​One Need Not Be A Chamber
Mike Zimmerman
​

 
One need not be a Chamber—to be Haunted--
One need not be a House--
The Brain has Corridors—surpassing
Material Place--
-Emily Dickinson, 670
                                                                                                                             

​The sign, hanging under the gallery as I ducked out of the rain in the French Quarter, waved in the wind on Pirate Alley. I was dizzy enough to be a sailor coming off the high seas, though it wasn’t rum that drifted like clouds in my veins. Apartment for Rent, it read. There was a number under it, so I took out my phone, snapped a picture, and decided to call tomorrow. In small letters, under the sign, it read, Haunted. A little lagniappe for the tourists, I thought. Call tomorrow, I reminded myself. 

I needed a place. My love, my cher, had shown me the door. Since it was technically his place—although anyone could see I had emboldened the style in that apartment with my je ne sais quoi—I had to be the one to go. He’d texted me a picture of my stuff, collected in two boxes, and told me I had a week. Two boxes, so sad. He was tired of my drug dealing and my antics—although, if I may interject here, these antics are what got us together in the first place. He’s a pretty big deal in the advanced manufacturing business, so I won’t say too much else. If you use a computer regularly, just know that it may be something he worked on while using my drugs. That’s how I made a lot of my money. But that’s all I can say. Really—that’s it. Lawsuits, you know. 

I ambled through Pirate Alley down the corner from my hotel, some side street shit hole, and turned toward the French Markets, wondering how I would spend the night. There was a bar nearby with interesting people and lots of drugs for sale. I walked with purpose, then, over to Decauter, which was always seedy at night, between the homeless and the outdoor seating, the ugly iridescent light making every drunkard look a shade or two greener than he is just then. I loved it there. 

There was a quaint little place, so easy to pass by—I won’t tell you where exactly—very long, marble bar and all black wood inside, like a Spanish greenhouse. It’s so narrow that my fingertips would almost touch the black walls if I were to spread my arms like Christ the Redeemer as I approached the bar and ordered my Old Fashioned. Cain, the bartender and co-owner with his brother, started one for me. 

“Where’s Abel?” I asked. The two of them always used code names, and although they are mon amies for a very long time—dear, dear friends—I never did learn their real names. Cain tended bar and Abel sold drugs out the back. 

(I was, in truth, still selling myself that day—had to pay for the hotel room and get ready for the security deposit. Mostly I sold light stuff to tourists, who loved a light skinned, fast talking native. I suppose it all felt like part of the “real” Louisiana experience. Try being bored and restless, living out of a tent in the high ground of the city while people’s possessions—shit, while people’s dogs and cats—float by you in the hurricane water. That’s my authenticity. I’d never wondered that before, what happens to all the dogs and cats when a damn breaks, but its more horrible that you can imagine. Mounds of fur floating by in flood waters, still as a piece of wood that’s been ripped from someone’s home. But I digress.)

“Am I my brother’s keeper?”  He asked. He had a fiery red beard and hair that seemed at odds with his subdued, glacial temperament. Even with the beard his face narrowed to a point. He was so skinny that through his black T-shirt and jeans, I could see his bones. He seemed like the kind of guy you might be tempted to underestimate in a fight, but he’d bite and slice and toss a handful of dirt in your eyes. “Why do you need him?”

“Bad breakup. Out on my ass. Going to look at this haunted apartment tomorrow. You believe in that stuff? Ghostly apartments and all that?”

“I don’t believe in it. It’s people are haunted, not places. It’s like if a tree falls in a forest, it don’t make a sound. If a ghost pokes around an empty house, it don’t make a haunt.”

“It’s intriguing to me. A roommate who can’t toss you out you., I ain’t afraid. I wonder what your brother will say.”

“You don’t want any of his shit after a break up. Keep it to liquor. Too easy to get carried away.”
“You worried about me, buddy?”

“Not in the least. Overdose would be bad for business.” Then he turned away to serve another customer, local girl with fake blond hair and even faker big tits. 

