He was white, with small ears, sunken cheeks, and hair that was as black and shiny as patent leather, oiled and combed into a slight curl on the neck.

"I'm looking for Ida Durbin," Jimmie said.

The man leaned on the sill and thought about it. He wore a creamy cowboy shirt with stitched pockets and chains of roses sewn on the shoulders. "Four doors down. Ask for Connie. Tell you what, I'll walk you there." he said.

"That's all right," Jimmie said.

"I'm here to serve," the man said.

On the way down the street, the man extended his hand. It was small and hard, the knuckles pronounced. "I'm Lou Kale. Connie's your heartthrob?" he said.

"The girl I'm looking for is named Ida."

"On this street, nobody uses their own name. That is, except me," Lou Kale said, and winked. "I was gonna call her Ida Red, after the girl in the song. Except she didn't think that was respectful, so she made up her own name. What's your name?"

Jimmie hesitated, touching his bottom lip with his tongue.

"See what I mean?" Lou Kale said. "Soon as people set foot on Post Office Street, their names fly away."

Lou Kale escorted Jimmie through the front door of a two-story Victorian house with hollow wood pillars on the gallery and a veranda on the second floor. The shades were drawn in the living room to keep out the dust, and the air inside the heated walls was stifling. The couches and straight-back chairs were empty; the only color in the room came from the plastic casing of a Wurlitzer jukebox plugged into the far wall. Lou Kale told a heavyset white woman in the kitchen that Connie had a caller.

The woman labored up a stairs that groaned with her weight and shouted down a hallway.

"Look at me, kid," Lou Kale said. He seemed to lose his train of thought. He touched at his nostril with one knuckle, then huffed air out his nose, perhaps reorganizing his words. He was shorter than Jimmie, firmly built, flat-stomached, with thick veins in his arms, his dark jeans belted high on his hips. His face seemed full of play now. "You're not here to get your ashes hauled, are you?"