It’s not that I wasn’t qualified. When I heard Calyph was looking for a chauffeur, I knew he wanted someone like me. It’d be just his peculiarity to want a white guy with a lot of education driving him around all “yes sir, no sir,” and we had some history. I’d saved his cat. His accident was the first I’d heard of him in almost two years. Calyph had begun to look for a driver because of a crash on Macadam Avenue, which broke his clavicle and made ESPN. The team insisted he get a driver who could ensure his safety, or they would do it for him. I was living in Michigan then, in the Upper Peninsula, finishing up my second useless degree at Northern, the only graduate school to accept me, and trying to write music reviews for whoever would take them. My old Portland boss at the restaurant delivery service sent around the job notice. The sight of Calyph’s name was one of those details that recalls a gone world, as the smell of chlorine in a girl’s hair relumes old summers.
