Late! Late again!

Minutes before the deadline I send the two-megabyte file, and now -- mere moments after finishing an exhausting project -- I am reminded about an urgent meeting, thanks to ingenious life-planning software and its relentless symphony of emails, jingles, and beeps. The countdown timer reveals a fleeting 1200 seconds to prepare.

I laughed at the stress: It is more important to be well-dressed than on time. Glancing at the online calendar -- “Colleagues at the meeting: conservative” -- I remove my “Obama 2008” T-shirt and then turn it inside out to match the zeitgeist of my belligerent audience. In bold letters, the shirt’s front delivers the message: “My Messiah can beat up your Messiah.”

Swiftly now, I convert some pertinent articles from formats text to mp3 then move them to an audio player. These are read to me aloud, as I grab dinner (one energy bar) from a bookshelf filled with hundreds of these bars, sorted by the chewy decimal system: by protein-content, flavor and size. In one click, I pay three bills with online bill pay. Now to my wife’s phone message (“Do something about the leak in the bedroom ceiling, and water the plants.”) -- with hurried poise I place a potted philodendron underneath the leak. Still listening to the mp3ed articles, I snatch four ice cubes and drop them into clay pots to water my thirsty plants.

Timer tells me there is one minute, one precious minute, of time free. I toss some old books on top of a beautiful wooden desk in my living room, the desk which I call my “cemetery of dreams”. Here I deposit sacred heaps of notebooks, scraps of paper notes, someday books to read, CDs of music to listen to and languages to learn, photos of friends to contact, titles of books to write, quotations from classic novelists and philosophers, names of charities and causes to learn more about. All the impassioned projects I would tackle wholeheartedly, if some great cosmic power would eliminate the necessity for money and work.

Haunted am I by information in never-ending waves.

Crossing the doorway threshold I hear my computer beep-beep-beep the wild cry of an UNA: an urgent news alert. Is it another wasteful war? The immanent economic meltdown? Some indispensable innovation in one of the fields of my expertise? ... Thinking about my profession -- where to be uninformed is hara-kiri -- I rush indoors to the giant screen. The news alerts me to the fact that a gust of wind has blown a giant inflatable dog turd beyond the bounds of a Swiss art museum, where it flew 200 meters, broke some windows, and took down a power line. The work of art had been equipped with a bad-weather safety system, which of course had utterly failed to perform.

Walking, walking to the meeting, I watch a squirrel make a breathtaking leap between two tall trees. The motto of Goethe strikes me: “Remember to Live.” You see, every day during my working hours (which is almost all my waking hours), I entertain the faraway feeling that I have forgotten something. Something essential for me to understand.

I turn off the audio player in the middle of an article about trends in electronic publishing. An old man is walking -- slower than snail --- in the middle of the street, bent in half like the Greek letter gamma. He drops his cane; and when I pick up the cane and hand it back to him he shakes his head and says: “You work your life away. And then this.”

And then he squeezed my hand and I remembered.

****

Some years ago I traveled around the world with a backpack and a bike. I had been wondering what would happen to me if I turned off the incessant noise: the computer, the phone, the television, the advertising propaganda, the terabytes of trivial facts, nonsense, and news. I hoped to find cultures, peoples, and individuals who were living a more natural life, a life vastly different from our comfortable — and some might say vicarious, buy-crazy, over-refined — existence in the West. As a traveling Thoreau, I lived simply: sleeping under the stars, eating whatever I could forage or buy inexpensively from farmers or shops, and cycling or hiking to undeveloped places that the guidebooks would never recommend.

During this year-long journey there was only one time when I found precisely what I was looking for. I had gotten myself lost, thoroughly off the map, and had wandered into a small village in a valley between great mountains. On a dirt road, when I first approached the village, I saw enormous blue herons who made nests on top of telephone poles. As I wheeled past them they flew into the sky, flapping their wings awkwardly and ever-so-slowly, graceful reminders of a timeless world. From the pole-tops they would land on what first resembled pillars, thirty feet tall, like stacks of giant mudpies. Hundreds of these heaps surrounded me, all made of dung and straw: I soon learned that this was the preferred fuel for cooking and for heat.

