A World the Color of Salt

by Noreen Ayres

  He said no, eating my neck again, my collarbone.

  “Be still,” he said, then took my hand and led me to the door of the bedroom, which wasn’t far off from the living room. The bedroom. So soon? I thought. What about the wine? Smokey!

  He leaned me against the doorway. I started again to kiss him back, my lips getting as far as the side of his mouth, until he said, once again, “No. No,” his lips nibbling my diamond earring. That’s what he is, a gem thief.

  When his fingers started at the buttons of my blouse, my breasts turned into little radiant heaters. Could he feel the heat pulses, know how much I wanted his hand to cup them, make sure they were still part of me and not rotated off at greater and greater speed till they were out coursing the room like bright, buzzing, omniscient UFOs? My breath reached the front of his shirt and U-turned back to me. “I want—” I said, and didn’t get to finish.

  “Shhh. Close your eyes.” He kissed me on the forehead and at the corner of my eye while holding my arms. “Be still now. Quiet,” and words like that I don’t remember, barely heard then, my ears ringing, his voice low, soft, his smell clouding me. It is never—gossips, note this—it is never the one a woman hugs, never the one she flirts outrageously with, spends all her time with, in the office. Watch instead for the one she doesn’t. Watch for the one she avoids, walking down one hallway after she spots him walking down the other. It’ll drive you crazy; who’s she diddlin’? You’ll never know. You will not know. Not about Smokey, anyway.

  I said, “You don’t make love like a married man.”

  “Now, that’s a statement you could speculate on.” He grinned, and kissed me, his mouth hot and yet withholding. In the other room, I heard the familiar chords of something on the stereo. What was it? He began kissing me again, and I recognized the song, came up for air, and said, “How did you know?”

  “I know,” was all he said, his lips down the side of my face, covering my neck, and the voice of the singer blues-ing out the words behind us, Tell it like it i-is. . . . Recalling the song’s lyrics, about life being here and gone tomorrow, so baby live. Go on and live.

  I felt his fingers sweep my shoulders, and my blouse fall away. Where did it go? Where did my coat go? Am I going to sleep? Not thinking, but feeling, being.

  In my mind, free-form pictures were taking place: not the bad pictures, but good ones, of shimmering pampas-grass fans; a sand-colored mourning dove I saw once on a leafless tree, the sun striking the pale branches and the bleached autumn grasses beneath it, and the dove lifting its wings like cymbals, holding them there, airing out its little armpits, ahhh.

  There was pressure on the metal fastener of my jeans. Zip. Quick. Joe kissing my face. Not kissing my lips. Joe whispering, “Don’t do anything. Just hold very, very still. You don’t have to do . . . anything.”

  In my mind, the picture of Joe and Jennifer dancing together at one of our parties, the grace of them together, her brown hair catching the light and her dress swinging out. Remembering that picture then, feeling dismayed, and automatically placing a hand on top of Joe’s as he began to slide the jeans over my hipbones.

  “What?” he said.

  “Nothing.”

  His hands slipped around me, melting the landscape between my legs. Then kissing the top of my breast, and the edge of lace at the curve of my bra. Pulling the straps down. Just the straps, ma’am. Saving the rest. I started to help.

  No.

  Taking orders.

  His hips pinning me to the wall. My whole body could be a mouth. Gimme. Gimme. Yum, and yum.

  His lips went to the lace, over the lace, his hot mouth down then to my nipple; his tongue licking the lace off, and me bare to the world, which Joe was then at that moment, the whole world and nothing else.

  I felt the bed under me then, the soft comforter and the real down pillows puffing out at each side of my head, and from them a scent making me intensely restless.

  From my throat, a sound.

  I heard the crinkle of foil, and he started to fumble, so I whispered, “Let me do that for you,” then met his eyes and smiled and said, “I know: Be quiet.” But I rose partway up, his dark shape standing near me against the lighter darkness of the room, and took the foil from his fingers.

  When I was ready, the round braced between my lips, I leaned over and rolled it into place, as I’d heard it could be done. His hands clutched my shoulders, and now it was he who made a sound, and I lay back and closed my eyes and felt his weight shifting the bed and the heat of his body descending.

  My lips against his dear face.

  His husky, sweet, and hungry voice: “Smokey, Smokey.”