Even though the place was small, it had mirrors on all sides of it to give it the appearance of being bigger. I saw myself, then, from a few angles, and after I drunk my Old Fashioned, it had a disorienting effect not unlike a funhouse. My skin looked particularly Indjun—as my mom would have said—in this light, honey brown like an onion just starting to caramelize before you throw in the green pepper and celery, although I have barely any Native in me. I felt warm and flush, my ears in particular, and everything had that amber glow that comes along with being drunk on bourbon. Save clear liquors for a stone-cold revelation in the wreck of the morning. Night is not a time to think—it’s a time to act. 

A nervous looking but square fellow sat next to me, as fate would have it, dark green sweater, forest in winter, and tight little jeans. Pink hair. Italian by the look of him, and when he orders his whiskey neat, I can hear the Louisiana all over his tongue. He sipped his whiskey and rubbed his eyes and I saw that he was not nervous at all—he was a junkie. Perfect. He’d know where I could find Abel.

“Hey fella. You looking to pass a good time?” I swiveled my bar stool so that my knees faced him. I’m cute like that.

He didn’t look up, swirled his drink. “What’s a good time but an interlude?”

“What’s an interlude but a bridge to the next act? Just because we’re in the bar of brotherly sin—you know, Cain and all that—doesn’t mean we can’t find some brotherly love. Let’s you and me find Abel.”

“You got cash?” He stilled looked down at his drink, trying to hide his eagerness, but I caught that hungry glint in his eyes. His face narrowed impishly as he pretended to indifferently consider rail whiskey.

“Yeah. You got a place?”

“What’s wrong with yours?” Now he looked at me, all original sin and skin, lips pursed in a half smile. He looked me up and down openly now, although, in truth, his narrowed mouth made him seem as annoyed as he was interested. Someone, somewhere along the line, I thought bitterly, told him it was better to act indifferent than open, or maybe he learned that on his own after years of being treated this way. He had the slightest bit of facial hair that caught the candlelight as he turned, and I wondered if it would be sandpaper rough or downy and smooth, like a young man’s first mustache, when it brushed against my clean-shaven mouth. Even though he looked nothing like my former lover, there was a striking resemblance in his indifference. I had a distinct memory of trying to talk up my beau at some bar. His blonde Irish hair and Indian brown eyes feigned disinterest as I insisted on buying him a drink, on buying him another, offering him a bit of my joint. It took him a while to look up from that drink too, but when he did, I knew I had him. 

“Hotel off the square. I’m moving tomorrow to a place in Pirate Alley—my beau kicked me out.”
“Yeah, I bet you’ll be back with him next week.”

“No, no—I got an appointment at this place tomorrow.” A white lie, alright? I opened my phone and showed him the photo of the apartment listing. “I especially like the way they bill as ‘haunted’ in that little subscript. For the tourists.”

“Unless it’s really haunted.” He raised one eyebrow and pursed his light little lips.

“You believe in that absurdité?”

“If you didn’t believe, you wouldn’t be asking.”

“I wouldn’t mind a ghost for a roommate. At least then I’ll know there’s a record of us beyond all this.” I could tell by the glazed over look this was too deep—I’d lost him. I pulled out my wallet to close our tabs, deliberately flicking through my money so he could see I was good for the cash, but careful to slip my wallet back into my inner coat pocket with the buttons, since I knew these loose-handed types that hung around Louisiana bars. Hell, takes one to know one. I introduced myself and he introduced himself as Jim, a fake name if I ever heard one. He probably read it off the coaster from the table, which said “Jim Beam Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey.”

“Abel’s upstairs.” He strode off in that slow, southern style. I waited a beat than took his exact path, a few feet behind him, watching his ass sway back and forth to the plaintive and lazy blues that slid through the bar from the band in the front. He did not gesture for me to follow or look back at me, and I thought of Orpheus tip-toeing with his flute through the underworld as I followed Jim up through the shadows to the old wooden steps at the back of the bar. 

We passed through the hall to a cobwebby room with a small deer head mounted on the wall. The wood was stained a dark, dank brown, and the only lights in the room seemed to come from with window, curtains pulled aside, New Orleans visible and throbbing in the town below.
Abel sat facing the window, eyes wide and mouth agape at some hidden horror outside. He was rounder than his brother, and darker in his hair and complexion.  The French Victorian chair he sat in, plush at some point, had tears in it so I could see the white cushion under the purple velvet. 

