North of the Border

by Judith Van GIeson

  My eyes met his—they’ll do that if someone stares at you long enough—and he raised his drink, something clear, I noticed, no ice. It was an odd gesture, overly confident, or maybe not confident enough. There’s a place where opposites meet, south becomes north, excess turns to lack. The place where weakness turns to arrogance is in the ego; this man was spending too much time there if he thought tipping a drink was going to win me over. For a moment there was a hole in Bailey’s babble, no one chattered idly, no glasses clinked, no typewriters were sold. Nothing happened, except his eyes met mine. The sound came back on. He swallowed his drink, put the glass down, and walked away.

  “Who’s that guy?” I asked Sally.

  “Andrew Monogal,” Sally said. “He comes in here often, but that’s the first time I ever saw him pay attention to anyone, man or woman. He runs the Mother Lode.”

  I licked the last bit of salt from the edge of my glass. “Where have I heard that name? Sounds like a singles bar.”

  “It’s the gold mine in Lagrima.”

  So that was it. I hadn’t thought he was a cowboy, or special either, even if he had been alone too long. The gold mine was a client of Lovell, Cruse’s. I remembered that now, although I’d never seen him around the office or I’d have remembered that, too. “The price of gold must be down, if he can’t do any better than that suit.”

  “Maybe, but the mine itself is worth nine million dollars. The government is going to pay that much to turn it into a nuclear dump.”

  “The WIPP project.”

  “You got it.”

  “That guy would be pathetic, even with millions.”

  “To you, maybe, but not to everyone. Money talks.”

  “I’m not listening.”

  “He’s a lonely person, Neil.”

  “Who isn’t?”

  “He spends all his time out there with the rattlesnakes and mining engineers. That mine is all he ever thinks about; it’s his romance, and his family too. You ever think about having a family, Neil?”

  An empty glass was working its way across the bar toward the Cuervo Gold, Triple Sec, crushed ice, and salt. “Yes, but I don’t think about it as much as the average human being or I’d have one by now.”

  “I think about it all the time and I don’t have one. Every time I see a woman with a baby, I think, why her? Why not me? It makes me feel like I have a big hole in my chest.”

  “Baby envy.”

  “What else is there?” She took the glass and began to mix my margarita. “Work?”

  “What else is there?” I looked off into the distance, out the doorway, down the road. “There’s the lonesome highway and there’s the endless sky.”

  “You sure you want another drink?”

  “Maybe not.” I felt a tapping on my shoulder, saw a glimmer of a frosted nail. Anna.

  “We’re going to the Wooly Bully. Wanna come?”

  “Not me. You guys go. Have a good time, but don’t be late for work tomorrow.”

  “Ha,” she said. “Tomorrow’s Saturday.”

  Brink was, as always, undecided, so I did it for him. “You wait here,” I said, “while I go to the ladies’ room. And don’t let anybody take my seat.”

  The ladies’ room was snug and pink, pearly as the inside of a conch shell. I let myself into the stall, put my purse on the shelf, sat down. The Mother Lode—what a name for a gold mine. The shelf snapped shut and dumped my purse to the floor. I bent over to pick it up. CHRIS IS A DORK someone had scratched on the wall, and JELLYROLL KILLED MY MAMMA.

  Brink was in my seat conversing with Sally when I got back. She hadn’t seen the triple play, but she had heard about it. Good old Sally, the kind of woman everybody wants to lean on. Maybe she’d make a spot for Brink.

  “You keep the seat,” I told him. “I’m going home.”

  “Already?” he asked.

  “Already,” I replied. “See you Monday.”

  Fresh air would have done me some good, but I didn’t notice any. Sometimes the nights in Albuquerque are so clear you can see every distant star, even the satellites as they blip across the sky, but this night wasn’t. It’s the altitude that brings you closer to the stars and the mountains that hold the pollution in. The air was thick. It tasted like metal and smelled like New Jersey. I could hear the cars pounding on the interstate like waves on a nearby shore. I tried to remember where I had left the Rabbit. It was out there somewhere, bleached sickly yellow by mercury-vapor lamps. I started across the lot, slowly, walking underwater with the current against me. I was so tired… the lot was so big. I wanted to get into my car, put my head down, and rest. Even to think about driving home seemed arduous.

