It was the same shot of Gabe hunched over his bike but with music, a deep, simple bass line, something electronic that Gabe hated. Boom, boom, boom, boom. He thought of the kid at The Pig. “Luna,” he said in the video, then the video started over, and he said it again. “Luna. Luna. Luna. Luna,” each time with the beat till it formed some demented dance song.
Then another noise joined the beat, a cymbal crashing, and the words changed again. “Luna. I’m Luna.” Boom crash. Boom crash. “Luna. I’m Luna.” Over and over.
Then the song got more frenetic, more beats were layered over it and some effect was placed on Gabe’s voice, making it high and rhythmic, like he was singing. “It is what it is.” Then, “Luna. I’m Luna.” Boom crash. Boom crash. “It is what it is. Luna. I’m Luna.” Then a stutter came into his voice, and the music sounded like it was being played backwards. “Not much you can do. Not much you can do. Not much you can do.” Boom crash. “Luna. I’m Luna.”
Rose was giggling, high-pitched and squealing. “Gabe, go with it. This is so funny.”
“Not much you can do.” Then the music fell away and it was just Gabe’s voice echoing impossibly, like he was falling. “Haven’t jumped out of a plane. Jumped out of a plane. Jumped out of a plane.” Pause. “In a while.”
Then everything crashed together and the song exploded faster. “This shit ain’t funny no more. This shit ain’t funny no more.” Over and over. Then all his words were strung together, all out of order.
He glanced over at Johnny, who was doing a little dance in his recliner.
The words came faster, and higher, and faster, and higher. Then it all dropped away, leaving only Gabe’s voice with a rhythmic, echo effect: “I didn’t know shit.” Each vowel was stretched out for an impossibly long time, his voice a squeaking whine. “Knoooooow shiiiit. I didn’t doooo shiiiiiit.” Then everything went quiet. The video went normal, and Gabe said, “Change, you know? It is what it is.”
Then it cut to a shot of him riding away.
Gabe dropped into a brown, thin wooden chair near the front door. Gabe had only felt vertigo once. It was sixth, maybe seventh grade, and his father had taken Gabe out of school to go for a hike that day but left Lou behind. That felt so special. They hiked a familiar trail. Near the peak, there was a rise that looked out across the valley below—not a steep drop but you could see forever. Gabe had seen it countless times, but this time he swung his head and lost his stomach. He felt like the valley was folding up to crush them. When he dropped to his knees, his father looked worried for a split second before shaking his head and turning away.
Gabe blinked a few times before realizing his eyes were open. Rose was kneeling in front of him.
“Damn, I’m sorry, Gabriel. I didn’t think it was a big deal.”
He liked the way she said his full name, full of rising Spanish vowels.
“Not your fault.” Gabe ran his hands over his face and opened his eyes wide. “Things have been confusing lately. I should . . . I should head home.”
“You won’t make it five feet on your bike.” Rose pulled him up by the hands. “Sit with us.”
Gabe sat at the far end of the couch and Rose took up a spot closer to Johnny. “I thought you’d get a kick out of being famous,” she said.
Johnny held up both his hands like he had a major announcement. “Bet you five bucks someone’s already selling shirts that say ‘This shit ain’t funny no more.’”
He laughed, and Rose went to swat at him. “Bet you five bucks you’re not going out this weekend if you keep that up.”
The kid smiled and sipped his beer. “Just messing with y’all.”
Gabe appreciated the way the kid backed down. Johnny had to know he could storm out whenever he wanted, drink whatever he wanted and talk however he wanted. Another show started on the TV, and Gabe heard sitcom music and saw a family standing in a kitchen. Rose’s eyes flicked towards the screen. She watched a few seconds with a half-smile on her face and laughed.
“Stupid,” Johnny said with a laugh.
Gabe came here to apologize, to tell Rose he had been thinking about her. Had he said it? Rose poked Johnny and pointed at one of the characters. “That was your tía growing up.”
