3

Pace had saved some money from his construction projects in New Orleans and he had inherited a small amount from his mother upon her death, as well as Dalceda Delahoussaye’s house in Bay St. Clement, North Carolina, in which Lula had been living. Pace had contracted with a realty company in Bay St. Clement to rent the house, so he also had a little income from that. He felt a bit guilty for leaving New Orleans, but following Lula’s death for some reason he felt unusually restless, as if the spirits of both his parents were summoning him, calling from the Great or Not-So-Great Beyond, wherever or whatever that might be, to hurl himself off the cliff of Been There into the ocean of What Could Be. Other than his former paramour Marnie Kowalski, with whom Pace had remained on appreciably more than good terms, and Luther Byu-Lee, a musician whose house he had rebuilt in the Lower Nine, Pace figured there wasn’t anyone in N.O that he would miss spending time with more than the ordinary. He’d never been one for hanging on the telephone and he didn’t e-mail, text or tweet. Pace did like to send postcards, however, so as long as there was still a United States Postal Service he could keep in touch with those few individuals still on the prowl in the active file of his cerebral cortex.

He knew nobody in Chicago and very little about the city except that it got extremely cold in the winter and the powerful wind that blew in off of Lake Michigan was called The Hawk. It was June now, so cold would not be an immediate problem; and even if it got hot and sticky the humidity wouldn’t have anything on summer in New Orleans. When he disembarked from the train at Union Station, Pace stood for a few minutes on the platform looking around and thinking about what he should do first. There was no sign of Dr. Furbo.

Pace had a backpack and a roller suitcase. All of his other possessions he’d stored in a shed in the yard behind Marnie Kowalski’s house on Orleans Street. He walked to the taxi stand and asked a driver to take him to a not-too expensive but clean small hotel near the Art Institute. Pace had always wanted to see the original of Georges Seurat’s painting La Grande Jatte, which he knew was on permanent display there. This was one thing he’d long desired to do so it seemed like a good start. On the drive over, Pace hummed softly the tune “In a Small Hotel,” the way he’d so often listened to it played by the tenor saxophonist Stan Getz.

“You ever been in Chicago before?” the driver asked.

“No,” said Pace. “Always wondered about it, though. Heard good things.”

“Well, it’s a city like any other, only bigger than most. Some good things, as you say, some bad. Where you from?”

“New Orleans.”

“I had family in Louisiana,” said the driver. “Close by Baton Rouge. They all passed now, though.”

“Did you ever get down there?”

“Yes, sir, a few times when I was a boy, but that was more than forty years ago. Recall catchin’ catfish with my cousin Charles, with our hands. Charles showed me how to hold ’em without those sharp spears poke out both sides of their head don’t cut you up.”

“That was good of him. Catfish cuts can be plenty nasty.”

“Yes, sir. Poor Charles, though, he only made it to sixteen years old when he got shot bein’ in a wrong place at a wrong time, buyin’ a RC Cola in a convenience store when some fool tried to rob it. Clerk took up a pistol and kept firin’ until all the bullets was used. One of ’em hit Charles in the head. Robber got away.”

“That’s a sad story,” said Pace.

“Mm-hmm. I’ll take you to a little hotel two blocks from the art museum, the Blackhawk, named after the Indian chief lived around here back in the day. They call it a boo-teek, ’cause of the size, but it’s priced very reasonable and decent folks work there. My sister, Marvis, she works on the reception desk. Tell her Arvis brought you by.”

“Arvis and Marvis, huh?”

“Uh huh. Got a brother named Parvis, the oldest. Our mama had a real affection for rhymin’. She told me she’d had a fourth child, she would have named him Jarvis, or if it was a girl, Narvis. Here we are now.”

Pace was checked into the Blackhawk by Marvis, who told him that her brother brought customers to the hotel only if he had a good feeling about them. She gave Pace a room on the fourth floor with windows overlooking the street. Pace lay down on the bed and immediately fell asleep. He dreamt that he was a little boy again and he was riding in the back seat of his father’s car. Sailor and Lula were in the front. Sailor was driving as night fell. “Daddy,” Pace said in his dream, “aren’t you gonna turn on the headlights?” Lula turned around and smiled at him. Her face was silvery blue in the dusk light. “Don’t worry, darlin’,” she said, “we don’t need them any more.”