“Hello Abel.”

“Wha—what?” He turned from the window, gave us the same look of fear, and pressed his hand to his heart, looking us up and down closely. “Oh god, what fresh hell is this? A darkie and a little Louisiana boy—"
​
“You’re darker than me, you fuck—"

“—up to big brother’s room to play Alice in Wonderland? A warning: the spirits are randy tonight boys, but wouldn’t you rather be haunted than be alone?” 

“I know another place we can go. This guy’s out of his mind,” I turned to go. 

“Wait,” Abel stood, briskly, and walked over to his desk by the window, opened a drawer, and pulled out his suitcase. “You should have said you were here for business.” He clicked the suitcase open. “Now, based on, well, your appearances, age, weight, et cetera, I’d guess you two boys are here for the date night special. Am I right? No need to be embarrassed with Abel, he’s known the love of a man, and a woman, and things in between. Just haven’t known the love of a brother—”

“Get on with it, you quack.”

“Am I correct in the presupposition that the two of you come to me seeking a good time and a catalyst?”

Jim looked at me and nodded. “Yes, you’re correct.” It was the first hint that he was whatsoever inclined toward me, and damn, it felt good. 

I pulled out my wallet, too free with it, letting Abel see the money before he named his price. someone’s home. 

“250.”

“Mon friar, don’t you remember me? I’m a return customer, and last time your potions were half that.”

“You can afford it, my tricky friend,” Abel had a sing-song way of negotiating that was unnerving, the way one might talk to a child who’s been naughty. 

“No I can’t!”

“Do you not have the money?” Jim furrowed and raised his chin, a queenly look that suggested such back and forth was beneath him, and he would leave at any second, depart from my plebian company to return to his estate. Years ago, I would have let him walk. But I couldn’t start all over again. I needed a place for the night and Jim was Mr. Right Now. And, perhaps, it was maybe that he reminded me, in subtle ways, of the man I’d just left. Or the man who had just left me, if you’re keeping score. Isn’t every lover just a reincarnation of the last one, beneath hair color differences and accents, another chance to figure it out better this time? 

I had to decide now: ride this trolley or let it roll past the station. With a sigh and a sly grin, I opened my wallet and handed the cash to Abel. “Yep. I’ve got it, baby.” 

I took a long, deep inhale, handing the rest to Jim. I didn’t want to take too much, since I’d had a little something earlier—just a minor tranquilizer. This time, I took the lead, taking Jim’s hand in mine and leading him back downstairs and out the door. 

Before we walked out, I turned back to Abel. He seemed like a philosopher. What would he say about the ghosts in my apartment? “You believe in haunted houses, mon friar?” 

He smiled outside the window. “One need not be a chamber to be haunted.”

Jim and I made our way outside, through the shadows once again. We gripped each other’s hands hard enough to leave a red indentation. The warm night air folded over me like a blanket. Some street performers burst into a repetitious, relentlessly festive jazz standard. People gathered with their phones. Melody. Brass. Percussion. A wave of joy built up in me. I understood every note, maybe better than the musicians themselves, better than the composer. I chattered my teeth to the four bar measures. A full-blooded American song. All at once my voice heaved, an explosive shout right from my belly, it felt like I had swallowed all the air in New Orleans and was pitching it back out and the next thing I knew I shout-sang the song while the troop played me on, note after note. 

“Music is the record of our raptures,” I shouted, once the song was over. I felt amazing. My temporary homelessness melted away in the music around me.

“This way,” Jim whispered and then burst into a hysterical and loud fit of laughter. He ferried me through the blissful heaven of trumpets in the street to his apartment. As we walked, I saw two tourists, sweet looking older men, held hands and walked towards a bar. They laughed, saying their little I love yous in each other’s ear. A couple for sure, Midwesterners by their shape, talking about how it’s so much warmer here, and people are so open, both college-educated with solid jobs with financial packages and insurance, families they saw at holidays and calendars they kept judiciously. They’d wake up tomorrow, next to each other, with no regrets. All things I could have had years ago, when I got accepted to Tulane, except I didn’t want those things. My heart has always been sick, has always ached for bar room drug deals and back room sex slings, thrills and spills and darkness. They say follow your heart, but mine never led me to the normal paths, clean and convenient and safe like these two men. Just ask my ex. He kept a record of every transgression, every perceived slight, although he was by no means an angel. We met at one of those back-room parties, although he told everyone at his job, I had been his hair stylist. Ha! There’s nothing I hate more than a hypocrite and a liar. 