Johnny shook his head and snorted. Gabe turned to face the TV, sliding closer to Rose. He had never seen the show, but it was easy to pick up the story: small family crisis, meaningful conversation, one character who’s always a clown. In the end, all their problems were solved.
Afterwards, Johnny slinked into his room, calling goodnight before he shut the door and turned on his music. Gabe pictured himself doing the same thing in high school.
“Well, should we . . .” Gabe looked at Johnny’s door. “Should we watch more TV?”
Rose shook her head. “No, no more TV. I’m off all week. I don’t have to be up early tomorrow.”
On the ride to his house, Rose folded her arms across Gabe’s stomach. She was relaxed where Micah had been tense. Some of the gas stations mourning Eliseo Baca had replaced their memorials with cigarette and beer prices.
When Gabe tried to see the house through Rose’s eyes, he thought it still looked nice, even with the overgrown yard and peeling shingles. But the contrast with the empty, smoke-stained interior was harsh, and Gabe felt bad about Rose’s clear disappointment.
She strolled into the living room and examined the last few pieces of furniture. He threw a shirt over the bags of pot and carried the bundle into the laundry room.
“I remember your dad building this house,” she said. “I’d drive by and watch the frame go up. Seemed to take forever.”
“He moved slow.”
“Deliberate, he moved real deliberate.”
They stood next to the couch, as if waiting for some force to push them down.
“He died here,” Gabe blurted out. “In the old dining room through the kitchen. Empty now.”
Rosemarie raised her eyebrows.
He laughed out loud and said, “Oh sorry, I don’t know why I said that.”
They both laughed and Gabe felt a bit better.
Rose sat down on the couch. “Yikes, I just realized your house smells like my son’s room. You smell like a teenage boy, you know that? Cigarettes, beer, man-stink all let loose.”
“We can get some fans going, open a window.” Gabe opened the back door.
“No wonder your son likes it here so much.”
Gabe sat down next to her and felt like they were back in high school. Was he supposed to put his hand on her knee?
“He really does. He’s a guy, so he doesn’t care about the furniture. Gives him room to breathe, run around.”
Rose smiled. “I don’t know why you’re still talking about your son that way. This house is all you. It’s too you for anyone else to like it here.”
“Hey, it was my father’s house.”
“Ages ago, on a whole other planet.”
The two of them sat back, their shoulders touching and heads resting on the couch. Gabe thought about the pages he had written for Micah. Maybe Rose would like to see them.
“Okay, maybe it’s been a while since Helen let him come up.”
“I knew you weren’t going to rodeos or whatever.”
“No, no we did that.” Gabe laughed. “Once. The kid hates animals. Bitched the whole time and listened to his headphones.”
“That’s their specialty.”
“Is the thing online actually funny? I sound so . . . confused and old. Sick.”
She tried to hold back her smile. “Yeah, it is. It’s really, really funny. You seem so freaked out. I mean, you’re not that way normally, so that’s why I think it’s funny. Mr. Cool got all weirded out by some cameras. It’s pretty cute.”
“Can’t believe people are watching it, watching me.”
“You love it when people watch you. You’re that guy with the stories.”
“Half of them aren’t even true,” Gabe admitted. “I’ve never said that before.”
“You think it’s a shock?” Rose sat up straight and looked at Gabe. “Angie warned me, said you’d ask for money, that you asked her.”
“No, no. I asked her for a job.”
“Why do you care about being a father all of a sudden? You’re Gabe, lazy and alone. Always have been.”
“People change.” He stopped and tried to shake that anger out of his voice. “Things can happen to make people change.”
“I don’t know. People can change for a minute, then they go right back.”