  A truck was slowly cruising the lot, a souped-up number with springs that raised the cab a good four feet above wheels that were already four feet high. The body was black with lots of chrome trim, including smokestacks that poked like periscopes above the cab. A bunch of chrome tubes that connected the body to the wheels gleamed like vicious, shiny teeth. It was somebody’s idea of macho cool, and it would have been laughable if it weren’t so expensive, if it weren’t so big, if it weren’t picking up speed and gunning for me.

  The springs weren’t there just for looks: speed bumps didn’t even slow it down. The headlights were as tall as I was and they singled me out. The horrible, grinning thing was going to flatten me. I ran. It was smiling, moving in. I stumbled, lost my shoe, ripped my panty hose to shreds, got up, kept running. I saw myself spread-eagled on the pavement like a squished frog. In the last second before it caught me, I dove and rolled across the macadam, pulling myself under somebody’s four-by-four. As I fell I could see the thing swish its tail and disappear, parting a path through the haze.

  8

  THE VERY NEXT day, Saturday, found me in the office nursing my cuts and bruises, along with a body that ached as if I’d galloped a mustang to Denver and back. Lawyers in certain prestigious firms spend Saturdays in their offices—it’s part of the mystique to work too hard, drink too much, have messed-up personal lives, and go home to neglected partners or empty rooms. That’s what I rejected when I went out on my own. This was what I got.

  I bent over painfully and picked up the mail the mailman had pushed through the slot. Among the letters and bills and circulars from Albertson’s was a hand delivered envelope from Lovell, Cruse, Vigil, and Roberts, and inside, was a note from Carl: Neil, in hopes you will reconsider. Fond good wishes, Carl. “Fond good wishes,” indeed. Where did he get such garbage? There were two enclosures: an invitation to his coming-out party on Sunday, which was not at his home but at a Corrales address I didn’t recognize, and the file stolen from Menendez’s office, a copy of which had been stolen from mine. Did this mean that I now held the only copy? It was unlikely. Carl kept copies of what he did, safeguarded what he had. Lovell, Cruse, Vigil, and Roberts were protected by an alarm system and a six-foot-tall Sikh guard in a khaki uniform and blue turban with a gun at his hip. The Sikhs, known locally as diaperheads, part of New Mexico’s colorful community of religious worshippers, lived communally outside Española. Militant and efficient, they guarded New Mexico’s more prosperous businesses, conspicuous by their presence, a reminder of who had something to protect, attracting criminal avarice while they guarded against it. It’s a valuable skill to cause a problem and solve it at the same time.

  Damn Carl, I thought. Persistent as rain, beating on people’s heads, washing over and around them, undermining their foundations until he got what he wanted. The choice was simple: he wanted me in, they wanted me out. Scared off if I stayed out, manipulated if I didn’t.

  They weren’t the kind of options you could line up on a sheet of yellow paper, draw a line between, and say this is good, this is bad, this is better than that. They were both bad. I didn’t want to think about it, and the best way not to think about it was to think about something else. I spread my files out. Lots of munchies for the mind here. Judy Bates, for example; I owed her a call. I owed her a lot of calls
. I had a stack of pink slips on my desk that said Judy Bates called, ASAP, urgent, please return call. She’d be pleased to know I was thinking of her on a Saturday afternoon.

  What did I get for my trouble? Judy, in that state women fall into all too easily: victim mind. I happened to mention, casually, foolishly, that I had seen Jay Dean in Bailey’s.

  “You went drinking with Jay Dean?” she said, implying that I had been fraternizing with the enemy. She didn’t understand one of the operating principles of the legal system, that men’s club I belonged to—he wasn’t the enemy, he was an adversary, and at the same time, a friend. That’s the way things got done in the professional world.

  “Not exactly. We just happened to be in the same bar.”

  “In the same bar?”

  “It was seven o’clock at night. After hours.”

