Ambient 06 - Going, Going, Gone

in the Seattle Salvation Army. Twenty years later found this one, the best, Last Kind Word Blues, in a junk shop on Allen Street. After that, no more Geeshie. No more of any of them, only their records, and those marvellous labels: Grey Gull, Electradisk, Puretone, Resona, Columbia, Melotone, Radiex, American Odeon. My people preserved – sweet, black, and shiny.
    During the third instrumental break Eulie spoke. »It’s familiared, I’ve heard.«
     
    The Mississippi River,
    it’s deep and it’s wide
    IIIIIIII can stand right here,
    See my face on the other side.
     
    »Who is it?« she asked when the song ended.
    »Geeshie Wiley,« I said, lifting the disc up, reclothing and reshelving it with all the respect Geeshie deserved. »Where’d you hear it? Wasn’t ever on a comp, far as I know.«
    »These are all like that?« she asked, gesturing at my wall of sound,
    »Most aren’t that good. Some are. A few better but not many.«
    They started toward the kitchen. Eulie looked better to me then than she had all night, if only because she was getting ready to take off. Call me an idiot, it wouldn’t be a new experience. These mantraps may have been hazardous as hungry tigers or Southern cops but she’d put enough of a hex on me that I was no longer fretting over it, at least not too much. »We kind of got off on the wrong foot. You sure you got to rush off?«
    »Presently,« she said. »We’ll return.«
    »What about your phone number?«
    I was really digging that goofball baffled look that her face took on so often. »It’s unlisted,« she said, after a second. »I’ll contact.«
    »Got you.« Hadn’t gotten her yet, but if I had any say in the matter I would.
    »Walter, make note of when they return. Record how often you see them and where, and when.«
    » When they return?« I asked. »Not if?«
    »When,« she repeated. »We’ll be touching, Walter.«
    »In touch,« Chlojo muttered.
    »I mean we’ll be in touch.«
    »Either way sounds good to me,« I said, and before I could say anything else they were out the door. »Either or. Whatever.«
    Even though I hotfooted it, by the time I got to the windows in the front they’d already disappeared. Hated to see such sweet delights hit the bricks, but if there wasn’t pain in life the pleasure wouldn’t count for shit. In lieu of carnal life I lay down on my sofa, feeling the imprints they’d left, and reached into my stash to roll up a nightcap. All the lamps still worked so I supposed the lightshow hadn’t DCed the AC. Sad to say, the phone was also still working. After letting it go four or five rings I took a long drag and decided to see who was so persistent at that time of night.
    »Been thinking about our offer?« Bennett, naturally. Privacy wasn’t a concept he took much stock in.
    »Don’t be a worrywart, my brother. Wears away the stone.«
    »No worries here, Walter,« he said. »Any worries on your end?«
    »Can’t say there are –« Taking another draw, I realized I hadn’t ascertained the provenance of Chlojo’s supernatural produce. Hoped Bennett’s phone call was merely one of the aftereffects.
    »There will be,« he said, trying to do Bogart, failing miserably. »You can’t imagine. I can.«
    »You got a licence to use that imagination?« I asked. »By the way, what’d you send those cookies over to see me for?«
    Silence. »What the hell are you talking about?«
    »Bennett, you’ll get no Oscars playing the coy miss,« I said. »There’s no fooling a fooler, my brother.«
    He sighed. Nothing I tried seemed to prompt him to hang up. »The hell with you. Do what we ask or you’ll be sorry.«
    »What is it again I’m supposed to be doing? Refresh my memory. I get distracted when roller derby queens put the strongarm on me.«
    »You’re incoherent, you idiot.« No doubt about it, those babies weren’t his. That lifted my happy heart a little higher. »Get back on the wagon before it’s too late. Remember what we talked about this morning? In Washington?« Another pause on his end. »You remember being in Washington?«
    »Haven’t blacked it out yet but I’m trying,« I said. »Bennett, I told you and Martin and those two nightcrawlers, I’m not having anything to do with the Potato Famine and I mean it. Bug off.«
    He hung up. I laid the receiver in the cradle and panned the room. My two ghosts hadn’t wasted any time; they’d come back for an encore now that the crowd had thinned out.
    Help, he said, or at least I heard