Rose’s eyes sunk into Gabe’s blank walls. She got lost in whatever she was thinking about: her son, or her ex, or something a million miles away in the desert. Gabe put his hand on her arm, around her bicep and tugged her back to where they were. She smiled and laid back so her head was resting on the arm of the couch. Gabe pressed his mouth against hers. He pushed his weight down on top of her. She grunted and wrapped her legs around him. Her hands tangled in his hair, then ran over his shoulders and down his back. Gabe’s mustache left red patches on her neck. She smelled of smoke mixed with perfume and a layer of powder or soap underneath. It was so strong, so female. She brought her hands under him and unbuttoned her blouse. Gabe leaned back to take off his leather vest and T-shirt as Rose unhooked her bra. The smell of their bodies met in the room, filling the air with something new. He looked at the stretch marks along her round stomach. Her torso was paler than her face. Her breasts pressed flat against her body, and a thin trail of black hairs, a dozen or so, sat like fallen eyelashes in a line snaking down from her belly button. His own beach ball stomach was covered in patches of kinky hair that had started to grey. Thick moles dotted his skin. The muscles in his arms were beginning to unravel, and his chest had gone flabby and loose. He remembered their young bodies and could feel where the skin had loosened and the muscles softened; it felt like she was more his that way. Gabe pulled her hips down so that she was flat on the couch. He pressed their soft stomachs together. Her eyes were shut tight, so tight the sides of her face spider-webbed, like she was trying to shut out the world and focus the universe’s energy on the course of Gabe’s mouth.
EIGHTEEN
CHARLES LOOKED AROUND THE HOUSE, her house, and felt like the skeleton girl from her painting was swinging that broom into his guts. The year since the Hunt campaign had been an exercise in finding new, more humiliating lows. His ex-wife acting as secret benefactor was a level of pity and sadness new even to him.
Addie had been so full of concern for Hawley that morning. That girl swung the broom handle even harder. He dropped onto the couch and pulled up Addie’s number on his cell. It was nearly midnight back in Washington. She was home, brushing her teeth or sitting quietly in front of the TV with her hair pulled back. Or maybe, like him, she was looking around a house that could never really be home.
Charles turned on the TV and put his phone away. He hoped Addie was out having fun and flirting with men nicer than her husband. He flicked through the channels and found what appeared to be a softcore porn channel.
“Whoa,” Charles said to himself. “Old-school.”
The flick had only the thinnest thread of plot involving spaceships and female aliens with large breasts. The military kidnapped the aliens, but the aliens seemed to enjoy it. The sex looked wrong, staged, the bodies not at viable angles. It all seemed uncomfortable for everyone. He muted the sound and kept watching.
Before letting herself in, Olivia tapped her fingernails on the glass door. The quick, familiar rhythm sent a shiver through his bones.
She wore the same black, floor-length dress she had at the gallery. The fabric clung to her hips and flared near her feet. Her single exposed shoulder danced with the medley of freckles that Charles remembered so well.
She tossed her handbag on the shelf near the front door. “I had to escape,” she said. “The newspaper editor thinks he’s Truman Capote, and everyone is laughing at each other’s jokes.”
“Does your husband know where you are?”
Olivia’s eyes went to the TV and she fell apart in giggles. “Lonely?”
He scrambled for the remote and turned off the muted porn. “No, it was . . . I was flipping channels.”
“Whatever gets you through the night.”
He could feel every inch of space, every molecule of air between them. Her presence and those damn freckles on her shoulder infuriated him. She walked into the kitchen and grabbed a wine glass.
“What do you think of the tile in here? Took me forever to find enough for the whole house.”
“I don’t think anything about it.”
“Okay, okay,” she said out of the corner of her mouth. “Tough crowd.”
She strolled into the living room and pointed to a painting next to the windows. She studied the canvas and then looked over her shoulder, raising her eyebrows at Charles. The painting showed the sun setting behind a mountain range. The rocks and trees in the foreground, from a certain angle, looked like a skull.
“It’s a beautiful sunset,” Charles said.
“It’s a sunrise.”
“Are you ready to tell me what’s going on here?”
“It’s the sunrise. Happens pretty much every day.”
“No, you need to . . .”
Olivia rolled her eyes. “I already said sorry. I already said I should have told you I had a line on a job.” She filled her wine glass. “You’re welcome for the fully stocked bar, by the way. Or, at least, it was fully stocked.”