That’s the last thing I remember thinking before Jim and I made our way, unsteadily, up the stairs and threw ourselves—roiling together like a whiskey cocktail—down onto his bed. There was a blur of flesh for a while, light blazing until I sank away from it, the darkness of the city closing like a veil over my head. 

I never dreamed of home. Or, rather, I dreamed of it constantly, but never as a place I could enter, only as a place I could look into, like an uninvited vampire—which, according to the tour guides, cannot come inside unless given welcome. I’d see into the windows and remember: blue satin couches we never sat on, the smell of meatloaf brushing by me from the window, my father’s handwriting in the painted numbers just above the mailbox, the shadow and shape of my brothers and sisters visible from the kitchen. But always I had this stuck feeling, like feet in molasses. I could not cross into the house, I had just forgotten my keys again, no one could hear my knocking, I’d run up gasping to the place where the spare key only to find it gone. It was the same on this night, waiting outside the house, trying desperately to get in, but there was nothing there and no one could hear me. 

When I woke up the next morning, Jim was pretending to be asleep (I can tell), watching and listening to me get up to make sure I wasn’t stealing anything. Not that there was anything worth stealing. His bedroom had the same stupid Indian blanket mounted over the bed that everyone has, and he kept his clean clothes in folded piles by color on the floor. Creeping out into the living room and kitchen area, not that I was sizing the place up, just looking for a piece of paper to leave my number—the only thing of value was rather large system of tunnels for Jim’s albino rat. Its red eyes stared at me lazily from behind the clear plastic cage. 

I left without a word or a second glance. Briefly I considered leaving my number, but Jim would never call. Why bother?

Morning on Bourbon Street. Crashing down and sad. Christ the Redeemer again, with his outstretched arms casting a shadow from St. Louis Cathedral. Bright, harsh lights and the violent clangor of music piped into the 24 hours bars. I stepped into one and bought a Hurricane. Maybe it would help the hammers in my head. It was like slurping down lemon juice. Sour, bitter, threatening to come back up with a gurgle. I made my way through St. Anthony’s garden, it’s twisting Spanish layout and mixed American plants. Everything in this damn city was mixed. Nothing was exactly what it should be, not plain or simple, layers built over layers and eroding into one another. 

I’d taken a picture of the apartment earlier yesterday on my phone, pulled up the number now, sitting on a bench under a tree overgrown with Spanish moss. I made an appointment with the real estate agent on the phone to see the apartment in a half an hour. 

I sat on the bench and tried to absorb a bit of October sun when the Hurricane came churning back up my throat in a blue wave. I wretched into the trash can, and it burned my throat with acrid chemicals. So close to the trash can—I’d never had cause to look at one so closely—I could see the stains of other people’s messes, the bad decisions of an entire city along with the condensation from the morning dew. The new perspective was fascinating to me. Filth and nature. I stared for a solid minute. Still a bit high, I thought. 

Why did I do this to myself? The regret of the morning, the hollow emptiness of being alone and coming down. Was that it, or would there be another round? My stomach answered with a tightening and a heave. I closed my eyes this time. A splash below me in the trash can. My throat felt raw and strangely dry. I need to walk away from the smell. 

I crossed the park over to where the artists and fortune tellers set up. What is a fortune teller but an artist herself, a weaver to half-truths and little lies? I know in other parts of the country it’s looked on as foolish, even sinful, but my family has always gone by the guide of the stars and those who can read them. 

I walked over to one of the card readers—to read cards, you don’t need to be too psychic, just smart—with pink hair tied in a bun. She wore a black hoodie over her head and had a pretty round face. Concealer, too pale for her yellow skin, covered her rough, pimply face. This was a no-frills fortune teller, here in the morning. I knew the type. My mother was this type. This pink haired woman probably left in the middle of the day to go work at the Starbucks or Rite Aid across Canal Street. These were the really talented ones, although they didn’t know it. They had to work regular jobs because their readings were just a little too spot on. My mother, in one of her trances, had told me, “It will all, all fall to ruin for you my child.” And damn, wasn’t she right?