  “But you didn’t talk to him?”

  “It didn’t seem like the appropriate moment.”

  “If you don’t want to handle my divorce,” she whined, “that’s all right. I’ll do it myself.”

  “Well, it’s your decision, of course, but I can’t honestly recommend it. There are matters of personal property, records, chain saws, and a dog that seem to mean a lot to you.”

  “Then I’ll get a man to represent me.”

  She’d gone too far. I took a look down the long, lonesome highway at life without Judy. No more phone calls, no more pink slips with her name on them, no more Peanut. “All right,” I said, and started to hang up.

  She began to cry. Her sobs echoed like they were bouncing off tin. I heard Tammy Wynette in the background singing about her D-I-V-O-R-C-E. That was self-pity. That was the chocolate cake and chocolate ice cream of self-pity. You couldn’t sink much deeper into self-pity than that. “I just want you to help me,” she cried.

  “I can’t help you until you turn that record off.”

  Click. She did it. “Now, where’s Peanut?” I wouldn’t have asked that question, except that I already knew the answer. As a matter of fact, there was a letter from Jay Dean in the pile on the floor saying that Peanut had been returned as a peace offering, now could we get down to business—chain saws, records, payments on the trailer.

  “He’s right here in my lap and you’re not going to let mean old Daddy take you away ever again, are you, sweet thing?”

  “Now, Judy, what you need to do is get out of the house. Take Peanut for a walk. It’s not doing any good to sit around feeling sorry for yourself.”

  “Get out? For a walk?”

  “It’ll be good for you.”

  “Well, I don’t know.”

  “I insist.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  It was good advice. I should have taken it myself. This day was leaving me with a craving for something; nothing as gloppy as chocolate ice cream or Tammy Wynette, but something. I left the office. It was a busy world out there. People washing their cars, watering their rocks, taking their kids to the zoo.

  I got into the Rabbit. Saturday afternoon with no place to go. I just sort of released the Rabbit from its lead and let it wander. It circled up Central, then through the university and back out Menaul, definitely leaning toward the South Valley, the barrio, Callejón Blanco, the Sparkle Car Wash. It needed a wash, but that’s not what it really had on its mind. It remembered how carefully—tenderly, even—the Kid had fixed it. This was something I had never done before, something I had thought I might never do. I had only been to the Kid’s shop when the car needed work; never once had I stopped there just to see him. I found the street, Callejón Blanco. There was a line in front of the Sparkle Car Wash. Of the few things in life worth waiting in line for, a car wash wasn’t one.

  The Kid’s shop was not much of an attraction, a gray cinder-block building with a flying-red-horse sign, surrounded by pieces of cars. I didn’t see the Kid’s white pickup, but it could be inside, being worked on. The garage door was open and I heard the sweet sound of Mexican music. Someone lay prone on a dolly under an old Saab. I could tell it wasn’t the Kid because the Kid doesn’t have big feet and fat ankles. It was his partner, Manny.

  “Hey Manny,” I called. “Manny.”

  He didn’t hear me, the music was too loud. I tugged at his foot. He started and banged his head on something beneath the car. “Puta madre.” This episode was beginning to have mistake written on it. Manny rolled out from under the car, not especially glad to see me, never having appreciated even my marginal presence in his partner’s life. The Kid was the mechanic, Manny the businessman. He didn’t like it that the Kid and I had something to do with one another. I was Anglo, the Kid wasn’t; wasn’t that reason enough to meet in the dark or not at all? His look when I was around was sort of confused, sort of hostile, sort of pretending that nothing was going on.

  “He’s not here,” he said, demonstrating all of the above.

  “Well, thanks anyway.” So it was a mistake. I’d leave quietly.

  “He’s at his house. You know where that is?”

  “No, but that’s okay. I don’t want to bother him.”

