Crescent City Connection

they had to check her reference.
    * * *
    The Monk woke with an odd sense of foreboding. Foreboding and depression and maybe a little regret—that he’d let this lovely, strange, desperate young person into his life.
    He had been so self-contained, so… dare he say it? Happy.
    You know what?
he thought.
I was happy. Now I know what happy is. What I used to be.
    He meditated on it.
    Life had been so serene. So lean.
    And then Lovelace.
    Why hadn’t he stayed out of her life? It was he who’d encouraged her to answer the damned ad. Why had he done such a stupid-ass thing?
    If he hadn’t, she wouldn’t have gotten involved with that asshole, Larry.
    She had been glowing when she got home last night, bubbly almost, a condition that normally put him off. But her happiness made him happy—that was the problem. He felt what she felt. It was like he absorbed what was going on around him.
    He had forgotten to lay down rules, and so she had given the asshole her phone number, and before he could say “don’t,” she invited him over and he came.
    The Monk had done the only thing he could do—withdrawn to his bedroom. But he heard their voices, quiet, normal, and then louder and louder.
    “What are you doing?”
    “Come on, baby. You know you need me.”
    The Monk instantly grasped the implied blackmail.
    “Are you crazy?” Lovelace said. “I hardly know you.”
    “Oh, thank you so much, Larry. I think I’ll just use you and toss you aside.” His voice was like a twelve-year-old’s.
    The Monk thought it had a dangerous edge, too, but that would have been his own perception. He didn’t know if Lovelace could take care of herself, but he certainly didn’t want to behave like some interfering older brother.
    In the end, he just walked to the door of his bedroom, opened it, and stood there with his crook in his hand.
    Larry left, and Lovelace burst into tears.
    The Monk didn’t know whether she was crying because of what he’d done or not—maybe she was perfectly willing to barter her body—but she came to him and hugged him, and he knew it wasn’t that. He recoiled—he couldn’t bear to think of the germs she carried—and she was horrified at what she’d done, because she understood, he thought, and that shamed him.
    She stepped back, crying, looking bewildered, and he had no idea what to do. He was perfectly clear, however, on what he wanted to do, and he did it—stepped back into his room and shut the door. He heard her crying for a long time afterward.
    This morning his brain was a tangle of half-baked thoughts, all of them unhappy. He had encouraged her to apply for the job, and therefore she’d allied herself with Larry. But then he’d driven Larry away, and now she wouldn’t get the job. On top of that, he’d hurt her feelings.
    Yet he had to get to the gallery, he had to paint, he had to do the things he had to do. There were rules, and they were rules he’d made himself. He had to follow them, or the other thing would take over his brain.
    It seemed as if a dark, fierce magnet, maybe even a spirit, were trying to hold him to his bed, stick him there like a wad of chewing gum, bitten and discarded.
    It took all his strength to get out of bed, throw on a white robe, and slip quietly into the street.
    The morning was overcast—sunlight would have been an insult on a day like today.
    He was passing St. Anthony’s Garden on his scooter when someone hailed him. “Hey! Whitey!”
    Only one person called him Whitey—the other artist who wore white; the one who was black. They knew each other because of their clothing. They always nodded.
    The Monk raised a hand and lowered it quickly, a salutation of sorts, but one that said, “Not now, if you don’t mind.”
    “Whitey! Come here! I got somethin’ to tell you.”
    The Monk kept going, but the traffic was heavy, and he couldn’t get away fast enough.
    The other artist was chasing him. “Goddammit. Goddammit. Shit, man! I’m too old for this shit—I’m gon’ have a heart attack.”
    Reluctantly, The Monk pulled his scooter over. “Listen to me, man. I got somethin’ to tell you. A woman’s lookin’ for you.”
    The Monk closed his face and, as well as he could, his brain and his ears. One woman was more than enough.
    “She says she’s a cop.”
    He shrugged his shoulders and pointed to his chest. “Me?”
    “They want a white dude dressed in white. Think you an artist. Hey. You an artist, brother?”
    The Monk stopped and