Quickly I began to wonder about the people who welcomed the blue birds and created these practical and hilarious towers. The men in this village wore dark caps with gold sewing needles stuck inside, and spent much of their day yammering in the lone café, and no more than twenty hours per week working in their fields. Though the women worked constantly they laughed more, and seemed even happier than the men. Early in the mornings I would watch five of these women — sitting in a circle around a deep earthen pit — talking and working together to make the bread for the day, the same way their ancestors had worked for centuries before. The first woman started the fire in the bottom of the pit and kept it burning; the second woman mixed the flour and water; the third rolled this mixture into round balls; the fourth flattened the balls into thin circle-shaped doughs the size of a small pizza pie; the fifth placed the flat round dough on the sides of the pit then took it out at just the right moment when the bread was done. There was no word in their language for ‘leftovers’ — the bread and all the meals would be made fresh every day. These simple people believed that food, like life, needed always to be made new.

As the village guest, I was treated with grand hospitality and kinglike esteem. In a week I was able to learn enough of their language to explain where I was from, what my life in America was like, and why I was a-traveling. And after the explanation a young boy, perhaps ten years old, took me by the hand and told me that he wanted to show me something, and that this sight would be the best and most interesting attraction that I would find anywhere in his entire town.

He led me to his great-grandfather, an old man working in a field. The moment the old man saw me he removed his hat and placed his hand over his heart. He called to his family to make a feast for me, and to chop wood for my warm bath. By Western standards he had few reasons to be happy, and yet all the time I observed him, in all moments, he was radiant with joyfulness.

I stayed the night in his best room, and in the morning I loaded my bicycle, pointing the front wheel to the west. I described my destination (a large lake in the mountains); I explained that although I carried a map I had become entirely lost. With a great smile, he told me some words which I carefully wrote down -- it would be months later before I understood. “My son,” he said, placing an arm around my shoulder. “My son, listen to an old fool who in his whole life has learned one thing alone. No matter how far you’ve traveled on the wrong road, turn back.”

****

My summer of unending labor continued, and nothing eventful happened until a certain Tuesday in the Fall, the fourth day of November in the year 2008. Gripped by my computer screen, I watched the early election returns. Those of us who had suffered over the past eight years felt that this night could change the course of history. It would be a revolution, a genuine revolution, an expansion of consciousness in America and the entire world.

My wife played a piano version of Sarasate’s “Gypsy Airs” as I tallied electoral votes. I had wandered to my cemetery of dreams, and unconsciously began to sort the heap of papers into project piles. I picked up a biography of Goethe, where long ago I had bookmarked a page with the gem: “As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.”

What would I do if I could paint my paradise and walk in? ... I would master the arts of loving and being kind. I would center my life about relationships: with family, neighbors, and friends. I would balance my life with Dr. Montagu’s prescription: “Health is the ability to love, to work, to play, and to think soundly.” I would use my encyclopedic knowledge and savvy about the latest technologies -- not to worship and improve technology itself -- to advance a sustainable lifestyle, a healthy planet, safe havens for all species, freedom, peace, justice, education, great books, and the creative arts. I would live more simply and wisely, and encourage others to do the same. Like Noah, I would start huge foolish projects, and not care a damn what other people might think.

“He’s winning,” I told my wife, after adding the prospective votes from Washington,Oregon, and California. “Let’s walk.”

The streets in our little town were quiet until an hour before midnight. Then, from the center of the town known as “the Commons”, we heard a cheer -- an enormous roar. What joyful freedom sounded in that colossal cheer! My wife squeezed my hand. Two young black teenagers, both female, came running down the street shouting “Obama! Obama! Obama!” Some Autumn leaves must have fallen from the trees into my eyes: how else could I explain my wet cheeks, now covered with streams and streams of tears?

And I tell you now, that despite all the obstacles our culture throws at us, and all the struggles our creative spirits must endure -- that night I promised myself I would remember. And act every day on that remembering, and begin my life anew. It would mean sacrifice: I would have less, I would be more.

