Pot Thief Who Studied Pythagoras

by J. Michael Orenduff

  My glass had salt around its rim. Hers did not. Other than that one difference, we agree on all others aspects of the perfect margar­ita—never from a mix, always with silver tequila, never frothed or frozen, and never with strawberries, raspberries, peach liqueur, pepper­mint swizzle sticks, crumbled Hershey bars or any of the other countless adulterations which the noble Nuestra Señora de Agave has suffered in recent years.

  Tequila is now one of the most popular distilled spirits in the United States, but I wonder why people in Boston or Birmingham like it. Its prime appeal to me is that it tastes like the desert—saline, organic and slightly viscous like the juice of the cactus it’s distilled from.

  I don’t understand why anyone would drink añejo, the aged tequila whose amber color comes from being aged in wood casks like scotch or bourbon. If you want woody liquor, order those two. Don’t adulterate good tequila. Pour it in a shot glass and hold it up to the light. Try to discern the ever so slight tincture of green. Hold it on your tongue and feel its volatile vapors chase the fog from your sinuses. Then let it roll down your throat like warm silver.

  Why do I drink it in margaritas? Because pure shots send me straight to Margaritaville.

  The agave is Mexico’s national treasure, their answer to Canada’s maple trees or our waves of amber grain. Mexican art is replete with images of the agave, a source of native pride, something not brought by the conquistadores. And New Mexico is part and parcel of Old Mexico, a stretch of the high Sonoran Desert stolen by the USA.

  “You’re not giving up on art history, are you, Suze?”

  “No, you’ve got to take the bad along with the good.”

  “And what is the good?” I inquired.

  “You sound like Socrates. I think he said the good is one of the Forms.”

  “Is philosophy another of your former majors?”

  She shook her head. “I took it for general education. It was supposed to be an introduction to philosophy, and I was excited. I thought we’d be discussing how the universe began and what happens when you die. But all the instructor ever talked about was Socrates living in a cave.”

  “I think that was an allegory.”

  “No, I’m pretty sure it was a cave. There were prisoners chained to a wall and people crossed in front of them with cut-out figures of animals and houses and stuff, and a fire from behind threw shadows on the cave wall. The prisoners thought the shadows were real animal shapes because that’s all they had ever seen. Or maybe they thought the shadows were real animals. I’m not too clear on that part. But the idea was that the prisoners are like us. We think what we see is real, but … Oh, I get it—allegory. I wasn’t paying attention. You don’t think I’m stupid, do you? I mean ‘allegory’ isn’t a word you hear every day, and when you said it—”

  “I know you’re not stupid, but I may be.” It was time to own up to sort of planning a theft from the Valle del Rio Museum. “Guess what I did today.”

  She gasped. “You stole that pot from the Museum?”

  “No, but I did go there to look around.”

  She laughed and said, “You cased the joint!”

  “I guess you could call it that,” I admitted. “That’s why Guvelly’s visit unnerved me. I went to the Museum and looked at the pot just to see if I might be able to do it. I even picked it up. But I left it right where I found it and went home. Then right after I got home, he showed up and said they were investigating the theft of a Mogollon pot.”

  “And you thought he meant the one you had just looked at.”

  “Exactly. It was like an episode from Twilight Zone.”

  “I love that show.”

  “Yeah, I used to enjoy it, too. But this wasn’t like watching it. It was like being in it. I felt like I’d been under surveillance, and the people watching knew I’d gone to the Museum. But they didn’t just know what I did. They knew what I was thinking. I thought he was going to arrest me.”

  “What could he arrest you for? You hadn’t done anything.”

  “I had committed larceny in my heart.”

  “Who said that? Wait, I know. It was Jimmy Carter. Except it wasn’t larceny. It was lust.”

  “Lust is better,” I said, “and also not illegal.”

  “Neither is stealing if all you do is think about it.”

  “I’m not so sure. I think planning to commit a burglary is a felony even if you don’t actually go through with it.”

  “Hey, you’re right. I remember Bernie Rhodenbarr mentioning that you can be arrested just for having burgling tools on you even if you don’t use them.”

  I stared at her blankly. “Who is Bernie Rhodenbarr?”

  “He’s the burglar in those books I told you about.”

  “Oh, right,” I said. Susannah has the endearing habit of talking about fictional characters as if they lived down the street from her.

  “You didn’t have any burglar tools on you, did you?”

  “I had a couple of napkins that I used to lift the pot.”

  The way Susannah holds her wide shoulders back could almost seem military except she looks so relaxed and natural doing it. But when she’s perplexed, she does this thing where she lets her shoulders fall forward and her long neck tilt back. She was doing that now and staring at me. “You didn’t want to leave fingerprints?”

  “No, I didn’t want to damage the pot. Oil from your hands can stain pottery.”

  “That was considerate of you. So you didn’t use the napkins as burglar tools. And anyway, I don’t think napkins would count no matter how you used them.”

  “It doesn’t matter if I had burgling tools. I was there trying to figure out how to steal the pot. That has to be as much intent as merely carrying around a crowbar.”

  “But they didn’t know you were planning to steal it.”

  “I know that. But when Guvelly showed up like he had trailed me from the Museum and asked me about the pot, I couldn’t think straight. It was like when you were a kid thinking about some mischief, and then you see your mother looking at you. You’re positive she knows what you’re thinking.”

  “That’s just guilty conscience.”

  I knew she was right, but it still felt strange. I couldn’t escape the feeling I had barely averted a disaster, even though that wasn’t true. Guvelly didn’t even know I had been at the Museum until I told him. No one was watching. I had nothing to worry about. Right?

  Susannah canted her head and said, “Tell me honestly. When you had that pot in your hands, did you think for just a moment about walking out with it?”

  “I thought about how much I would like to have it. It’s an amazing piece of work, and it’s survived over a thousand years with just a little chip out of the rim. But I didn’t think about carrying it out.”

  “Why not?”

  “The building is too secure. The windows have steel bars. The door has a double-cylinder deadbolt. The front has a security camera. There are at least two guards plus other employees around. There’s no way to get that pot out.”

  “So you won’t be able to collect the twenty-five thousand.”

  “I’m afraid not. I guess I’ll just have to earn my tax money legally.”

  I was trying to get Angie’s attention, but Susannah said, “One’s my limit. I have a date tonight.”

  “Someone new?”

  “Of course someone new. You wouldn’t expect me to go out again with any of the losers I’ve dated in the past, would you?”

  “So who is the latest contender?”

  “He is soooo handsome. He has that LA look—spiky gelled hair, olive skin, and shoulders—”

  “You’d like to rest your head on.”

  “Well, for starters maybe. He smells good, too. Not a cologne smell. I can’t describe it, but it’s tantalizing. He must be giving off profiteroles.”

 
“I think maybe you mean pheromones. Is he a student?”

  “No, he was the guest lecturer on Remington. He’s actually from LA Can you imagine that? Me, a simple ranching girl, going out with someone from LA?”

  “He’s the lucky one. How much better a ranch girl than one of the phonies in Southern California.”

  I enjoy our conversations for what she says, but I like the way she says it almost as much. She is free from both that irritating nasal whine many young people have today and their affectation of ending every sentence with a tonal upswing.

  “He’s just staying through the weekend,” she said. “I got to be part of the small group that showed him through the Museum after his talk—a private tour—and he asked me out. He wanted to go out right then, but I’d already had all those margaritas, and I didn’t feel like I could be very charming. Plus, what would I do if he wanted to buy me a drink?”

  I looked at her blankly. “I give up. What would you do?”

  “That’s the problem. There’s nothing you can do. If you say no, then he won’t have one, and right away you’re off to a bad start because most dates start with a little getting-to-know-you over drinks. Also, if I refused a drink he might think I don’t drink, and who wants to date someone who doesn’t drink?”

