Midnight Shadow

Chapter 4 - Home

Memphis was an interesting city. It that had grown quickly in the 50's and 60's due to the explosion of Rock and Roll music but had it's traditional bout of recession when the music industry had migrated to California. Memphis had bounced back in the late 90's. The legendary Beale St. had been revamped, cleaned up and was as close to a tourist destination as places like Bourbon Street in New Orleans or Rush Street in Chicago, but with more history and tradition. Blues music floated through the air for blocks on end as out door musicians played for love and a few tips. Many of the buildings had been renovated and condos and luxury apartments now dominated the floors over restaurants and art shops up and down Union and Main streets. Memphis was a work in progress but I loved that the city named for my home was making a come back. It felt right to me.

     At the corner of Union Ave. and Main St. stands a simple square concrete building, three stories high, directly across Main St. from a building that for years was home of the Memphis Business Journal, a local publication. It was a few blocks off of Beale Street and while there was a fair amount of foot traffic due to the trolley cars that ran up and down Main street (which was banned to motorized traffic) it was still relatively quiet and clean. I looked up at the third floor corner penthouse with its sixteen foot high windows that lined the walls of my home and admired the work my contractors had performed a few years earlier in yet another renovation to my building. In order to avoid suspicion, humans lived in the other apartments on the three story building, but that corner was mine and mine alone.

     My excitement to be home was invigorating. I was accustomed to not being with my most prized possessions for long stretches of time. But being in Memphis, so close to the only real place I could call home, always tempted me. I tried to be careful, but it was difficult to fight off the temptation to visit every few days. That corner apartment was a magnet to me. It was the only place on the planet that I truly felt like myself, without the mask I wore everyday as I played my human role.

     I removed the key card from my backpack for access and entered the building off of Main St.  The entrance to my building opened up into a simple long hallway. The bare concrete floor stretched the length of the building lined with the smaller one bedroom apartments on the bottom level. Five white doors evenly spaced along on the right side of the hallway started just beyond the elevator doors. Two steps into the building, I pushed the button for the elevator. I had the strongest sense of contentment and peace as I entered the silver box, I was almost home. Directly to the left on the third floor landing, almost hidden, was the door to my "home".

     My apartment was simple by luxury standards. The door opened to a long hallway stretching to the left that was decorated with large and small paintings I had done over the centuries. Paris in the fall in the 1400's, an Italian summer 300 years later, the New York City sky line in the 1930's. Places I had lived and visited. The hallway opened up to the living room with twenty foot ceilings lined with windows on the outside walls. The entire apartment was painted in varying shades of white with polished concrete floors. Immediately to the right was a small kitchen that I had never used which was divided from the living room with a long, low countertop. To the left was a tiny "L" shaped hallway that led to a bathroom and a bedroom that held many of my memories from centuries in Europe, Asia and Africa. One wall inside the smaller bedroom held the same sixteen foot high windows that lined the living room, covered with blinds and heavy curtains. It had been too long since I'd visited and dust was collecting on a few of the sculptures I had. I would have to clean them up and make more frequent visits I thought with a sigh. I returned to the living room. The wall dividing the living room and the left side bedroom was paneled with book cases as high as the ceiling and packed full of tomes and books I had collected over the centuries. It was hard to see them all due to the blinds and curtains in this room not to mention the age of many of the volumes.