Horse Latitudes | Page 6

sleepwalkers, entering Chinatown through the big
ornamental gate on Grant Street, weaving in, out, and through the oddly
beautiful group pantomime. The streets were almost silent there, except
for the muted colors of unhurried feet and rustling clothes. None of the
sleepwalkers ever spoke, although they mouthed things to each other.
They frowned, laughed, got angry, reacting to something they had
heard or said when they had first lived that particular moment.
It was near Stockton Street that I heard the looters. Then I saw them,
moving quickly and surely through the narrow alleys, loaded down

with merchandise from the sleepwalkers' open stores. The looters took
great pains not to touch any of the sleepers. Perhaps they were afraid of
being infected with the sleepwalking sickness.
Watching them, cop paranoia got a hold of me, and I started back out of
Chinatown. I was almost to the gate, dodging blank-eyed Asian
children and ragged teenagers with armloads of bok choy and video
tapes when I saw something else: Coming put of a darkened dim sum
place--a jewelled bird skull on a black jacket. The jacket must have
spotted me too, because it darted back inside. I followed it in.
A dozen or so people, mostly elderly Chinese couples sat miming silent
meals inside the unlit restaurant. Cats, like the homeless, had
apparently figured out the pattern the sleepwalking sickness took
through the city. Dozens of the mewing animals moved around the
tables, rubbing against sleepers' legs, and licking grease off the stacked
the dim sum trays. I went back to the kitchen, moving through the
middle of the restaurant, trying to keep the sleepers around me as a
demilitarized zone between me and the jacket. I wasn't as certain of
myself inside the restaurant as I had been on the street. Too many
sudden shadows. Too many edges hiding between the bodies of the
dreaming patrons.
There were a couple of aproned men in the kitchen, kneading the air
into dim sum. Cats perched on the cutting tables and freezer like they
owned the place. Whenever one of the sleepwalking cooks opened the
refrigerator doors, the cats went berserk, crowding around his legs,
clawing at leftover dumplings and chunks of raw chicken. There was,
however, no jacket back there. Or in the restroom. The rear exit was
locked. I went back out through the restaurant, figuring I'd blown it. I
hadn't had any medication in a couple of weeks, and decided I'd either
been hallucinating again, or had somehow missed the jacket while
checking out the back. Then from the dark she said my name, the name
she knew me by. I turned in the direction of the voice, and the jewelled
skull winked at me from the corner.
I had walked within three feet of her. She was slumped at a table with
an old woman, only revealing herself when she shifted her gaze from

the tablecloth to me, doing a good imitation of the narcotised pose of a
sleeper. She motioned for me to come over and I sat down. Then she
pushed a greasy bag of cold dim sum at me. "Have one," she said, like
we were old friends.
"Frida?" I said.
She smiled. "Welcome to the land of the dead."
"Why were you following me?"
"I was raiding the fridge." She reached into the bag and pulled out a
spring roll, which she wrapped in a paper napkin and handed to me. As
she moved, I caught a faint glimmer off the gold rings above her
eyebrow. "You, I believe, were the one who only seconds ago was
pinballing through here like Blind Pew."
"I'll have my radar checked. Do you always steal your dinner?"
"Whenever I can. I'm only at the cafe a couple of nights a week. And
tips aren't what they used to be. Even the dead are peckish around
here."
The old woman with whom we shared the table leaned from side to
side in her chair, laughing the fake, wheezing laugh of sleepers, her
hands describing arcs in the air. "So maybe you weren't following me
tonight," I said. "Why did follow me the other night from Cafe Juju."
"You remind me of somebody."
"Who?"
"I don't know. Your face doesn't belong here. But I don't know where it
should be, either. I know I've seen you before. Maybe you're a cop and
you busted me. Maybe that's why you look familiar. Maybe you're a
bad guy I saw getting booked. Maybe we went steady in the third grade.
Maybe we had the same piano teacher. Ever since I saw you at the cafe,
I've got all these maybes running through my head."

"Maybe you've got me mixed up with someone."
"Not a chance," said Frida. She smiled and in the half-light of