There is so much good in all of us, so much kindness, so many noble dreams. I know now that Goethe meant: “Remember to live sincerely, passionately, intensely.” The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years or the most wealth, but the one with the richest experiences. To remember to live is one thing mainly: to remember to love.

This is our moment. This is our time.

My eyes came open.
Soft light came in, a window, perhaps, a turquoise sky.
Serah was sitting at my bedside.
  "It's okay, you are fine. You have arrived, everything's fine, “she said.
Liar, I thought. I focussed on her face; she looked troubled. What's the problem, I thought, aren't you pleased to see me? But I said nothing.
I lifted up my arm; it was wrapped in polymer and cooling fluid. Inside the wrap my skin was hot, like new baked bread.
  "Whuguh?" I said, speaking round some soft tube in my mouth I couldn't spit out. Serah took it out for me.
  "You need to put on another ten kilograms but you are doing fine. Well. Here you are "
  "Yes, here I am."
  " I didn't really expect you so soon. You said you were going to send a copy after six months, once you had finished your ocean research."
Liar, I thought. You didn't expect me at all.
"I exercised my option early."
  "Good, good. How are you getting on back on Terranova? How am I getting on as well? I mean my original. How is she doing?" she asked.
  "Fine," I said. I can lie too.
  "I - she hasn't written to me for more than a month. Last thing she said, you were all going on a trip in that old yacht round the islands."
  "Yes. We did that." Oh, yes, we did that.
I pretended to be bored. "So this is Roanoke, is it? Pretty sky you've got here."
  "It's artificial, a membrane to keep the atmosphere in. They change the color every so often. This is a small world, it can't keep hold of its atmosphere very well without a membrane to hold it in; but it is a small community, everybody knows everybody, you know what I mean. You will like it here, I think," she said. "Did you send a copy to the other worlds as well?"
  "Yes. I expect I am waking up on Nadia and Hammerstein and Twinkle around about now, and talking to you, just like this. It is more personal than writing a letter."
I wanted to scratch my new body under the plastic, but my fingers were too clumsy.
"It is odd how she hasn't written to me," Serah said.
  "You’re original?" I asked her, in what I hoped was an innocent voice.
  "Yes, she used to write every week. Of course I wrote back, but my mails won't get to Terranova for another twenty years. But there is no time lag from there to here, is there? Mail travels at light speed, just like full copies for engeneration, doesn't it?"
  "Yes, just like me. I have just beamed across twenty light years like an e-mail just to see you."
A copy of a person's mind state, and of their DNA, can be sent by laser from one system to another; here, on Audubon and on a number of other new worlds a new body can be grown in a matter of days. It is much easier than sending us by starship. However, it feels a little odd, to say the least. I was literally growing a new body moment by moment, and was as weak as a kitten. For now.
She didn't seem too happy to see me.
  "Was Thom on the boat with you? With us? Round the islands?" she asked, nervously.
  "Yes, for a while. Then he ran off with some island woman; we never saw him again." Another lie.
  "I was worried, the three of you in that rickety old boat, with no computers."
Yes, you would worry, wouldn't you, after a month with no word about how your sordid little plan had unfolded.
  "About Thom... we are seeing each other, here on Roanoke," she said, carefully. “You did know he had sent his copies to these new worlds as well, didn't you?"
  "Oh, yes."
  "Actually, we want to get married, I really need to talk to you about a divorce. I'm sorry," she said. That was no surprise at all, of course.
Ha! You never realised that my wristwatch had a personality as well. A little partial copy of myself to keep an eye on the wind and the tides while I was asleep; a little cheat to keep us safe. You didn't realise that my watch would see both of you when you crept in and killed me.
I don't think you even realised I had a backup copy of myself in the University library. You didn't realise that my watch would communicate with my virtual in the library, and that my copy would tell the rickety old boat to scuttle itself.
With you, and him, on it.
Far from land.
It was my duty as a husband to arrange for my only remaining conciousness, the University Library copy, to be sent to the four distant worlds where you were still alive, and break the bad news in person.
Yes. I will tell you, and Thom. Just before I kill you.
Again.
An eye for an eye for an eye for an eye.