  “Who indeed?”

  “But if I did let him buy me a drink, it would have been my fifth one, and I might have started acting silly. So I suggested tonight would be better.”

  Although she didn’t have another drink, I did. I took a sip when it arrived to make sure it was as good as the first one. It was. Then I looked up and the mysterious Angie was still standing there, her dark eyes looking at me from under those long lashes.

  “Mr. Schuze?”

  “Yes, Angie.”

  “I need to tell you something. I’m not supposed to say anything, but I have to because you are … Well, it just seems wrong not to tell you even though he made me promise I wouldn’t.”

  I gave her an avuncular smile. “Who are you talking about?”

  “He’s a federal agent, and he was asking questions about you.”

  “Yes, I know about him. He thinks I did something wrong, but I didn’t. I’m not worried about it. I won’t let anyone know you told me about him.”

  “So you’re okay?”

  “I’m okay.”

  She started to walk away. “Angie,” I said, and she turned and looked at me. “Thanks for telling me.”

  Her wide smile softened her angular face. “We can’t afford to lose our best customer.” She swirled gracefully away, her long tiered skirt rustling like banana leaves.

  The wind had died down as it almost always does at night, and I sat easily in the dry brisk evening enjoying the margarita and the scents of Dos Hermanas—the masa from the enchiladas, the smoke from the piñon logs in the fireplace and Angie’s lemony perfume.

  6

  The only place I like better than Dos Hermanas is my own house.

  I own, in partnership with the Old Town Savings Bank, the east third of a north-facing adobe located half a block off the plaza. The house was built in 1685, although it’s impossible to know which parts are original and which parts belong to the countless remodels that have taken place over the last three centuries. There are four entrances—the front one to the shop, a back door out the kitchen that opens onto an alley and two doors on the east side that open off the bedroom and living room respectively into a small patio. Come to think of it, I don’t know if the two doors to the patio can properly be called entrances since the area is entirely surrounded by an eight-foot adobe wall, so that entering from the east would require a big leap or a tall ladder.

  Before I bought the place, it was a kitsch palace selling beaded purses from Malaysia, cactus candy from Canada, feathered headdresses from Honduras and soft-serve ice cream from a chemical plant in the suburbs of Denver. Actually, I’m not certain where the chemical plant was. I’m pretty sure nothing in the shop was made in New Mexico.

  When I was dismissed from the University, I sold the pots that led to that event and used the money for a down payment on my part of the building. Being kicked out of college didn’t bode well for a job search, so I decided to start my own business.

  Since dismissal also meant loss of my student housing, I needed a place to live. That was before the current trend of college graduates moving back in with their parents, so I never considered that an option.

  The back portion of the space had been the storeroom, its walls a combination of exposed adobe, cement plaster, dirt plaster, plywood and the odd cardboard patch here and there. I hired day laborers to strip everything down to the bare adobe.

  I’m a potter, so I know clay. Some generous friends call me an artist, but I am an artisan at best. Making pottery is no more a fine art than is trimming trees into topiary.

  When all the walls of my residence had been repaired, I set about plastering them with traditional adobe plaster. The formula calls for clay, sand, water, finely chopped straw, prickly pear cactus juice and donkey manure. Put in a blender and serve it over ice at Dos Hermanas and they might call it a cóctel de caliche. It couldn’t taste any worse than Campari.

  I left out the prickly pear juice and the donkey manure, but mixed in everything else including the straw, which makes unfinished adobe glisten in the sunlight and made the conquistadores think they had discovered the Seven Cities of Gold. They must have been having a few cocktails themselves.

  The final result was spectacular. The plaster follows whatever irregular shapes existed in the walls and ceilings. The final coat is a brilliant white with the geometry of a Georgia O’Keeffe painting. I had intended to hang a few prints, but the flow of the surfaces is so soothing that I can’t bring myself to disrupt it. So the walls remain bare, a sort of art form themselves.

