Ivory and the Horn Read Free Page A

rather lack thereof, because I know I wasn’t dreaming that night, or at least I wasn’t asleep.
     
    3
    Everybody’s worried about me when I finally get home— Rexy, the other dogs, Tommy, my landlady, Aunt Hilary, who looks after Tommy—and I appreciate it, but I don’t talk about where I’ve been or what I’ve seen. What’s the point? I’m kind of embarrassed about anybody knowing that I’m feeling nostalgic for the old squat and I’m not quite sure I believe who I saw there anyway, so what’s to tell?
    I make nice with Aunt Hilary, calm down the dogs, put Tommy to bed, then I’ve got homework to do for tomorrow night’s class and work in the morning, so by the time I finally get to bed myself, Shirley’s maybe-ghost is pretty well out of my mind. I’m so tired that I’m out like a light as soon as my head hits the pillow.
    Where do they get these expressions we all use, anyway? Why out like a light and not on like one? Why do we hit the pillow when we go to sleep? Logs don’t have a waking/sleeping cycle, so how can we sleep like one?
    Sometimes I think about what this stuff must sound like when it gets literally translated into some other language. Yeah, I know. It’s not exactly Advanced Philosophy 101 or anything, but it sure beats thinking about ghosts, which is what I’m trying not to think about as I walk home from the subway that night after my classes. I’m doing a pretty good job, too, until I get to my landlady’s front steps.
    Aunt Hilary is like the classic tenement landlady. She’s a widow, a small but robust grey-haired woman with more energy than half the messengers at QMS. She’s got lace hanging in her windows, potted geraniums on the steps going down to the pavement, an old black-and-white tabby named Frank that she walks on a leash. Rexy and Tommy are the only ones in my family that Frank’ll tolerate.
    Anyway, I come walking down the street, literally dragging my feet I’m so tired, and there’s Frank sitting by one of the geranium pots giving me the evil eye—which is not so unusual—while sitting one step up is Shirley—which up until last night I would have thought was damned, well impossible. Tonight I don’t even question her presence.
    “How’s it going, Shirl?” I say as I collapse beside her on the steps.
    Frank arches his back when I go by him, but deigns to give my shoulder bag a sniff before he realizes it’s only got my school books in it. The look he gives me as he settles down again is less than respectful.
    Shirley’s leaning back against a higher step. She’s got her hands in her pockets, clickety-clickety-click, her hat pushed back from her forehead. Her rosehip-and-licorice scent has to work a little harder against the cloying odor of the geraniums, but it’s still there.
    “Ever wonder why there’s a moon?” she asks me, her voice all dreamy and distant.
    I follow her gaze to where the fat round globe is ballooning in the sky above the buildings on the opposite side of the street. It looks different here than it did in the Tombs— safer, maybe—but then everything does. It’s the second night that it’s full, and I find myself wondering if ghosts are like werewolves, called up by the moon’s light, only nobody’s quite clued to it yet. Or at least Hollywood and the authors of cheap horror novels haven’t.
    I decide not to share this with Shirley. I knew her pretty well, but who knows what’s going to offend a ghost? She doesn’t wait for me to answer anyway.
    “It’s to remind us of Mystery,” she says, “and that makes it both a Gift and a Curse.”
    She’s talking like Pooh in the Milne books, her inflection setting capital letters at the beginning of certain words. I’ve never been able to figure out how she does that. I’ve never been able to figure out how she knows so much about books, because I never even saw her read a newspaper all the time we were together.
    “How so?” I ask.
    “Grab an eyeful,” she says. “Did