Her brown eyes focused, became devious, when she smiled. She walked into the living room, sat down, slipped off her shoes and leaned back into the corner of the couch. She pulled her legs up against her chest and tucked her dress between her knees, the fabric drew impossibly tight. He moved to the far side of the couch.
“You don’t seem to find this very funny,” she said.
“Ask me to come up with a list of people I’d find in my bed in Santa Fe, you’d be towards the bottom.”
“Well, that’s because we know so many people. We’re old now.”
“We’re not old. I’m not old.”
“Nearly forty is old. It’s not as old as we’ll get. But it’s older than we were.”
Charles made his way to the kitchen and the bottle of wine. “You’re really from here?”
“Española, just up the road.”
“I didn’t remember that.”
Olivia nodded her head like it was the answer she expected. She smiled and rested her head on the back of the couch, staring at the ceiling.
“Were we really dumb enough to marry strangers?”
“In the courthouse. My mom was mad at me until we divorced.”
“It was good for a few months.”
He leaned against the kitchen island. He wanted to move back to the sofa, but he held off.
“You were impressive,” he said. “I’d been surrounded by politicos for years, and you were amazing.”
Olivia closed her eyes and looked for a second like she could sleep. “We didn’t actually like each other. I was crazy. You were . . . boring. It’s what we needed. Now, I’m here. Painting. Playing house.”
“Must be a happy marriage,” he said.
She opened her eyes. “I knew you’d dig at me for marrying Cody before you actually asked why I married him. I knew, I knew, I knew that’s how you’d do it.”
Olivia rested her glass on her stomach. The wine threatened to spill over the side with each breath. She ran her fingernails along the rim.
“I know how this looks,” she said. “He’s almost twenty years older. He’s rich. I’m wearing a fucking ball gown.”
“Back in Chicago, you made me promise not to drag you to fundraisers because you couldn’t stand the exact same people who were in the gallery tonight. Different accents, different names, but they are the same people.”
“I get it, Charles, Charlie, Chuckster.” She drew out each of the syllables in the nicknames. He had always hated the way she called him that and
he hated it even more now.
Olivia set the glass on the coffee table, sloshing wine out of the side. “We’re exactly the same. Neither of us really knows how we got here or how to get out.” She leaned forward, closer. “These people have everything you’ve ever wanted. You’re up against the heart of it and you can’t even see it. But you are an outsider and you’re going to have to take what you want.”
Charles felt much drunker all at once, like his brain was bringing back all the wine, all the champagne and booze he had drunk since he had landed here. He tried to ground himself, to think about Addie, but what came instead was Jim Hawley in Syria and the sound of boots marching down a cinder block hallway.
“These people like me,” he said. “I can help them, and they’ll help me.”
“There’s money out here, but you’re going to have to carve out your own space. Learn what’s important. Find the secrets they’re keeping from you. That’s what you cash in.”
Charles thought of the casino and Branch’s grip on his shoulder. “Oh, they’re telling me plenty.”
Olivia groaned. “After everything you still think you’re the lucky one. Cody’s not dumb and he’s not generous.”
Olivia stood up and grabbed her handbag. She had walked in, kicked over all the furniture, left her fingerprints and her breath all over everything, and now she was going to leave. As she slipped into her heels, Charles walked up behind her and put his hands on her hips.
She flinched and then leaned her head back against his shoulder. “I have got to go home,” she said.
Charles felt dizzy with the scent of her hair, the crinkle of the fabric under his hands. He moved his mouth towards her neck. Olivia pushed back, and Charles tried to hold on tighter, but then she was walking away, towards the door.
“I have your number,” she said over her shoulder. “I’ll be in touch.”
And then she was out the front door and gone. Charles ran his hands over his face and then locked his fingers behind his head. He grabbed her glass of wine and poured what was left of it into his. Roaming the house, nosing in the cabinets and drinking another bottle of wine did nothing to calm him down, but he did it until he passed out.
Trust Me Page 13
