I read the sign and climb a stair. The office door is smoky glass. Inside, a radio plays jazz. I go in. He points to a chair. He’s shabby, but he don’t look dumb. His voice is booze and cigarettes: a weary voice, full of regrets. A gumshoe, laid back, chewing gum.
I tell him: “You’re a Psychic Eye. I got a problem, something’s changed. It’s like the whole world’s rearranged, gone crazy, but I don’t know why. When joshing with my buddy, Pat, there was a mishap with a gun. The pistol was a loaded one. Things turned peculiar after that. Down at the pool room, I’m ignored. Guys talk and laugh like I’m not there. Goddam invisible, I swear. I was their pal once. Now they’re bored. I crack a joke. They look elsewhere. I shout: ‘Hey, guys!’ They just don’t hear. I ask for whiskey or a beer. The barman gives me a blank stare.”
The psychic nods. I tell him this: “I visited my gal today. She looked right through me, turned away when I leaned forward for a kiss.”
He lights a smoke, says: “Some survive a bullet from a careless gun, a lucky few, but you’re not one. Man, you’re a ghost. You ain’t alive. I’m psychic, so I see a bit.”
The gumshoe gives me this critique: “For you, the future’s looking bleak. You’re dead. You gotta live with it.”
Editor’s Note:
Richard Fleming’s noir vignette bends the classic ghost story into a study of urban alienation. To accompany this piece, we’ve paired the text with Yoshiko Miyashita’s public sculpture The Eye of Shinjuku, transforming the gumshoe’s smoky office into a metaphor for the unblinking, indifferent gaze of the modern metropolis, where one can walk among the living and yet be entirely unseen.
