It was three blocks off Main Street that he found the thing that had been calling to him in his sleep: a shot-to-hell Victorian house with a cardboard sign in its window reading APARTMENT FOR RENT. This was truly a city of signs.
Jay parked in the ditch, jogged up the dusty front lawn and knocked hard, hard on the door, grinning ruthlessly when, after a moment or two, an obese woman emanating the funk of fried chicken opened it. She saw him standing there in his wrecked chinos and jacket, looked at him like he was fucking insane, but still left behind a screaming child to take him around back of the place, up some perilous wooden stairs and into a third-floor apartment. Inside, Jay rapped on the walls, stepped repeatedly on a squeaking floorboard, pressed his fists into the stained mattress on the wildly careening iron bed frame, then announced to the woman, who was visibly nervous by now, that he'd take it. He paid her the necessary deposit in cash from his wallet, she babbling something in that grating accent about her husband sending up a copy of the lease. Then he showed the good woman the door.
Alone at last in his new home, Jay removed a silver flask from his jacket pocket, unscrewed the top, took one slug from it, then another. He drew his lips up over his teeth, turned round and round in self-satisfied circles, examining the walls. "My walls," he said. He stepped into the bathroom, saying, "My bathroom," and discovered an old-time bevelled mirror on the back of the door. Feeling some obscure, some unnameable, urge, he stripped naked before it, then stood there, his clothes in a tired pile at his feet, turning his body left and right, examining his profile, saying, "Oh baby. You're so fine. You're so fine."
