I spent an hour or two with him, wrestling, rolling around with him on the ground in the back garden, and talking to him about everything that happened, then debated as to whether I should take him with me uptown. His dark, long face, wolflike and seemingly evil, was full of the usual gentleness and forbearance. God, why didn't you make us all dogs?

Actually, Mojo created a sense of safety in me. If the Devil came and I had Mojo....

But that was the most absurd idea! I'd fend off Hell on account of a flesh-and-Wood dog. Well, humans have believed stranger things, I suppose.

Just before I'd left David, I'd asked, "What do you think is happening, I mean with this Stalker and this Ordinary Man?" And David had answered without hesitation, "You're imagining both of them, you punish yourself relentlessly; it's the only way you know how to go on having fun."

I should have been insulted. But I wasn't.

Dora was real.

Finally, I decided I had to take leave of Mojo. I was going to spy upon Dora. And had to be fleet of foot. I kissed Mojo and left him. Later we would walk in our favorite wastelands beneath the River Bridge, amid the grass and the garbage, and be together.

That I would have for as long as nature let me have it. For the moment it could wait.

Back to Dora.

Of course Dora didn't know Roger was dead. There was no way that she could know, unless—perhaps—Roger had appeared to her.

But I hadn't gathered from Roger that such was even possible.

Appearing to me had apparently consumed all his energy. Indeed, I thought he had been far too protective of Dora to have haunted her in any practical or deliberate way.

But what did I know about ghosts? Except for a few highly mechanical and indifferent apparitions, I'd never spoken to a ghost until I'd spoken to Roger.

And now I would carry with me forever the indelible impression of his love for Dora, and his peculiar mixture of conscience and supreme self-confidence. In retrospect, even his visit seemed to me to exhibit extraordinary self-assurance. That he could haunt, that was not beyond probability since the world is filled with impressive and credible ghost stories. But that he could detain me in conversation—that he could make me his confidant—that had indeed involved an enormous and almost dazzling pride, I walked uptown in human fashion, breathing the river air, and glad to be back with my black-barked oaks, and the sprawling, dimly lighted houses of New Orleans, the intrusions everywhere of grass and vine and flower; home.

Too soon, I reached the old brick convent building on Napoleon Avenue where Dorawas lodged. Napoleon Avenue itself is a rather beautiful street even for New Orleans; it has an extraordinarily wide median where once streetcars used to run. Now there are generous shade trees planted on it, just as there were all around the convent that faced it.