Portents, he said, would make me sure of this

Abstract

I follow the photographer up the stairs. He is a white boy from another country with a braided beard down to his navel. I try not to hate him as we climb, one flight and then another and another, stopping on each landing for breath where the narrow stairwell opens two directions to flats on either side. He smells like he sleeps in his clothes so I keep my distance batting up narrow steps behind him, wondering if someone loves him and how long it takes to get past the stink, if stink's still stink after you live with it and you're part of what's high and rotten in his clownish drawers. He clanks. Like he's wearing armor under his baggy shirt and baggy pants. The strap of his camera is beaded many bright colors-cherry red, blue, yellow, black, green. An Indian design I think, the heads of snakes or fish or -birds repeated. And we are single-file, Indian style. Barely room for that up these steps. One, two, three landings where we pause and listen and count to ourselves so we don't make a mistake. A deep breath on each floor, pause to stare in both directions down halls where scarred, numberless doors are locked tight. October but summer heat's still bottled up inside the building. Old heat. Stale heat. I remember the stifling basement of my mother's house, full of wet wash hanging on clotheslines you have to duck and drag your face through on a trip to empty the potty. You hope for the surprise of someone cooking something good on one of these floors. The luck to catch the odors of good food simmering to drown out the stink. His. All the bodies like yours that have penetrated the front door and pounded up these steps and scuffed off layers of skin that decompose in the stinking air. Dying skins of animals. A tub in the basement full of your brothers' and sisters' diapers only halfway clean soaking in ammonia. He guides you because he's the one who thought of coming here, he asked the questions of the little boys on the stoop who shook their heads, each crowned with a different hippy-dip cap, and didn't know what shooting he was talking about here in their building, but pointed across the street where two dudes were wasted last week. No. No. Here. On the fifth floor, two floors above the apartment where it turns out one of them lives, but they don't know. He knew. I know now. They don't know nothing mister and dropped their eyes as if they were ashamed of him for asking. He's a tall ship listing, billowing, a swaying sea smacked lurch and glide, driven crazy by the wind. My leader and congregation. Rock I want to squeeze till blood runs out. How long had he been on the road? Vagabonding he calls it. His funk says years. A lifetime ripening. Should I believe what he says: