The Pot Thief Who Studied the Woman at Otowi Crossing

by J. Michael Orenduff

  “I was elected interim head of the art department.”

  A hurt look slid onto her face. “Why didn’t you tell me you applied for that?”

  “Because I didn’t apply. I’d never do anything like that before talking it over with you.”

  Her smile reappeared and she squeezed my hand. “Okay. This is exciting. How did you get the job without applying for it?”

  “Helga Ólafsdóttir nominated me for it. No one else was nominated except for Melvin Armstrong who nominated himself. No one seconded his nomination. So I got it by default.”

  “So the black guy who’s been teaching there for years loses to a new whitey who’s just an adjunct. The diversity police are going to be all over that.”

  “I don’t think it had anything to do with—”

  “I’m just kidding. You know what I think of Armstrong. He was horrible to you.”

  “True. But it wasn’t because I’m white. He loved Junior Prather who’s even whiter than I am.”

  “There are shades of white?”

  I stuck out my arm and pulled hers alongside it. “I’m almost as dark as you are. Unlike me, Prather is pasty.”

  Doing her imitation of Butterfly McQueen, Sharice said, “I’s a light-skinned colored girl and you’s a tan-skinned white boy. We’s made fo one nother. But seriously, you should wear sunscreen. It’s not healthy to be exposed to that much UV radiation.”

  “It’s not all UV. My skin is a bit tan even on the parts of me that don’t get sunlight.”

  “I know. I like those parts.” Then she laughed and said, “And I like when your skin turns red.”

  “I’m not blushing. It’s just the effect of too much Gruet.” I told her about the impromptu celebration at Dos Hermanas.

  “Too bad. Gruet would be great with what I fixed for dinner tonight.”

  “I don’t smell anything.”

  “That’s because it’s a salad. Kale, apple slices, dried mangos with smoked paprika, and an avocado lemon vinaigrette.”

  “Yum,” I deadpanned.

  She poked me and said, “You love green vegetables.”

  “Yes. Poblanos, jalapenos, serranos, tomatillos, noplalitos—”

  “Shut up and come to the table.”

  My own cooking is based on what Consuela fed me for the first eighteen years of my life. Putting smoked paprika on dried mangos sounded like wearing brown shoes with a tux. But they were the highlight of the salad and would have paired well with some Gruet, but I’d already had three glasses. Okay, maybe four.

  After changing into her pajamas, Sharice said we were moving to the couch for dessert. She brought flans and told me I could have a small coupe of champagne with dessert.

  When we finished, she slid next to me and asked if I had thought about what she had whispered to me in bed.

  I can’t explain it without telling you what she said, but I’m a bit uncomfortable with the topic.

  She said we were about to have unprotected sex.

  Which caused me briefly to be … er, physically unable to do so.

  I associate the phrase ‘unprotected sex’ with the AIDs epidemic. So I had reminded her that I was the only person she’d ever had sex with, and I hadn’t had sex for a couple of years before she and I got together. So there was no way she could have an STD, and if I had one, symptoms would have shown up well before two years passed.

  But it was not protection from STDs that she had in mind. It was protection from pregnancy.

  You may recall my mentioning that she and I discussed it briefly and then got back to nature taking its course. The gist of that discussion was that neither of us had any objection to being parents and were happy to let fate decide whether that came to pass.

  Being an old-fashioned guy raised by old-fashioned parents, my real view was that we should get married before we made a baby. But I didn’t want to use the intimate occasion to ask her once again. I had pestered her about it too often. And I knew she was struggling to balance her desire for us to be a normal couple with the promise she had made to her father not to marry a white man

  I’d had enough time to think it out. “I’d be delighted if you got pregnant,” I said. “This business with the dead guy in the plaza has me thinking about family. You and I are a family of sorts even though we aren’t yet married. We’d be even more of a family with a child.”

  “You know I want to be with you forever. It’s just that …”

  “You promised your dad you’d never marry a white guy.”