  CHAPTER

  26

  Our lives are not linear. Neither our actions. You’d like to think you get from A to C via B, but sometimes you jump all the way to M, then bounce back like a flea to B—actually, like a fly: A fly figures you’re going to think linearly. “Little bugger’ll head east, 14.66 feet per second; no problem, I’ll hit him on takeoff.” But no. A fly on takeoff jumps backward. Aha.

  This is how I explain going to Joe’s apartment before plunging in to search for Patricia. I could take care of one piece of business, cold as that may seem, and then have room for anger and hard intent.

  At work Christmas Eve morning, people were getting ready to take the afternoon off. I was determined to push through my jobs, not let people come around and jaw at me, telling me what they bought for their kids and where they were going skiing this year without them. Usually I listen for a while, take up papers in my hands, smile, and say, “Isn’t that great?” and then, “I have to go copy these.” While I’m gone I get a cup of coffee or visit the ladies’, and I’m back at my desk before they’re done with the next person. Today I told Herb, an odontologist, or dentist-for-the-dead as he calls it, that I had—groan!—a special tally to do for Stu and I had to get going. Betty Brankoff from ID was with him. I didn’t like fibbing to Betty, because I like her, but Herb’s cabin at Big Bear just doesn’t interest me that much.

  Billy Katchaturian was around, going from one person to the other telling them something, but before he got to me, I grabbed a folder and waved at him, saying: “Catch you later, Billy. I’m late for a meeting,” went downstairs to the library, and called Patricia at work. Or tried. They said she was sick. Sick, huh? I dialed my own answering machine to retrieve messages, thinking maybe she’d tried to call between the time I left the house and drove up again to Huntington Beach to the Fairdale Apartments, the fog having lifted and me not caring if I was late this morning. I knocked on her door and slid a note under: “Call me.” This after driving by Roland’s unit and seeing nothing; then knocking on the redheaded landlady’s door at seven A.M., she answering with a cockatiel named Willie Nelson on her arm. Telling me no, Patricia’s paid up, but apartment 210’s empty now, did I want to rent it? When she said that, my mood brightened, thinking first: He’s gone, out of our faces; and then: and took Patricia with him.

  I was about to ask another question when the woman started talking again. The tenant in 210 moved out in the middle of the night. No notice, just like that. “Leastways I won’t have to refund him the cleaning,” she said. Her loose floral housedress was scooped at the neck, revealing a pasty yellow scar in the middle of her throat. With her terry-cloth slippers on, she stood no higher than my chin, maybe four-nine. I wondered if she were short enough to qualify officially for the Little People organization. A wave of pity passed over me, but I couldn’t know why—she was a mean little rooster.

  “What about the last month’s rent?” I asked, stupidly hoping to get an address. “You going to send it anywhere?”

  “No, ma’am,” she said, shaking her head and combing down Willie Nelson’s green crown feathers. Though the morning air was chilly, she’d opened the door wide, and I could smell the strong odor of bacon within. “He’ll have to take me to court to get it. That’s his punishment for movin’ without a scrap of notice. Those types, they don’t p
ay attention to money anyhow.” She said it like gossip, lowering her voice.

  “Those types?”

  “You know. Those ones with the tattoos. Those ones allays lookin’ over one shoulder, mean like. I see ’em. I shoulda ast for two months in advance, see what I’d get,” she said, laughing tee-hee at such a good trick. “It’s the rich guys want to hold out for every little penny. There’s a renter down the corner in a Porsche puts a bill in my mailbox every time the dryer eats one of his nickels. That’s how they are. If I owned this place, I wouldn’t let the rich ones in. I’d take the other ones first, like the one vacated 210. You sure you don’t know somebody wants a nice place?”

  Now, from the library, I heard the beep that told me I had no messages and then took five minutes more and called Raymond and Gary, asking if they’d call around Huntington Beach and San Pedro, see if there’s a bartender named Judy or maybe even Jubey, if I heard it right.

  Late morning, about the time the effects of one hour’s sleep were hitting me, Raymond called. Raymond, bless his auto-club heart, snagged a bartender for me, a woman who worked at the Fore ‘n’ Aft, Huntington Beach, days. I forgot to tell him night bartenders, was irritated with myself, until I thought it wouldn’t matter, because people switch shifts. No dice, he said. This one’s been out with the same operation you had, just back to work and not doing nights yet.

  “How’d you get all that out of her?” I said.

  “Charm, what else? I’ll keep at it, if you want, but it’s getting pretty busy out here.”

  “That’s okay, doll.”

  “Don’t you worry,” he said, his voice a warm wave of honey. I missed him then, missed looking in his deep brown eyes while he exercised his male right to practice his moves, the solid jaw coming around as he’d look at you, like, Sweetie, I got moves I ain’t even thought of yet. One time I told him, Raymond, you’ve been seeing too many Emilio Estevez movies, and he said, all innocentlike, “Who’s he?” Okay, then, I said, his brother, the one in Wall Street. “Who?” he says. “Sheen. Charlie. You know, and you have that same grin he does.” Raymond, not one to give up easily, looked away then, smiling, and said, “So that’s my competition, huh?”

  Now he was saying, “Somebody’s going to be sending those righteous Adam Henrys your way, Smokes. Just be patient. Hang in there.” Adam Henrys were assholes; code talk, even though Ray was on his cellular, not using the airwaves, where the FCC could be listening in.

  “Thanks, Raymond, for whatever time you gave it.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Stay out of trouble out there.”

  “Dig. Hey, Smokey?”

  “What?”

  “We found a Moe on the tracks today.” He was referring to the hundreds, no, thousands, of illegals who make it up from the border, crossing at a fearful price paid to people who profit from human adversity, the ones who rape, steal, beat, and kill with virtual impunity. Still these pollos, chickens, come, spewing into the canyons until they reach by hook or crook northern cities such as Anaheim and Santa Ana, to pack a dozen to a room in cheap apartments where the landlord looks the other way; and in the chilly mornings go stand in empty lots next to fast-food places, hoping a slow-moving truck will stop and the man inside will lean out and say, “Three manos today,” pick and shovel or hammer and broom, or until some citizens’ group drives them away.

  The boy on the tracks was probably just trying to catch a fast ride. The morgue is loaded with Does of Hispanic descent.

  “Jeez, Ray.”

  There was a pause, and then he said, “I got overlap and graveyard tonight.”

  “Oh, no, Ray. Christmas Eve? That’s awful. And still you took time to do my calling for me.”

  “The glamorous life of a traffic officer.”

  “Well, hey, Raymond. Kick ass and take names tonight, okay?”

  He said, “Some poor slob of a motorist is going to wish he’d stayed at the office and worked all night.”

  “Attaboy, Ray. Show no mercy. Love ya, pal.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  I laughed, and then heard him sign off with, “Love ya too, Smoke.”

  CHAPTER

  27

  People started to drift away from their desks and their little coffee klatches to fuss with foods they’d brought in. I made one more phone call.

  “Gary—”

  “Twenty-one pitches, no hits. Sorry, sister, no bartenders by that name.”

  “I appreciate you trying anyway, Gary. I know a lot of bars aren’t even open yet, so you probably came up with a lot of duds. What say I buy you lunch?”

  “You don’t have parties to go to?”

  “There’s food all over the place.”

  “And you still want lunch with an old man?”

  “No, I don’t. Don’t invite him. Just you.”

  Feeding time, not with Gary, but at eleven-thirty, in the lab. Guacamole and chips. Rugalach. Falafel, and brownies, and chocolate chip cookies giving Mrs. Fields a run for her money. Salads. Meatballs bobbing in barbecue sauce. Too much.

  Kathleen Kennedy and the personnel director had dressed up the long tables with paper tablecloths and a centerpiece of pine branches and candy canes.

  Billy K. and Chris Cummins, the specialist in charge of the CAR, the Coroner’s Analytic Robot, shared dubious honors for Good Glop in a Crock-Pot. When Chris came into the room dressed in his lab coat and a chef’s hat, Billy K. followed with several bricks of cream cheese clutched in each hand. For the longest time they fussed at the table, Billy’s dark head down, Chris’s sandy hair bunched out like mini-muffins. As I’d pass by on my way to go do this or that, Chris’d look up from his stirring with a mad scientist’s grin on his face and inhale the aroma.

  “You getting high on that stuff, Chris?” I asked him.

  He Jet go the wooden spoon, rolled his eyes heavenward, and fluttered his hands.

