I kept saying I didn’t need anything, but he kept asking me to name the three things. Three things I needed before I left this place.

“The Father, Son and the Holy Ghost,” I offered. He didn’t seem to hear it.

“Just pick three things. A dish rag, a hamburger and a bottle of wine… something like that.” Smoking fingers revealed tattoos inside each digit. I imagined them to be tiny skulls. An air of death treading through our midst.

I don’t make deals with devils I’ve never met before. Not while in a State of Grace.

Men covered in logos hovering in the background, tiny wings on their feet. Quivers without arrows. Mercurius speaks only in trade-rhymes. Pidgin tongues covered in ash. I offered him free beer before he flew off.

The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. The transmission of mysteries across generations. Personalities traveling through time, recollecting themselves from fragments encoded in history. I have become my grandfather and other men I’ve never met. Free France rising again like a star over the sea. I sat all night at the listening post; people came to ask for absolution. The wind whistled through me. The Song of the Sea, enchanting.

“I’ve never seen a man with eyes like mine,” she spoke nervously. I looked into hers and knew what she meant. She told me how she’s sometimes stupid about the things she sees.

“It’s easier to see what you want, than what’s really there.” The lights came on as I said it, as if on cue. She told me she was full of shit and apologized for laughing at me. I just like when people laugh.

That night I realized that names are really just descriptions. They should not consume you and never have contained you.

“Does that have an accent on it or not?”

I told him it did. He seemed like he was waiting for more. He thought my real name was an alias. He was probably right.