The Ansonia Ghost
Neil de la Flor and Maureen Seaton
He was gorgeous and sheepish yet alive with songs such as “falala” and “hoteedooo.”
Was it opera he was after or a place in the Baseball Hall of Fame? Babe Ruth
or Enrico Caruso?
Wrapped in the cloak of his own destiny and singing to the other ghosts as
he fell, he imagined himself free of voice and gargling, and it was in that
spasm of silence that I found him, limp and struggling in his tulle skirt.
Please, I would say, in English, stay away from the stairwells. This place
is just waiting to take you and you are so alive and pretty.
It was Tuesday, the day of the World Series. Ruth was up and Caruso was sending
clowns into his head to distract him. It was 1927.
He leaned over the banister and, some say, toppled to his death from top
to ground in five seconds with a very strange sound, like silk on whiskers.
He broke with an indefatigable smirk on his face, a rub of paint the wrong
way, a slight blurring effect that made him glamorous.
His story began as so few have, in Italian (Vesti la giubba) with
a pop fly and a He’s …… out!
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