  She nodded and said, “Maybe he’d change his mind if I were pregnant. I wonder if that was in my subconscious when I decided to forego birth control.”

  “Maybe he’d want you to get an abortion.”

  She slid even closer to me. “I’ve always been pro-choice. We women have the right to control our own bodies. But if it was your baby inside me, I couldn’t abort it. Does that make me a hypocrite?”

  ”Of course not. Being pro-choice doesn’t mean you favor abortions. It just means you favor women making the decision.”

  “You’re sure you don’t have any reservations about becoming a father?” she asked. And then added, “If it happens.”

  “Not any big ones. I guess I worry about being a new father at fifty. Actually, it’s not that. It’s more about being almost seventy by the time she graduates from high school.”

  “Why ‘she’.”

  I smiled at her. “Because the more frequently a couple have sex, the more likely they are to conceive a girl.”

  “That sounds like an old wives’ tale.”

  “Nope. Scientific fact. A biologist named Landrum Shettles discovered back in the sixties that couples who have sex frequently are more likely to have girls, and couples who have sex less frequently are more likely to have boys.”

  “You should go on Jeopardy.”

  Constant reading has filled my head with a lot of useless information.

  “Do you have a preference?” she asked.

  “Yes. I prefer more frequently.”

  She laughed and asked, “Boy or girl?”

  “No preference. But I hope we don’t have twins.”

  “Why?”

  “Because how can you breast feed two babies with one breast?”

  When she stopped laughing, she lifted her pajama top just a few inches and said, “It’s only one, but it’s perfect. Want a peek?”

  And our odds of conceiving a girl were increased a short while later.

  Chapter 9

  After Sharice left for work early the next morning, I washed the dishes, walked the boys, and returned to see Agent Charles Webbe guarding the condo.

  In fact, he was merely waiting for me, but he is incapable of a waiting pose. He is constantly alert and vigilant, almost certainly a result of his training at the FBI Academy. And at 6’ 3” and 225 pounds of muscle, he would make an excellent guard.

  “You ever heard of the Jessica Fletcher Syndrome?” I asked him after we were inside and coffee had been poured.

  “Sure. From Murder She Wrote. And you have the syndrome.”

  ”Come on. You don’t really believe in that, do you?”

  “I didn’t until I met you.”

  Charles’ glare is enough to make children cry and innocent men confess. But when he smiles, he looks like a giant black teddy bear.

  “You here because of the guy they found in Old Town?”

  He nodded

  “You don’t want me to go to the morgue, do you?”

  “No. What I want is a lot simpler. But it may sound unusual and even a bit weird. I want a sample of your DNA.”

  I felt light-headed and put both hands on the table to steady myself. “Why?”

  He handed me a snapshot. It was me in my bank.

  “Who took this?” I asked.
<
br />   “The security camera. It’s you, right?”

  I looked down at it again. “Not a great picture, but it’s me.”

  He handed me a second snapshot. “What about this one?”

  It was me in my Bronco. But the picture wasn’t clear. I’m not sure I would have known it was me except for the fact that there aren’t many 1985 Broncos still running.

  “Yeah, that’s also me. Am I under surveillance?”

  He laughed. “These days, everyone is. That picture was taken by a traffic camera.”

  “This is scary.”

  “I know. Like a lot of modern technology, it can have great benefits and also scary downsides.”

  “What are the benefits of secretly taking pictures of bank customers?”

  “None. Until one of them pulls a pistol out of a deposit bag and robs the bank.”

  “Surely I’m not a suspect in a bank robbery!”

  “You are not. And if the person in that picture had in fact robbed that bank, I would have begun my investigation with the assumption that it wasn’t you but someone cleverly disguised as you.”

  “Because you know I’m a law-abiding citizen.”

  “No. You break the law every time you dig up an old pot. But you don’t have the cojones for bank robbery.”

  I nodded and we both laughed.