  “No bother. Here.” He wrote the address down for me on the back of a bill. I’d never heard of the street, but I knew where it must be, deep in the heart and soul of the barrio.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “I’ll tell him you were here.” Friendly statement, but there was something besides friendliness in the tone. M-I-S-T-A-K-E was the song playing on my mind’s radio. I stuck the address in my purse, went home, had a few drinks, watched a tennis match on TV. John McEnroe made a terrific return that went out. He threw his racquet into the net and called someone a fucking French frog. I fell asleep on the sofa, but when I woke up again it was still only ten. A women’s volleyball match had come on ESPN. The room was dark, I was alone, I don’t like volleyball. So why shouldn’t I go looking for the Kid if I needed him? Didn’t he come looking for me?

  I got into El Conejo and put in my Patsy Cline tape. In twenty minutes you can go from mountain to desert in this state, from Anglo to Indian to Mex. The barrio was a bit of old Mexico here in New. Not necessarily a good place to be on a Saturday night if you didn’t know what you were doing or where you were going; if you were a woman, Anglo, alone. There were long lines in front of the drive-in liquor stores—lines at the bank on Saturday morning, the car wash in the afternoon, the liquor stores at night. There are Saturday night brawls in this part of town, shootings, stabbings, by “Mexican nationals,” as they like to say in the paper. I drove along at ten miles an hour, trapped between a purple low-rider out cruising and a black one. The bars here were bright, brassy, filling up. The Kid played in one of those bars, music that people drank and fought and slow-danced to. The music the Kid liked best was slow and sweet. The low-riders turned at the corner to cruise the strip again. I switched the tape to Willie Nelson and headed south.

  In this old part of town, the houses are small one-story adobes, close together. The cottonwoods are bigger here—they’ve been around longer. Everything isn’t out in front like it is in an Anglo neighborhood, where there is a street, a yard, a driveway, a house, in that order. Here the houses are likely to be right on the street, the yards hidden, and there are houses behind houses, houses down narrow potholed driveways. The Kid lived on one of those driveways, more or less alone, I gathered, but he had a lot of visitors; people looking for work, passing through. His address was 7 ½ Callejón de la Vuelta, a little street, an alley wide enough to get a car through, but just barely.

  When I found 7 ½ I wondered if I was in the right place. The Kid’s truck wasn’t there. Of course; he was probably playing in the bar. It was Saturday. When you need to see someone, you never stop to think that maybe they’ll be out somewhere. Had I ever been out when he came looking for me? He never said. I wasn’t ready to cruise the bars, but I wasn’t ready to go home either. There was a light on in the house and music playing. The song was M-I-S-T-A-K-E, but I hadn’t heard it yet, and I got out of the car drawn to the
light like a bug to a zapper.

  When I got to the door, my hand flitted toward the bell, but I stopped first and looked in the window. The house was gaudy but neat. There was a sofa covered with a green chenille spread, and on it sat a girl stroking a cat, a cat with a thick, luxurious coat, a girl with an abundance of black hair. Like the Indians at the first sight of a horse with a Spaniard on it, I was so startled I had the impression that the girl and the cat were one creature. She was a lovely girl, a gentle girl, anybody could see that; a small girl, a Hispanic girl, a girl who didn’t argue or practice law, a girl who liked cats, a girl who would be perfect for the Kid. I turned away from the window and went home.

  9

  THE BRUISES I’D gathered in Bailey’s parking lot got covered up, more or less, with Revlon Natural Wonder. Carl’s coming-out party was in Corrales. The driveway was marked by a couple of cottonwoods and a Hispanic boy in a white jacket who wanted my invitation. Some people make their statements with Sikh guards, some with Hispanic boys. I gave him the invitation and drove down the driveway, which was lined by lilac bushes that were about to come into bloom and Mercedes-Benzes that already had. I wanted to get as close to the house as I could because walking was still an adventure in pain.

  I was the only Rabbit in a garden of Mercedes-Benzes, BMWs, and Saabs, but I noticed one battered beetle and I squeezed in next to it just to make El Conejo feel at home. Cars live forever in New Mexico; there’s no rust, and no inspection either, but this one looked like it had run out of time, worn out, maybe, from all the messages it carried: IMMORAL MINORITY, I BRAKE FOR WHALES, and a sticker with green mountains on a white background that said SEMINATIVE.