Imaginary Friends Read online

  “You only get to have one form once you go down there?”

  He nodded.

  “Then you must choose for yourself who you want to be.”

  He took a step back into the shadows. Took another. “Thank you for our piece of the world,” he said softly.

  The silence and the solitude had a weight it had never had before. He was gone from the tower.

  A few minutes later, a young man stepped onto the part of the road framed by the mirror. He had black hair and blue eyes. He had the face of an angel, but he’d given up the wings of that form in order to look more like the others. When he turned toward the tower and raised a hand in greeting, there was something in his smile and his stance that told me he had kept a bit of the old god too, at least in heart.

  I watched him as the others came over to greet him. I saw his face when the simple act of being touched by the others confirmed that he no longer just existed in the shadows; now he truly lived in that world.

  I saw his joy.

  Then I breathed out a sigh—and saw no more.

  NEITHER

  Jean Rabe

  The age-faded sign read: “Please don’t give money to the vagrants. They are either professional beggars or addicts who use the money for drugs or booze.”

  Sig was neither.

  He was a beggar, but certainly not a professional. A professional would be good at it and would have enough coins in his outstretched paper cup to buy something decent to eat. And he wasn’t an addict, at least not anymore. Sig used to drink more than a little bit of whatever was strong and cheap or could be found in near-empty bottles discarded behind the Wild Horse Saloon, but he’d been sober for the better part of two years.

  When he drank, his senses got so muddled he couldn’t properly hear the music, and he could barely see the dog.

  It was a good dog.

  Sig sat on a clean piece of sidewalk along Broadway in downtown Nashville. His back against the red brick of the T-shirt shop, his head came up just far enough to obscure the lower corner of the front window that displayed the vagrancy sign. There were plenty of vagrancy notices in downtown Nashville, but most of the beggars avoided sitting directly beneath them. Sig sat here for several hours every day because the dog favored this spot. It was a convenient location from which to hear the music drifting out of the various bars.

  The dog obviously didn’t mind the fare that roiled off the juke boxes in the diners, but it seemed to like the live music the best, feeling the beat from trap sets and basses pulsing through the concrete and reverberating against its paws. Sig could feel the beat, too, when he set his fingertips against the sidewalk and concentrated, as he was doing now. It was the heartbeat of the city, and it brought out the people—the regulars who lived and worked in the area, the bums like himself who preferred the freedom and sounds of the colorful sidewalks to the blandness of the homeless shelters, and most importantly it brought out the tourists, who occasionally tossed scraps to the dog.

  The city was said to have a black heart and that the beat masked it with lively tunes and sad songs, with electric guitars and expensive mandolins, with busty girls lip-syncing for videos that would be played on CMT—all of it distracting folks so they didn’t look too closely. But Sig looked. And the city’s dark heart showed itself to him from time to time on this very sidewalk in the forms of pickpockets and purse snatchers—several of which the dog had thwarted through the years at Sig’s encouragement. Sig had also spotted drugs and money changing hands on a few corners after sunset; the dog had fouled a few of those sales, too.

  A very good dog.

  Sig liked bluegrass the best, even when the singers wailed too loudly in off-key feigned country voices, as someone was doing this very minute. The dog’s preference? It didn’t seem to matter: western swing, rockabilly, traditional, folk, honky-tonk, gospel, country rock, swamp opera, or boogie-woogie. Sig figured the dog liked just about everything—except for that damned accordion that started wheezing almost every afternoon from an apartment just above Ernest Tubb’s Record Shop across the street. The dog howled like a coonhound when the accordion played.

  The dog came to just above Sig’s knees, the shade of an expensive Gibson mahogany guitar, with large, kind eyes and sharply pointed ears that were always tipped toward whatever joint was offering the best music at any given time. It looked as though one of the street artists had lovingly dry brushed white paint against the dog’s otherwise dark muzzle and just above its eyes to give it brows. Just a hint of age to the dog. Distinguished looking.

  Sig could not have imagined a more wonderful, beautiful dog.