“Hello. Where y’at?” Her accent betrayed her a true, deep Louisiana native, like me. I wondered if, like me, she had run from something, from some house with doors she couldn’t quite break into. I saw that her eyes were the color of Spanish moss, dull green flecked with a strange, almost silver quality. 

“I’m here, I’m alright.”

“You don’t seem it.” It wasn’t until she commented on my appearance that it occurred to me how I must look. A pair of tight jeans that had a few streaks of coke on them, pungent vomit breath, hair utterly wild like a palm tree in summer. I thought for a moment to apologize for my appearance, but she didn’t seem all together herself. A bit of the heroin blues if you ask me, or certainly a wake and bake kind of girl. Nothing about her said citizen of the year. Besides, her tone hadn’t been judgmental but factual. She was probably worried about my ability to pay. 

“Let’s do three. I’m thinking of moving into an apartment that’s haunted. Want to know if it’s safe.”

“I can ask the cards. Three for three dollars.”

I tossed three dollars onto her little table, which she had dutifully covered in a black, crotched tablecloth. It was such a fine, antique looking pattern—I wondered if it was a death shroud. Maybe her grandmother’s. Or maybe she had found it next to a grave while she was scooping up her cemetery dirt. Either way, it was certainly old and homemade, and it lent further familiarity to this reader. She gave me a yellowed-toothed smile. 

“First, the past, shown in the Five of Pentacles.” She laid it out. The card showed a young man hobbling away on crutches from the warmth of a stained-glass window.  “Second, now, shown in the devil.” Satan, a great satyr with bat wings, waved to me from the card. A man and woman stood chained next to him, looking content with their slavery. “Finally, the future, shown in the nine of swords.” A woman sat straight up in bed, hiding her head in her hands, nine swords lodged in the wall in front of her. “The past you left ties you down, keeps you where you are, like these swords sheathed in the wall.”

“That’s it?”

“I think that was well worth three dollars.”

“You didn’t tell me if the apartment was haunted.”

“I did, but in doing so, I answered a different question.” In a dismissive and regal manner, she scooped up her cards. Her body language suggested she was done with me, whether I liked it or not. I knew better than to get in some pointless argument with a psychic in the middle of the park. Besides, I wanted to get to that apartment before some rich tourist rented it just for the thrill. 

The super met me outside to let me in and show me upstairs. The apartment itself was once a warehouse. So it was really a large, cold room with exposed brick on one side, a temporary wall put up to divide the living room from the bedroom and bath. A large window had been cut out of the brick, but there was no terrace access. Some white curtains fluttered by the window, and the only furnishings were a bed and a refrigerator. Good—I didn’t have a bed of my own yet. 

I told the super I’d take the place, and gave him some to let me spent the night right away. I’d get my two boxes tomorrow—I had a week after all. That seemed to shut him up about my moving in right away.   

I stood in the empty apartment, staring out the window, waiting for some sight of the haunting. Finally, with a twinge of what I now realized was disappointment, I took to whispering and then full on speaking out loud to the ghost: “Are you there? Hello? Is anyone there?” I never got an answer, so I sat alone, on the bare bed, listening for some sign that there was something out there beside the hum of the refrigerator, the music of the city, and the strange voiceless calling of my heart. 

About the Author: 
​Mike Zimmerman is a writer of short stories and poetry, as well as a middle school Writing teacher in East Brooklyn. His previous work has been published in Cutbank, A & U Magazine, The Painted Bride, Wilde Magazine, Caravel, Aji, Arkana, 8 West Press, Steam Ticket, Typehouse Literary Magazine, and Zingara Poetry Review, and various anthologies. He is the 2015 recipient of the Oscar Wilde Award from Gival Press and a finalist for the Hewitt Award in 2016. In 2018, he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for his story “Doppelganger” in Two Cities Review. Mike lives in Brooklyn with his husband and their cat. Learn more on Instagram @mazaffect.

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