Crescent City Connection

Monk and be The White Knight.
    This was a good plan, an excellent plan. As long as he stayed on the street, the police couldn’t find him. And as long as he had no house, he didn’t have to wash.
    He’d still have the thoughts, of course, and some of them might be worse than usual, since he couldn’t make them stop by painting. But this was his job for right now—watching over his angel. He was oddly pleased at that.
    He was up with the sun the next morning, watching his house—her house now. But she didn’t come out. Her meeting was at seven, he couldn’t be wrong about that. The Camellia Grill was at the opposite end of town, about as far uptown as you could get and not fall in the river. It could take an hour or more to get there on public transportation. His plan was to follow her until she got on a bus, then get on his motor scooter and be there before her—just to see that everything went okay.
    But six came and six-thirty, and then seven, and still she didn’t come out. He peeked in the window, and there she was lying on her new futon, peaceful as a real angel. He was touched—she could have slept in the bedroom, but she had kept it clear for him.
    All of a sudden she sat straight up, as if she’d sensed him there, and he had to duck. He couldn’t really hide in his own neighborhood—what to do?
    Finally, he went to Pamela’s, and wrote her a note asking if he could come inside. She said, “Sure, Monkie, whatever your white little heart desires.” Pamela was such a nice woman; she never asked questions. She’d never even mentioned his shaved head.
    He simply walked in, sat on the sofa, and turned toward his own house so he could see out the window. Pamela said, “You want anything?” but he pretended he hadn’t heard. There were two great things about not talking—people thought maybe you were deaf and maybe you were crazy, and if you acted as if you were one or both, they left you alone.
    Lovelace finally left at about nine. He got up and followed, without even a word to Pamela, knowing she wouldn’t care.
    When I start talking
, he thought,
I’m going to have to do something nice for that woman
. He was aware that that was the first time he’d actually thought about talking again.
    Lovelace set out walking through familiar territory, straight to his gallery, Rough Trade.
    What the hell, he thought, and pretty soon a big woman went in, six feet or more, with wild, crazy hair.
    I’d like to paint her
, he thought.
She’s terrific-looking.
    When the woman came out, she just kind of stood in the street for a long time, and it came to him that she was doing what he was doing—watching the gallery.
    She must be the cop
, he thought.
Lovelace must have decided to meet her here. Maybe she tried to turn me in. Maybe she thinks I’m going to kill somebody
.
    But eventually she left, and Lovelace came out and walked to the streetcar. The Monk took a taxi home and got his scooter. She must have gone to work, he reasoned. Where else would she go? He parked near Juicy’s Juice, and found a place to hide. Sure enough, there was his angel behind the counter. He stayed with her.
    The whole thing was familiar and not familiar.
I wonder if I’m doing this because I have to
, he thought.
It sort of feels like it and sort of doesn’t. But I think it’s like wearing white or keeping silence. I think I have free will on this one.
    He found it gave him an odd sense of peace and purpose, almost fulfillment, like painting.
That must mean I want to
, he thought.
Other people live like this all the time. Other people do things just because they want to.
    He caught his reflection in a window and saw that he still had twigs on his clothes from sleeping outside. He didn’t bother to remove them.
    * * *
    Skip went straight to City Hall and looked up the business license issued to Juicy’s Juice. It had been given to an Anthony Earls in 1992. It had probably gone out of business. Going backward, she looked up Earls. Six months ago, he’d gotten another license—for Judy’s Juice on Maple Street.
    Now that sounded more promising. She headed straight over.
    She realized what had happened—Judy’s opened after the phone book came out; therefore it wasn’t listed.
    She had parked and was more or less ambling, not really thinking about anything much except that this was probably another dead end, when she heard a man’s voice, loud and alarmed. “You get on out of here. You leave her alone now!”
    She