  He didn’t know how old the dog was, only that he’d spotted it in an alley some six or seven years ago, or maybe it was eight, sniffing around a trash bin it couldn’t quite reach. Sig had rummaged in the bin for it that night, coming up with some soggy French fries and a few partially eaten pork chops, which they shared. They’d been together ever since that night— except for when Sig had been drinking.

  They slept in the morning when the music was dead, in the hazy time between three and nine when they would find a Dumpster in an alley to curl up behind so the light from the bare bulbs that hung above back doors didn’t quite reach them. The air was always dead then, too, and was thick with sweat and filth and rotting lettuce and cabbage and whatever else had spoiled in restaurant kitchens and had subsequently been tossed out.

  Promptly at nine, when the music started up again, they’d rise as if to an alarm clock. They’d stroll out to the sidewalk and sit in their spot. They’d wait for breakfast, which if Lee didn’t stop by would consist of donut halves tossed in the trash can on the corner— of which they had a perfect view—or sometimes there’d be remnants of those sausage and egg sandwiches that the tourists bought at fast food shops and found too greasy to finish. Grease rarely bothered Sig and the dog.

  It was such a good, good dog.

  “Lee’s late,” Sig mused. She was special to him. She was one of the few people on Broadway who never looked the other way when she passed Sig and the dog. A bartender at Legends on the corner, she always stopped on her way to work each morning. Sometimes she gave them leftovers after her shift was over. Lee worked from nine to five, and so her comings and goings fit rather well with traditional mealtimes.

  Sig always looked forward to seeing her. Lee’s skin was the color of pale peaches, even-toned except for a hint of blush on her cheeks. And her hair was long and dark and always gleaming, her teeth as white and sparkling as new snow. Sig’s own hair was always a tangled buggy mess, and so he kept it stuffed up under an old Tennessee Oilers cap so not to offend people.

  Her smile . . . well it was beyond Sig’s ability to describe. It melted him, made it difficult for him to think and to breathe, and it always set the dog’s tail to wagging goofily.

  She wouldn’t always be a bartender, Sig knew. He’d heard her sing. Sometimes they’d shuffle down to Legends, and go around the corner to the side door, which was always open. They’d sit and listen to the young men playing acoustic guitars and hawking their CDs between sets. Every once in a while, on afternoons when business was slow, Lee would come out from behind the bar and sing a couple of songs she’d written.

  “You’re gonna be a star,” Sig told her once. It was just a matter of time until she was discovered and swept away from this life. “You’re gonna be at the Opry someday, Lee. Name in flashing lights.”

  “Me and everyone else on Broadway’ll be there,” she’d return with a dazzling snowy smile.

  “She should’ve been here by now,” Sig told the dog. “Not like Lee to be late.” He craned his neck this way and that, thinking maybe she had to park somewhere else this morning and had gone in Legend’s side door and thereby missed them. “Maybe she’s sick. Not like her to be sick, though.” He couldn’t remember a time when Lee had been anything but perfect. “Not like her at all.”

  The dog tipped its ears toward Tootsie’s, just a few doors down, where a man who
sounded vaguely like Kris Kristofferson had begun a set. The dog pressed its front paws against the sidewalk, and Sig set his paper cup down and did the same with the palms of his hands, both of them feeling the steady beat rise through the concrete.

  Shortly after the accordion started that afternoon, Sig rose and gestured for the dog to follow; its howling was bothering the T-shirt shop customers. They ambled up the street, past Tootsies, where Sig paused to peer inside. Sig didn’t care much for the place, and he was glad Lee hadn’t been hired there. “World Famous” maybe, but it looked more ragged than his scruffy self. It was murky inside, always, the shadows helping to mask the cobwebs in the corners and the spilt beer on the floor. And it had a fusty pong that made even his nose wrinkle. The walls were interesting, though. They were papered with autographed photos of country music stars, all of them curled on the edges and yellowed from decades of cigarette smoke.

  A bartender frowned and waved a towel at a horse-fly. But Sig knew the gesture was aimed at him.

  “Just looking,” Sig said. He ducked back out and continued west, the dog dutifully following. He stopped at a plastic Elvis, little bigger than life-sized, arms outstretched waiting for a tourist to step into his embrace for a photograph. The dog hiked its leg and peed on the King’s pantleg.