A taste of the white orchid, the eternal Lady Day, but it was not the radio, not a remastered CD; it was the one and only Ruby Daulton. She had a style, a phrasing and tone distinctly her own and Jake was dumbfounded.

Ruby was a singer. She had the talent, the looks and the flare to fill women with envy and make men fall to their knees. How she ended up running drugs and dancing in two-bit stripper bars was a mystery as deep as the seven seas.

She let the last note drift to the heavens and gave him a wink and a smile.

He spoke from the depth of his native soul: "You should go straight to New Orleans, Ruby. They’ll make you a legend."

Ruby laughed and leaned out the window to breathe the night air and take in the stars.

"Don’t you know what they do to legends in New Orleans?"

Visions of Billie Holliday, eyes rolled back, a needle dangling from her arm, and Bessie Smith dying in the front seat of car, parked outside a white only hospital washed over him. What do you do when the jackhammer of truth comes down on you?

"Yeah," he reflected. He knew what they did to legends.

They had a new plan: a quick stop in Kansas City and on to St. Louis. Catch a ride on the Mississippi Queen, a floating casino, straight down to New Orleans and a new life.

"In and out," Ruby said of the Kansas City detour. She had friends there and she felt a need for self-defense. She would score a concealable weapon and find out the latest news from Guido and the boys in Vegas.

Jake did not object to Ruby having a gun but he was less certain that she should trust anyone connected with her past. If she wanted a gun, she should have got one from White Wolf.

It was early morning when they crossed the state line, stumbled into Kansas City and made their way to Truman Avenue at 38th Street. The numbers were coming up wrong and Ruby was suddenly wary. Jake was back in the sleeping mode; even when he was awake, he was asleep. She had a long conversation with his subconscious, in which he spoke in tongues, riddles and rhymes, eyes rolling and head swaying from side to side.

"Tell me about your mother," Ruby said.

"The earth was shaken to her core," replied the sleeping man. "The clouds were dark, shivering rain. The ocean is plasma, a magnetic swarm, flies so thick, the caretaker warned: the milk is poison."

His eyes rolled and sweat covered his brow but when Ruby became concerned, he would break into poetry, rolling out a velvet tribute to the beauty of life.

Ruby was amused and amazed at the workings of Jake’s sleeping mind but now that they were nearing her Kansas City connection, she sensed danger and felt the need for his conscious presence.

She drove half a block past the apartment building and parked. They were friends of a friend, every bit as dubious as Jake feared, but it seemed reasonable until now. The same instincts that told her she needed a gun now warned to be wary. She needed Jake to take the ball, bounce it around, and figure out which way to move.

She shook him hard and pleaded with him to wake up. His eyes rolled behind closed lids before springing wide open, as if petrified: "Nanih waiyah!" he called out and then lapsed back into his world of dreams.

She pressed her body against him and teased him with a kiss. Again, his eyes rolled and popped open in fear. It was strange. She had never seen fear in him while he was awake but here it was in his dreams.

A stranger in a strange land, Jake heard Ruby’s voice and crawled out of the abyss, fluttering his eyes, adjusting to an unfamiliar world, until he saw her shining face.

"What is nonny wayuh?" she asked.

"Nanih waiyuh," he muttered. "It’s Choctaw for the fox."

"The fox and the weasel," said Ruby. It was what Sister Woman called the couple in Kansas City, the connection she was about to meet.

The fox was a master of camouflage, a wearer of masks, renowned for cunning, while the weasel was known for stealth and an ability to see beyond disguise. They were a perfect match.

"What were you afraid of?" Ruby asked.

"What is anyone afraid of?" Jake replied. "The unknown, the unfamiliar, the tunnel of darkness, the absence of light."

"I’ve never seen you afraid before."

"You’ve never brought me back from so far under."

Ruby’s mind was racing in a thousand directions but everything would have to wait. She had to focus on the moment and she needed Jake to be there with her.

"We need a plan," she said.

"We have a plan," replied Jake. "We go in, keep our eyes open, you make the deal, we get out."

"It’s not much of a plan," said Ruby.

