries to find the right key. His legs ache less. Sophie pulls the ghost from the camera; against gravity It is worse than I thought it would be. Hard edges intersecting fainter and fainter blues. Lines I cannot alter, lines I did not draw. I am afraid that everything will fall all of a sudden, pulled by its incredible weight through whatever cities preceded the City, and myself pulled with it, pinned weightless to the ceiling. I am worried by the walls of cement in the guise of books, bric--brac, cushions, painted paper lanterns, yellow with red tulips in a cut-glass vase. The thought occurs to me that now would be the time to step on scales. I laugh suddenly, and there is nothing to be embarrassed about. Max is over looking at the bookshelves with his hands behind his back. He had placed our jackets on the counter. I touch the inside of his wrist. We work silently. I lead. I point. The black hammer. The pair of scissors. I lead. I point.

25 The white dress to the left of the green dress. A bottle of ink. The pair of scissors in the drawer to the left of the sink. Every scarf. I like scarves; there is nothing to be embarrassed about. Breaking the scissors with the hammer is the loudest. Max wraps up the bottle of ink in what used to be a suit coat; a muffled broken window. The white dress. The scarves take the longest pulling out ghost after ghost. I tell him, in gesture, in no uncertain terms, to stay out of the bedroom. The ghosts of scarves, a white dress, a bottle of ink, a pair of scissors. The pleasures of relative weight. I leave Max on the other side of the counter. I arrange everything on the heavy bed. I toss the suit coat on the floor. I want to, though I do not, growl through my breath. the camera keeps an eye on Max; the clues we put on shelves Max watches her leave. He tries not to hear the silence of Sophie undressing. He turns. There are trash bags below the sink. Max cleans up. The pile of scarves like a tangle of limbs, colors, patterns. The scraps and shreds of tweed, lining, leather patches. Max gets ink on his fingers. What was once a pair of scissors wrapped in the remains of a white dress. As Max looks around the apartment, he is careful to keep his back to the bedroom because he is a coward or a gentleman. He places one curiosity in front of an other. Our private eye sees signifiers everywhere; representamen, clues. Max attempts to read in the intersections, confluences, and conflicts between resident and residence who Sophie was before the fall. Max attempts to decipher a home. He sees: Clutter, meticulously arranged. Small clusters of objects arranged here and there by size color shape into triangles and concentric circles, fans and small towers; strange stage sets made in miniature from knick knacks, needles, spools of thread, keepsakes, the remnants of

26 history, messages from the City. Lines, patterns, the symmetry of the kaleidescope. He sees: A red velvet couch, old, patched with squares of different red fabrics. A coffee table, wood stained, coffee stained. Various pegs, hooks, racks and lampshades where scarves had hung. The wall is scattered in a wider symmetry with posters for films and plays, tintypes and photographs of a mythic ancient Hollywood, framed squares of fabric. There are a few points in the apartment where the symmetry is disrupted, where objects exist in the context of no lines but their own: a scattered pile of handmade handbills and programs with Sophie's name in the credits, a small ceramic deer, a copy of The Street of Crocodiles with a chopstick for a bookmark. The kitchen is separated from the living room by a counter and a passage. Paper lanterns hang over the counter. A vase of tulips sits in its center. The kitchen is neat, orderly, well stocked. The only meticulous pattern is made from the magnets on the refrigerator a mandala composed from odds, ends. There are no matching pairs between plates, bowls, mugs. As he scans the bookshelves for familiar authors, titles Max thinks about what city all this is a map to, about the hands that placed the objects. Max translates what meaning he can from languages that suggest, imply, do not define. Max infers vague figures from the books with well worn spines, the books with uncut pages, the arrangement of books by subject and color; vague figures who read Ionesco, who seem to sit only in the center of the couch, who have a red toaster. Max tries to construct vague figures, earlier ghosts of Sophie. Max tries to focus all the lenses, order all the frames, ignore sections of his memory. Max tries to read the setting as best he can. He takes note of repeating themes, juxtapositions, general atmosphere, converging paths, the things that are done with space. Max does what he can with clues in a context. He draws no conclusions. He forms hypotheses. He wonders what Sophie is up to. He

27 pulls a book from a shelf, sits in the center of the couch, turns toward the middle, reads. Sophie smiles to herself when she sees Max smiling to himself while absorbed in a collection of Little Nemo Sunday strips and absentmindedly twirling an unlit cigarette between his fingers. Max looks up. Sophie has changed. the I of the P.I. returns; the lioness Her blue/white dress is tied at the waist, the blue/silver pair of scissors is tucked between the cord and the pressure of her hip. She has cut her hair. The ghosts of scarves of many colors. The blue/black of her hair, cut short at strange angles. The blue/black of her ink-stained fingers. The two blue/black lines in blue/black ink across the ghosts of her cheekbones, the ghost of the bridge of her nose. Scarves in blues of all colors around her neck in layers, waves; scarves tied to her wrists. A new calm strong current in the blue of her bare feet, ankles, arms, shoulders and profile. Sophie has changed. There is a lion in the case after all. She moves her lips slowly, I am not a femme fatale. I stand up. That is one of the few things I've figured out. I put the book back on the shelf. She smiles. She claps her hands twice; silently. Every noise I make is too loud. Sophie no longer concentrates while wrinkling her brow and holding her bottom lip between her teeth; instead she holds her right elbow in her left hand and taps her blue/black fingertips against the blue/pink/red of her mouth. Sophie is the blue of the base of a flame and what quick currents and waves emerge as though to storm-wreck and submerge the firmness of her stillness seem to break against the two lines drawn in the ghost of ink across her features. She

28 conducts with her ink-stained fingers. She is fluent and certain. She has never jumped from a roof in her life. We redecorate. Meanings shift. The lines alter. Sophie pulls the ghosts from the yellow with red tulips; I break the cut-glass vase; Sophie pulls the ghost from the vase. Where will you sleep? Do you sleep? Her lips move slowly, I had better. She points to the couch. A knife from the kitchen to the cushions, their ghosts removed, arranged. Blankets and pillows from the bedroom. Feathers. Fabric scraps. The new lines make less sense to me. I move things. I break things. Sophie pulls the ghosts from broken things. Sophie rolls her eyes less often when I move my hands while watching her hands. All the leather bound books are turned inward. With her ink-stained fingertips against her lips, Sophie looks at the phonograph, smiles as though illuminated. The phonograph: the force and face of the hammer, the leverage and the claw, the heel of my shoe. Flipping through records; quick nods of her head; a pile of albums to break like glass. Sophie holds the ghost, I pull the wreckage from the shelf. The vinyl and the blow; the shards and the ghosts. She lifts the arm, places the record, and turns a switch as though the ghosts of objects are more than impossible feathers. to the ghost of Mancini's Peter Gunn Judging from her smile, the first guitar is not blue in any way. The blue/black of her fingertips dance in the air. She conducts me to move all that is delicate, fragile in a pattern around the couch. She balances on an upended wine glass. There are points in the constellations that I do not know.