  “These pictures are the reason you want my DNA?”

  “I prefer not to tell you the reason at this point. I know how you are, Hubie. Do us both a favor and don’t obsess on this. Just keep these two things in mind. First, no one outside of law enforcement knows about this; don’t say anything except to Sharice. Second, I’m here as a friend.”

  Chapter 10

  On Thursday evenings, Dr. Santiago Batres provides free dental care for indigent residents of Albuquerque. Given that my hometown has the fifth highest poverty level in the country, the lines are always long. Sharice donates her time like the doc does, but he gives her comp time to make up for it.

  Santiago and I were in the same graduating class from Albuquerque High School. He was a star on the football team. I was the top student in math. He became a respected dentist. I became a pot thief. If there is a sociological message there, I don’t want to know it.

  I often spend Thursday evenings at Dos Hermanas with Susannah and other drinking buddies who happen by. The tradition began many years ago when I was living behind my shop and Susannah was waiting tables two blocks away at La Placita. She was often my server when I ate there but only at lunch because in the evenings she was taking courses at the University. Her shift got prolonged one day when she didn’t happen to have a class, and she dropped by Dos Hermanas after work because she also didn’t happen to have a date.

  The only single guy there was someone she already knew—me. I invited her to join me and bought her a margarita. When I asked her why I’d never seen her there before, she said she was always in class or on a date.

  “And tonight?” I asked.

  “No class tonight, and I’m between boyfriends.”

  I pretended be to confused, looked around the table and said, “I don’t see the other one.”

  She laughed and said, “I’m in my early twenties” in a putting-the-cards-on-the-table tone.

  “I’m in my early forties.”

  “You look a lot younger.”

  “Okay, I’m really only twenty-eight, but I didn’t want you to get your hopes up.”

  “Because you already have a girlfriend?”

  I shook my head.

  “So you’re between girlfriends?”

  “Depends. I had a girlfriend a few years ago. So this won’t technically be a ‘between’ period unless I find another one.”

  “You’re funny. Are you really in your forties.”

  “I am. Too old for you?”

  “Not at this point. But in twenty years …”

  The unfinished sentence hung in the air until I finally said, “You’ll be a sexy forty something, and I’ll be preparing to file for Social Security.”

  “Friends?” she asked, and held up her margarita.

  We clinked glasses to seal the deal. I wondered for a few months whether if I had pushed a bit, we might have become more than friends. Does age really matter? Sharice is about halfway between Susannah and me in terms of age. But Sharice and Susannah are close friends, and Sharice and I are a couple.

  After Susannah and I had clinked glasses, I pressed my upper lip against my teeth and mimicked, “this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

  She laughed and said, “That didn’t sound like Bogart.”

  “Sure it did. Otherwise, how would you know who I was imitating?”

  “I know the line. I’ve watched Casablanca maybe a hundred times.”

  It has been a beautiful friendship. But also a painful one because I’ve had to help her cope with a series of disastrous romances. So now you understand why, when she and I were discussing Shorty who disappeared from Otowi, she said, “A lot of men I’ve known have disappeared.”

  Which makes no sense because she is tall, shapely, and pretty. More importantly, she has a great sense of humor and is fun to be around. I’ll admit she isn’t frilly, and I guess that bothers some guys. Susannah’s idea of ranch dressing is boots, jeans, and a cowboy hat. She rides horses, ropes goats, and castrates calves, skills that are valued in New Mexico, although the last one is probably not something to be mentioned on a first date.

  It’s now almost a decade later, and all those evening courses paid off last year when she received a master of arts degree in art history. There aren’t many jobs for people with an M.A. in art history, so she’s still waitressing at La Placita. She tells me the money’s good, and the best thing is the flexible schedule. She can take a few days off to spend with her family on their ranch near Willard.

  She was again between boyfriends. But one of the previous ones was about to make a reappearance. Frederick Blass, former head of the Art Department, was scheduled to be released from the State Penitentiary at noon the next day.