"I’ve got another plan," said Jake. "We head on to St. Louis and take our chances."

"No," Ruby reflected. "We don’t back down. Once you start, you never stop."

It was becoming an obsession but Jake wouldn’t fight it. It was what made her Ruby Daulton. It was one reason he would go to the wall for her.

"Watch my back side," she said as she stepped from the truck.

Jake followed, emptying his mind and proceeding in the quiet manner of the fox, ready for another appointment with destiny. Ruby was nervous, her palms sweating, her movements stuttered and sudden.

"Relax," said Jake as she pressed the buzzer on the floor level.

A man with slick back hair and beady eyes circled in darkness greeted them at the door. Jake smiled. He looked like a weasel. His weak chin shadowed by a thin beard gave the impression that his face converged at the end his prominent, pointy nose. He wore a ragged Aerosmith tee shirt, wiping his eyes and scratching himself.

"Santini?" Ruby inquired.

"Yeah," he replied, motioning them in, closing and bolting the door behind them.

"Who’s this?" he muttered.

"A friend," said Ruby.

The weasel squinted, as he looked Jake in the eyes.

"Coffee?" he asked on his way to the kitchen, overrun with dishes and discarded packaging.

"Sure," said Ruby.

Jake took it in. The man who drew all eyes at a motorcycle bar in Arizona was suddenly invisible, like the Indian in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The weasel could not see through him. He figured he was too dumb to talk.

Santini yelled "Cat!" as he poured the coffee and served them in the cluttered space of a small living room. "Get the hell up, your friends are here!"

Cat the fox came in with an open silk gown and a platter of drawn cocaine. She was a striking woman with jet-black hair and long, thin lines. Jake deferred but Ruby and the weasel indulged.

On the face of it, Cat was far too attractive to be attached to the weasel without an angle. She was putting on airs of nicety, which was unnatural for a low stakes transaction in the morning hours. Something was on and this was a charade.

"I need a gun," Ruby pressed.

"What’s your hurry?" purred the fox.

"Business before pleasure," replied Ruby.

"A little late for that," said Cat with a snort.

"Have you got the goods?"

"Sure," said Cat. "Relax. Hey baby, show ‘em what you’ve got."

The weasel cleared his nostrils and went to the bedroom, closing the door behind him. After a moment too long, Ruby looked at Jake and Jake looked at Ruby. The gig was up. The weasel emerged with a case displaying four handguns, ranging from a snub nose to a pearl-handled derringer.

Ruby grabbed the latter and asked, "How much do I owe you?"

"It’s clean," said the weasel. "I’ll take three hundred."

"Is it loaded?"

Santini drew another line, pulled a box of bullets from a desk drawer, and tossed them on the table. Ruby loaded the gun and drew a bead on Cat’s forehead.

"What’s the news from Vegas, sweetheart?"

"Take it easy, Ruby. No one knows where you are."

"They didn’t before I came here."

Ruby tossed three hundred on the table and backed toward the door as the weasel angled for the gun stashed behind his back.

"You pull that thing," said Jake, "you’d better be good."

Jake had his knife in his hand and Santini froze. Weasels are good liars and cheats but they’re not killers.

Back in the truck, Ruby took stock. She had a gun but the bad guys knew where they were. If they had any sense at all, they knew where they were headed.

"Damn baby, that was mistake."

"We’re alive," shrugged Jake. "Let’s roll."

Jake was asleep by the time they hit the interstate, dreaming of Mississippi starlight on ink black waters, drowning souls in liquid tombs, forever wanting, yearning, reaching for the light. Liquid nightmare and fireflies, loves lost and prayers unanswered, betrayals, dark deals, a man with smiling eyes and lightning lies, illusions and deception.

A million souls sacrificed to muddy graves beneath a blood red sky. The suffering innocent and desperate cries. There is light in shadow and darkness in light. There is right in wrong and wrong in right.

"Wasichu!" said Jake from the depths of sleep. "The Killing Spirit!" he cried. "The Killing Spirit!"

Ruby let him sleep and wept as she drove. A summer rain began to fall and it fell in gales of darkness.

