Before by Joseph Hurka Page A

there is something that he must do.
    *   *   *
    In twenty minutes Ghost-Man is behind 38; there is a spread of elm trees here, a strong smell of earth and the cement of the garages. On Monday nights Tika LaFond and Susan Bristol are often gone until midnight or one o’clock. Ghost-Man watched Tika LaFond come down the steps of 39 ten minutes ago and wave to the old man on the balcony above. The man spoke to her in that language, and she laughed and waved and said, Don’t worry, Jiri, I’ll be fine. She was carrying her camera case and she turned onto Cambridge Avenue, toward Harvard Square. She is going to her job at the pub or to see her musician (hard to tell, for she carries the camera case with her always); Susan Bristol left with the Australian man earlier—Ghost-Man saw them packing when he came through Trowbridge in his car—the Australian putting a suitcase into the back of Susan Bristol’s Ford.
    The women leave the back door, where there is a wonderful blackness, simply open. Tika LaFond with her new, short-cut hair makes Ghost-Man think, as he goes quickly up the wooden steps, of the Admiral, the club he will be at later in Medford. There is a dancer there named Velvet Queen, who has short-cut black hair and violet eyes and black vinyl boots—a slender, then wide back like Tika’s and a proud neck and long, long legs; Velvet Queen comes to the stage completely swathed in darkness, in dark veils that swirl about her. Last night, the dancer was sitting to the side of the entrance and recognized Ghost-Man as he came in. She motioned him over, and when he bought her a drink she was unusually talkative; she told him about the massage therapy she was learning, the money she was putting away for a house. She caught him looking at her with his yearning and smiled, and stretched there, with her elbows back on the bar, ran a hand through her hair, let him wish. He likes to see Velvet Queen talk, likes to watch her face, so bold and perfect and frightening in its makeup. He enjoys that she can take him into her confidence so easily and then quickly slip into being a slightly cruel woman. She whispers words into his ear, asks him which of the dancers he likes—Shiloh, on the main stage? Tanya or Autumn in the circles? You, Ghost-Man says. Good answer, Velvet Queen will say, smiling with her bloodred lips.
    Tika LaFond has a different color of hair, a more golden hue of skin, but she moves in a similar way as the dancer, and sometimes, late at night, Ghost-Man stands on the porch in front of this building where, if you look carefully and patiently through the thin lace curtains, you can watch the girl sleeping, make out the way her mouth parts as she dreams. She is like Velvet Queen before corruption, before poor decisions set her into the sexual fishbowl, the circle of wishing men.
    He takes very light cotton gloves from his pocket and puts them on. Into that back door: It is easy on its hinges, making no noise, staying finally, as always, a few centimeters open. He trembles, flushed with adrenaline and fear. Ghost-Man takes off one glove and reaches into a shirt pocket for methamphetamine, his second pill of the night. He puts it on his tongue, swallows, puts the glove back on. He can hardly wait for the soaring, the rush in his legs and chest that makes him feel as if he is watching Velvet Queen onstage, when the dancer locks her high-heeled boots on either side of him and moves her body at him. It is so fucking dark in here, and he cannot make mistakes, so he waits, lets his eyes adjust so he doesn’t knock some damn thing over; Ghost-Man has an image of Susan Bristol for a moment, with her chin jutting out, walking out of this house to the back garage, to her old Ford, on a day of rain. This was in July, his first month of Trowbridge occupation. She had been talking to herself, and it was very matter-of-fact, direct talk, as if she were trying to reason something out