  I never took an art class when I was a student at UNM. I didn’t even know where the art building was. But when Freddie invited Susannah to a party at his penthouse, she took me as a faux date because she wasn’t sure whether he had invited her as a date or merely a guest. No way I could have anticipated that I’d end up with his job.

  It turned out to be a fun evening at Freddie’s until Jessica Fletcher struck. Someone was killed in the building, and I became a suspect.

  But Freddie was the guilty party. His plea of self-defense didn’t get him acquitted, but it must have influenced the jury and judge because he got a light sentence.

  After visiting him in prison last year, I decided no sentence is light. The guy Susannah had fallen for was tall, dark and handsome—wavy black hair, sharp nose and intelligent eyes.

  The guy I saw at the penitentiary had white hair, a broken nose, and sunken eyes. Intelligence still shone in the background. Or perhaps wisdom is a better word for it.

  He taught painting to the other inmates. The warden commended him for doing so, saying it was therapeutic.

  He gave me a sketch he made of Susannah. The way he held the paper—gently, the way a Buddhist monk might hold a rice paper lantern—told me he was still in love with her.

  When I gave Susannah that sketch last year, she stared at it and said, “Dance in the Country.”

  Turns out it was based on a painting by Renoir of two young people on a picnic in the countryside who have impetuously decided to dance rather than eat. The girl in Freddy’s version is Susannah. She was touched by the drawing, but not moved when I told her Freddy was a changed man.

  “They all say that to the parole board,” she said.

  Freddie was now being released, and I sat there wondering how to broach the subject
again. I didn’t want to be his advocate. But I thought he deserved a second chance at life. And with Susannah? I didn’t know. I decided the best tack was just to tell her I was his ride.

  “I’m picking up Freddie tomorrow and bringing him to Albuquerque.”

  “And you’re telling me why?”

  “Don’t want you to be shocked if you see him on the street.”

  “I can always cross to the other side.”

  That went well, I thought to myself.

  She said, “Let’s change the subject to something I’m interested in.”

  “Okay, how about Charles Webbe coming to the condo to get a DNA sample from me?”

  “A murder mystery! That’s more like it. Why did he want your DNA?”

  “He wouldn’t tell me. And he told me not to tell anyone except Sharice.”

  She looked at her arm. “Nope, not Sharice—I’m still a white girl.”

  We laughed so hard that it took me a few seconds to realize there was a third laugher behind me.

  Martin Seepu came around my right side, sat down and rolled up a sleeve to expose his arm. “Looks like I’m also still a redskin. What about you, paleface?”

  I rolled up a sleeve. “I’m still a Mounds candy bar—brown on the outside and white on the inside.”

  “You and about a million other New Mexicans,” he said to me. Then he asked Susannah why she checked to make sure she wasn’t black.

  “Hubie just told me about Charles Webbe asking him for a DNA sample. He told Hubie not to tell anyone about it except for Sharice.”

  “I’ve heard Charles explain that,” said Martin. “He says there should be no secrets between people who sleep together.”

  Susannah said, “Hubie and I don’t sleep together.”

  “But you’re as close as people who do,” Martin replied.

  If you’re wondering why Martin and I had to roll up our shirtsleeves, the answer is neither of us owns a short-sleeve shirt. Next time you pass a field where migrant workers are harvesting vegetables, note they all wear long-sleeve shirts. It’s cooler in the desert with your arms covered.

  Other than long-sleeve shirts, Martin and I didn’t have much in common when we met. He was fourteen, and I was an undergraduate who signed up for a mentoring program on the reservations. A guy from Student Services drove a van full of Hispanic and Anglo middle-class kids from the university out to Martin’s pueblo and ushered us into a rec center that had the acoustic quality of a concrete culvert. After making some remarks no one could hear, he handed each college student a name tag and told us to hang it around our neck. Then he went outside to smoke.