"Damn baby, that was a mistake."

When everything around you is sinking and you are sinking with everything around you, it appears that everything is motionless, still life, a photograph, no life, death.

When all around you has turned to liquid and you can no longer feel your arms, your legs, the beating of your heart, you realize you are no longer distinct from the surrounding darkness. You are the darkness, the liquid darkness, and you are still yet you are falling, sinking, losing hold of the solid earth that held you together and kept you apart from the darkness that enfolds everything it touches.

Ruby was sinking and she could no longer care. Ruby was dying and she could no longer remember why it was she needed to fight back. Her mother was a liquid memory, less real than unreal, her father was a whisper in the night, and Jake – Jake was a man she never knew but only imagined in a summer daydream.

The only thing she could hold onto that tied her to the world she once knew and the dreams she once dreamed was the music she carried in her soul. Lost in this dreamland of endless void, Ruby had a song to sing and she sang as if everything she knew and felt, loved and hated depended on it. Ruby sang the blues and a river of infinite sorrow flowed from the depths of creation.

Ruby sang songs she never knew she knew with a depth and clarity few ever attain. Ruby sang the blues: My Man, Strange Fruit, Don’t Explain, Ball and Chain, God Bless the Child, Stormy Monday, Cry Me a River… Ruby sang the blues and everyman and everywoman prayed for her salvation, as if they understood as they never understood before that their salvation was chained to Ruby’s salvation. They understood as they never understood before that once the pure of heart fell, it would all come crashing down, leaving no one unscathed.

No one gets out alive.

They understood that Ruby was the collective soul yet they could only witness and cry and pray.

Jake heard her in the depths of his madness. He awakened long enough to take account and surmise what had happened. There was a briefcase full of cash, large denominations, and a note:

"Let no man say the Marquis did not pay his debts.

"Would you dance with the devil, Mr. Jones? What would you offer a man who has no needs? Let the full weight settle before you venture forth."

Jake was drugged and he cursed himself for allowing it to happen. Now he felt the sleeping disease creeping through his veins: paralysis. He managed to call the desk and deliver five hundred in cash with the explanation that he did not know how long he would stay.

He settled on the bed and let go. He would have to rely on second sight. He would have to use the gift of spirit flight that White Wolf revealed to him so many moons ago.

He closed his eyes and let go. He felt his spirit rise and saw himself prone, motionless on the hotel bed. He let go and saw the sprawling city of Memphis and the great river. He let go and soared like the hawk that lived within him. He followed the river coursing through the great forest until he came to the giant paddleboat, the floating casino, the riverboat Queen that held his heart captive, that stored his love in bondage.

Preparing for a world in which he had only eyes and could not act, he let go and boarded the Queen just miles outside the Port of New Orleans.

From the moment she arrived, even through the surreal vision of a drug-induced haze, Ruby knew she had come home. She was once a Vegas girl but it was only a façade, a sequined costume, a veil of glamour. New Orleans was Ruby’s soul and Ruby was New Orleans.

New Orleans was a city of destiny. Without adding it up, Ruby knew it was number nine. Doomed by its geography and the willful neglect of government to defend her, New Orleans was the sacred womb of the nation and the sweetest, most enchanting of lovers: The birthplace of jazz, a culture of tolerance that predates the nation, Bourbon Street, Jackson Square, the St. Louis Cemetery and the tomb of Marie Laveaux, a city of a million contradictions and mysteries, city of light and darkness, city of hope and despair, city of faith and godlessness, city of passion and unholy calm, city of blues, Creole, Zydeco, ragtime and jazz. More than anything else, city of jazz.

It was a city that pulled at the heartstrings and permeated the souls of all it claimed. It haunted them like a mother’s love, like a lover’s cry, like a full moon on an endless night. Wherever they went, whatever they did, New Orleans followed them, crept inside of them, calling to them: Come home.

Ruby was home.

Here, despite the ominous presence of the nation’s dark intelligence community, there was no war and politics was only an afterthought. The city belonged to the music that defined it and set it apart from every other city on earth.