  The floor of my living quarters is piñon pine sanded to its natural color and waxed. Because the boards are neither stained, lacquered, nor coated with polyurethane, they emit on hot days the sweet scent of piñon, carnauba and beeswax. I walked over that floor from living quarter to workshop to shop and opened the door for business.

  Standing in front of it was Emilio Sanchez. He removed his hat and said, “Buenos días, Señor Uberto.”

  “Buenos días, amigo. Ha subido temprano.”

  The sun had not yet peeked over the Sandia Mountains to the east and the air was crisp and still. Emilio wore work boots, khaki pants, a chambray shirt and a denim jacket. The pants and shirt were freshly washed and pressed, but the boots were scuffed and the hat was sweat-stained.

  “It is not so early. When you are an old one like me, you do not sleep so well.”

  I invited him in, shut the door and left the Closed sign facing the street.

  “You must not close your shop because of me,” he said.

  “Don’t worry. There won’t be any customers this morning.”

  We went to my kitchen table where I gave him a cup of coffee and an apology for it in advance. Emilio carries himself like an eighteenth-century duelist, erect and proud. Sixty years of manual labor have scarred his hands and darkened his skin, but both his posture and his spirit remain unbowed.

  He sat upright in his chair, nodded to me and took a sip. He placed the cup on the table and crossed his hands in his lap. “Uberto, I have brought from the doctor a paper I do not understand. My English is not so good.”

  “Your English is excellent. Not even an English teacher can decipher medical papers.”

  “What means decipher?”

  “It is almost the same word in Spanish, decifre.”

  “Ah. The same word but sound different.”

  I read the paper. It was an explanation of the requirements for a patient undergoing dialysis. After I explained it to him, I asked if he had another paper from the doctor.

  “Yes, I have this other paper you spea
k of, but I am ashamed to—”

  “Señor Sanchez,” I said, “you must not prevent me from following the wishes of my parents. Give me the bill so that I can arrange for the insurance to pay it.”

  “But I worry that you—”

  “You worry about Consuela. I’ll worry about the bills.”

  Consuela Saenz—she didn’t become Consuela Sanchez until I was in college—was housekeeper to my parents, second mother to me and cook to all three of us. I have three skills—making pots, speaking Spanish, and cooking Mexican food—and she taught me two of them.

  “I do worry about her,” Emilio said. “It is a bad sickness.”

  “It is,” I agreed, “but people live for many years with this condition.”

  “This is also as the doctor says. He tells Consuela she can live to one hundred.”

  “And what does she say?”

  He looked up toward the ceiling. “She say she does not want to be one hundred. She just want to live long enough to see a grandchild.”

  “That sounds like her.”

  “She also tell me, Uberto, that she gives thanks to the Virgin every day for your parents.”

  “She was very good to them. And to me. Of course she spoiled me. I am never satisfied with Mexican food unless she has cooked it.”

  It was good to see him smile. “Then I hope you will enjoy this small gift,” he said and removed a sack of breakfast burritos from his pocket.

  7

  As I predicted, no customers came in that morning.

  Which was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, I could have used a good sale. On the other, it gave me time to eat the entire sack of breakfast burritos, a quantity so large it took half a bottle of New Mexico’s finest champagne to wash them down properly. And if you’re surprised by the phrase “New Mexico’s finest champagne,” you haven’t tasted Gruet.

  After breakfast, I pulled out an anthology of articles about Pythagoras and started reading them. I think most bestsellers are inane. Why would anyone want to read books with titles like The South Beach Diet, Reinventing the Family, or Investing in Globalization? But I admit that an anthology on Pythagoras is arcane even by my standards. I had checked it out of the library only because I commented on a poster of Pythagoras near the reference librarian’s station, and she said there was a new collection of articles about him that were interesting. The next thing I knew she had placed the volume in my hand, and I took it so as not to disappoint her.