  “Ain’t you got no respect?” Sig asked the dog. But he smirked and winked. The dog always peed on the King.

  They went around the corner and headed to Legend’s side door. Sig looked in, sniffed, and scratched at his ear. At his feet, the dog did the same. Elvis’s first five records were framed on one wall. Sig had heard they were worth thousands, the only five recorded on 78 RPMs on Sun Records. Kabuki-faced Kiss dolls were on a shelf near a large portrait of Johnny Cash and a guitar gaudily covered with shells and buttons. A saxophone, trombone, and a sitar hung near the ceiling. Album covers, some of them signed, were everywhere.

  A guy with a battered guitar was singing about the “hits of the day” at a place called the Roadkill Café. Cute music, Sig thought, scowling. “Get to the serious stuff.”

  When Sig stood at the side door sometimes Lee would come out and bring him a soda or coffee, and the dog a cup of water. Sometimes a sack of microwave popcorn, still warm. But he couldn’t see her inside, not behind the bar or at any of the tables, and not around the stage with the Roadkill man. Maybe she was in the kitchen or in the bathroom. Maybe she was getting ready to sing a song or two, as the customers were few and didn’t look to be demanding much attention. Sig tuned out the Roadkill man and kept glancing around.

  Sheet music and photographs were displayed here and there, none of them yellowed like at Tootsie’s. A notice, but not for vagrancy. It offered a reward of $100 for anyone reporting pilfering of the memorabilia. A sequined shirt that would have been worthy of Porter Wagoner caught his eye. Framed dollar bills, Canadian and US, hung behind the bar. There were lots of things to ogle in this place.

  “That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?” Sig mused, eyeing the reward notice again. “Get me a night in a hotel, a hot bath, get you a flea dip. A soft bed for us to sleep on for once. Get me a new shirt, too. Maybe like that sequined one. A pretty collar for you.”

  The dog’s nose was pointed down the street, quivering in the direction of the Ryman Auditorium. A gang of toughs in the back parking lot were admiring each other’s tattoos.

  “Maybe Lee’s got a new job, dog. Maybe she went back to school.”

  She’d told them once that she was going to be a veterinarian . . . once upon a time . . . before she decided to move to Nashville and look for her big break, singing and songwriting. Sig remembered her saying that one of her songs was being considered by Tanya Tucker or Loretta Lynn or somebody else famous.

  “Maybe some big record producer discovered her, dog. She would’ve told us, though, don’t you think?”

  The dog growled softly, and the hair rose in a ridge along its back. The toughs were parting ways, but two of them lagged behind, eyes fixed on the steps leading to the Ryman’s backdoor.

  Sig returned his attention to the barroom. “Dog, maybe I should call you Shep.” He’d spotted a piece of sheet music called “Old Shep,” by Red Foley, autographed and displayed behind a square of plastic in the hallway that led to Legends’ bathrooms. “Elvis sang that.” He looked down at the dog. “That leg you like to pee on? That’s Elvis. He recorded ‘Old Shep’ some time ago. Sad, sad song. Not really country, though Elvis gave it a little twang. Do you want a name, dog?”

  The dog continued to rumble at the two toughs until they eventually left, their eyes on the pavement as they passed by Sig, voices low in a conspiratorial whisper.

  Sig settled down just outside the door, back against the brick, legs stretched out. The Roadkill man started singing about cigars and former presidents. “Get to the serious stuff,” Sig repeated.

  The dog nestled next to him, paws firmly against the sidewalk to better feel the beat, chin on Sig’s knee.

  “You’re a good, good dog,” Sig said.

  They dozed until just before sunset, when a tour bus pulled up belching smoke and offloading a bevy of blue-haired women and balding men, the driver ushering them in the side door, all of them doing their best to ignore Sig and the dog. Not one dropped a coin in his paper cup. He listened to them shuffling across the hardwood floor, imagined them gaping at the memorabilia on the wall, prayed that one of them would take something—maybe one of those ugly Kiss dolls so the dog would thwart them and gain Sig a reward.

  “That hundred bucks would buy us a fancy time,” Sig told the dog.