Everyone in New Orleans seemed to be waiting: waiting for sunset, waiting for Bourbon Street to come alive with music, dance and revelry, waiting for a summer storm that hung in the thick, palpable air like an omen of doom.

You could see it in the eyes of those who walked its streets: desperation, yearning, a sense of loss. Something was terribly wrong. That sense of destiny that so often gave them comfort through hard times now offered only a warning: Get out while you can.

It left them paralyzed for there was no place to go. They belonged to New Orleans. Like jazz, itself, they could never be at home anywhere else. They could never be at peace anywhere but in the Big Easy.

New Orleans was Ruby Daulton and Ruby was New Orleans. Jazz, dancing women, black magic, gambling, an air of mystery and a taste of death, Ruby was the liquid sky and the distant stars.

She was escorted from the Queen to the palatial estate of Louie Marchant in the heart of the French Quarters on Burgandy Street. Bought and sold like the mulatto descendants of slaves in a former era, Ruby would become the plaything of a man who fancied himself a duke, lord and protectorate of the House of Burgandy.

He was known as "Pale Louie" for the absence of color in his skin and his habit of never emerging in daylight. His estate ran deep into the bosom of the infamous New Orleans underground and it was there, in a dark expansive and luxuriously decorated space, that he kept his collection of pale-skinned beauties. It was there in that foreboding space that he entertained the royalty and courtesans of the underground through the long, cold nights of winter and the hot, sweltering nights of summer.

From the moment he heard Ruby sing, he knew she was special. She would be a kept woman, a slave to his desires, but no one would be allowed to violate her body or her spirit. She alone would be off limits to his clientele. She alone would be protected. He would grant her every wish. He would provide her with the finest jewelry, the richest gowns, the best cuisine and rarest wine. He would give her everything she desired but freedom. She would become a legend in the underground but she could never leave.

It was the one condition Guido Lazerri insisted on besides cold cash and one the duke had no reason to refuse: Ruby could never leave New Orleans. From the moment he saw her pale image in a photograph, a hint of danger beneath a veil of innocence, an unattainable beauty and a knowing that reached back through the ages, the duke knew he could never risk losing her. She would remain in his underground kingdom and even on those rare occasions when she would be allowed to walk the streets, to breathe the air of a timeless city, she would always be accompanied by armed guards.

The night passes like a train you’re not sure you should catch. He enters because he still has a key. I should have changed the lock. There are people with him, witnesses. Good. I hear he’s not mad at me. No one is ever mad at me, but he does want to kill me. "Nothing personal" he says. "I just like being the one in charge".

He moves into the apartment and I wonder how much it would hurt to jump from my window. Last time I saw him he was being taken away by the police. I called the police. He could have killed someone then, and I didn’t want it to be me. He goes straight for my room, of course. He kicks the door open and sees me immediately. I am armed with a cell phone and a clear conscience. He’s got a knife. "Hello there old friend," he says "How you been?" I don’t respond because he knows how I’ve been. "I brought some people, I hope that’s ok?" I think about shattering the window and using some of the broken glass to protect myself. All offense is labeled "defense". "Get the hell out of my house" I yell. He smiles and moves closer.

His friends are chattering outside. I hear one of them talk about how crappy the foundation is. "You almost killed me," I say "you aren’t my roommate anymore". He asks me what ever happened to my nice-ness. "You blew it when you tried to hot-box the house" I say. He’d spread weed throughout the entire living room floor, and lit it up. The amount of weed alone could have put him in jail for years, but he got so stoned that day that he didn’t notice when he broke the lock on the front door and walked to the park. When the fire department arrived I was able to convince them that someone broke into our apartment and caused this mischief. He laughs. I push him lightly and he falls easily. He was hoping I could let him use the apartment for an impromptu after-party.

The knife he carries is meant to cut a cake one of his friends is holding. I believe he stole it from the supermarket because he’s done that before. He realizes I’m not in the mood to party. He decides to crash a different place. Ours is not your regular friendship. He’d have to be mad to murder our relationship, and tonight he was just drunk and high. Our war is usually without casualties, but there is a wound. He killed another part of my perspective, and that means he won.