Film Noir

I look for you everywhere: in the 4:00 A.M. red snapper alleys
of Chinatown, slick of fish on the street with blocks of ice,
men still swilling bowls of hot noodles and onions in silence;
down the aisles of the Basilica of Star of the Sea, votive candles
in the alcove, no sound but the click of my shoes on Spanish tile;
down terraces of lurid azaleas overlooking the bay as the yellow
lights of the bridge come on--but there's not a trace, not a foil
from one of those tamarind treats you suck on all day, not a star
out of place. Did you ever exist? I come back to my room,
a charred pot of water on the stove I forgot to turn off,
and wash my face in the city's hard water. Why go on?
I could talk to a thousand cab drivers, hedge trimmers and
altar boys--they wouldn't know a thing, not if I gave them
a hundred-dollar bill and asked them to drive down every
doglegged back road on the coast until they remembered
something, anything, unusual: a dowager teaching French
to her cockatiel in the cage on the back seat, "Enchanté!"

Was there perhaps a girl in a pink chemise walking down a dirt
road carrying a sextant? No? Then was there perhaps a winter day
without a cloud in the sky? I am looking for any vestige. There are
in fact hopeful signs: I searched the Old Mint, abandoned for years,
and I found a lens on the marble floor, a camera lens; someone
on my bus left behind a French novel, one of those with the white
paper covers and red lettering: La Veste verte, "The Green Jacket";
there is a theater out near Land's End, the Surf, where a handful
of people emerge and disappear in the fog, not wanting to talk.
You went out for a cigarette and silence and never came back,
and I was left with a tartan scarf and your final mot juste:
Only those who love are not afraid to be alone. Whitehorse,
Vera Cruz, Yangzhou: you could be anywhere, anything--
pearl fisher, drag racer, lightning rod. I'd give you up if I could,
but I see a white gardenia reflected in the watchmaker's window
under his awning, and in the corner of my eye a woman zips up
her rose umbrella and goes downstairs to the underground rail.

First published in New England Review. Copyright ® Robert Thomas.

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