  The dog listened to the people, too, but also to the music. The Roadkill man had packed up his guitar some time ago, replaced now by a five-piece group with a well-known bluegrass man on keyboards. They’d been playing something soft until the tourists came in. Cranking up the volume now, a little thing with a big, high-pitched voice started singing country pop. Sig thought she was pretty good, her five-piece band that barely fit on the stage a bit better.

  Not as good as Lee, though. Not close.

  Two songs later the tourists shuffled back out, and a few of them dropped pieces of pizza crust on the sidewalk for the dog.

  Shortly after sunset the rain started, making the street look like a slick black snake that wound its way past Legends and the back of the Ryman. The street-lights flickered on, and the neon beer signs sparked bright, sending rivulets of color streaming down the windows and across the sidewalk. The music got louder, still the little thing singing, sounding like Cyndi Lauper with a country twist. Hard to pick out all the words to her song, as a large crowd had gathered inside, and the quiet conversations, punctuated by calls for the bartender, mingled with the lyrics.

  Sig knew there’d be a crowd at Tootsie’s, too, and at all the other spots around the corner on Broadway. Music City’s pulse quickened after dark, regardless of the weather. The beat brought more and more folks out the later the hour got.

  Sig lolled his head back and closed his eyes, faintly heard the rain pattering on the sidewalk and felt its feeble attempt to clean the grime off his face. Soon he imagined that he’d be getting a good whiff of the dog. It always picked up a musty funk when it got wet. Sig certainly could pick out all the good things cooking inside: potato skins and roast beef sandwiches, minipizzas and popcorn. Sig had an amazing sense of smell.

  “I’m hungry,” Sig told the dog.

  Glasses clinked, and a cheer went up. It was somebody’s birthday.

  “You don’t mind the rain, the two of you?”

  Sig’s eyes flew open.

  Lee stood in front of him with a hand on one hip, an umbrella held in the other. Black pants, white shirt, face shadowed except for her incredible smile.

  “I’m on the late shift for a few days, filling in for Karen,” she explained.

  Sig smiled back. He was always at a loss for words in her presence. Maybe she thought him mute. The dog wagged its tail goofily and gave her a soft bark.

  “I’ll
bring you out something on my break. Do you like roast beef?”

  Sig nodded.

  “Coffee?”

  Another nod.

  She looked at her watch and stepped into the doorway, taking down her umbrella and shaking it off before she disappeared into the crowd. Sig imagined he heard her high heels clicking against the hardwood.

  He knew she wouldn’t be singing tonight. Too many customers, all of them too demanding on the bartenders. He suspected that’s why she liked the day shift, not as many people, meaning she had more opportunities to sing. He rested his head back against the wall, ignored the rain, and waited.

  Sig didn’t notice the dog pad away, down to the corner so it could raise its leg on the King again. And he didn’t notice the beat of the city alter beneath his fingertips, heralding the reemergence of the two tattooed toughs that had walked by before. If Sig had been watching, he would have noticed that they’d changed clothes, or rather had added to what they’d been wearing earlier. Each had a black longcoat, a little too big with the shoulder seams drooping halfway down their arms. The toughs went in Legends’ side door.

  If Sig had been alert, he might have heard the first shout of surprise coming from the barroom, cutting above the music as the two men wrenched the big frame off the wall holding Elvis’s five 78s. Instead, Sig was rudely jostled awake by the dog, returned from its pee break and now yapping.

  “What?” Sig reached out to scratch the dog’s ears, but then realized something was amiss inside. He got up, nearly slipping on the slick sidewalk, steadying himself against the wall as the two men forced their way out, the bulky frame held beneath the larger man’s longcoat. They started to run.

  Sig tried to take it all in, but everything came at him so quickly. The dog was still barking, people shouted, a whistle blew.

  “Call the police!” someone inside hollered.

  Suddenly Lee was out the door, a gun in her hand. She sidestepped Sig and dashed down the sidewalk, following the two men, who were fast losing themselves in the shadows that stretched out from the back of the old Ryman Auditorium. The dog barked a staccato rhythm that jolted Sig into action.