  Chris monitors the robot, meant to take the tedium out of analyzing the whole splendid array of toxins both legal and otherwise that people use to alter their bored and pitiful states. The robot releases such solvents as chloroform into the samples, caps the tubes, shakes them, and moves them to a centrifuge where they’re spun at tremendous force, causing the solvent to separate. He readjusts the pH, identifies acidic drugs, such as codeine and Tylenol, then sticks the sample back in the CAR to repeat the whole routine, this time testing for antidepressants; for anesthetics, such as cocaine and nitrous oxide; for anorexics—those compounds that suppress appetite—such as meth, the magic vitamin, and China White, a designer drug with 18,000 times the toxicity of heroin. And with each run of thirty samples, he includes seven or eight other compounds for a linearity check, a “standard,” for control, so no whiner on a witness stand gets to cry “Foul.”

  When the time came to pluck up paper plates and feast, we gathered around Chris like hesitant school kids while he lifted the glass lid of the pot and began to spoon. The mixture was a sort of cantaloupe color.

  “Smells like chili. But it don’t walk like chili,” someone said.

  “Looks like something erupted from a very sick dog,” I said, and everyone groaned and said, Thank you, Smokey, thank you very much.

  “I’ll have you know this product was developed in the Robert,” the Robert being Chris’s name for the CAR. “I call it Chris Cummins’s Crimeval Chili.”

  My boss was hanging back, waiting near two file cabinets just outside the door, with a clear view of the action. Supervisors always wait till the last in food lines, just as lieutenants always sacrifice themselves in the front lines of a war. He asked Chris, “Is that spelled as in primeval or crime and evil?”

  “Take your pick,” Chris said, beaming, plopping a blob on the next person’s plate. Billy gave us the go-ahead, saying, If you closed your eyes, you could eat it—and everybody did, even me, with me meeting Gary Svoboda for lunch in barely an hour.

  “Where’s Joe Sanders?” The question came from a Colombian Joe had recomm
ended for a job about six months ago.

  Kathleen looked around the room, chin bobbing as she counted bodies, and said, “Yeah, we have a few people missing, don’t we?” She wore a red dress with a beaded snowflake on the shoulder, and next to her, one haunch on a desk, the supply clerk was casting appreciative glances.

  Luther Furijawa said he saw Joe at the morgue earlier. “We had a vegetable-oil case over there.” A bony man with a streak of clean gray above the right temple, he was a man people liked and respected.

  Stu Hollings, from the doorway, said, “I thought Freon was outlawed,” referring to the fluorocarbon propellant base used in the cans. Fluorocarbons are cardio-toxic. With some people it doesn’t take many uses to become sensitized; the heart responds by fibrillating.

  “Yeah, Kathleen can’t even sniff correction fluid anymore,” the supply clerk said. “What’s the world coming to?”

  Luther Furijawa said, “That’s right. Trichloroethane, the drying agent in correction fluid, has been replaced with a non-intoxicating, ozone-safe solvent.” He shook his head and said, “This young man was fifteen years old, an A student, too. So sad. Dr. Watanabe thought it was a case of simple asphyxiation—suicide, or perhaps death at the hands of another—because the boy had a plastic sack over his head. But I was afraid it could be an inhalant and thereby volatile, so we examined the lungs underwater.” When Luther said this, it wasn’t self-congratulatory, because that is not the way Luther is. He added that the boy had been with two of his friends, hanging out, doing homework, listening to music, eating cookies the boy had baked himself. He excused himself to go to the bathroom, and never came out.

  We were all silent for a moment, until I heard Trudy’s deep voice: “Isn’t that too bad?” she said. “Why do kids do that to themselves?” That was the most I’d ever heard Trudy say out loud in a group like that. She seemed relaxed today, smiling more, and when she finished saying what she did, her gaze settled on me from across the room with a pleasant look on her face. Standing next to her was Billy K., both of them against the wall by the window as they ate, their coffee cups on the sill. The line of Trudy’s glasses came up to about the height of Billy’s elbow. Her hair seemed longer, and she was wearing colors, green slacks and a red blouse, and red Christmas-light earrings that blinked off and on, off and on, reflecting on her cheeks. I wondered if Trudy could consider Billy K. a possible match. My eyes flicked over to meet his then, and I thought, Uh-oh, and looked away.