BEAUTIFUL STRANGER

by Ruth Wind

  "Kicked her out?"

  "Yeah. She's pretty useless, my sister." Traffic suddenly began to move, traveled seven feet down the road and halted again. "But it's not like she had any kind of example. She's turned out better than my mother."

  "Where is your mother?"

  "Dead. She OD'd on crack when I was nineteen." A weariness on his face suddenly, and he swore. "I just realized she was younger than I am now when she died—she was thirty-four years old." A pause, and a slight shake of his head. "Man."

  Marissa wanted to say she was sorry, but something in the rigidness of his face made her halt her tongue and just wait.

  "I was in the barracks, in the army, and my sister went into a foster home. It probably saved her life in the long run, but I always felt bad about it. That maybe I should have done more, but I was so damned glad to get out of there that I—" He broke off, shook his head.

  "That you what? Couldn't stand to go back?"

  "Pretty much." He shifted gears, inched forward. "It was selfish."

  "Maybe," Marissa said, a knot in her chest as she thought of Victoria starving herself. "Or maybe it just took all the energy you had to save yourself."

  He looked at her. "That sounds like the voice of personal experience."

  "Not really. Not like that."

  "Like what, then?"

  Marissa shook her head with a smile. "My life is so mild in comparison to yours that my traumas will sound totally stupid. Please don't make me share them after you told me your mother died of an overdose."

  He raised a brow. "Your choice, princess." The traffic started moving suddenly. "Finally."

  Marissa thought she'd escaped, but as they got to the southern end of the city and the traffic thinned again, he said, "Why is your sister so skinny?"

  "Actually, she's gained a lot of weight since the last time I saw her." She wiped a mark of condensation from the window. "She's borderline anorexic."

  A quickening of his attention. "And nothing happened, right, to make one of you gain a hundred pounds and the other starve herself."

  A rush of images poured into her mind—images and colors and scenes jumbled together in a confusing and emotionally charged mass. "Not one thing, nothing you can point to, exactly, and say, 'It started right here.'"

  "How about a good guess?"

  Marissa felt pressure in her chest. "The summer we were ten, my parents swooped out of their world and dragged us out on a world cruise."

  He chuckled. "Poor dears."

  "I know. It's a rough life. First-class passage on a cruise ship—a room for us and a room for them. We were so excited—to be with them for months on end was the best thing we could think of."

  "You didn't live with them?"

  "Well, we didn't not live with them. We had nannies and servants, and we lived in the house they called home. They just weren't there very often."

  "That's weird."

  "Not really. My father was terrified someone would kidnap us, so he kept us safe on this gated estate all the time. We didn't even go out to school." She straightened. "So, there we were, ten years old, and have seen nothing of the world, and our parents swoop down and carry us off to see everything at once." She scowled.

  "You didn't like it?"

  "I loved a lot of it," she said. "The world is beautiful." She took a breath. "It's also very sad. I had no idea that poverty existed at all—and then we were in these places like India and the Caribbean and Africa, and it was just overwhelming. I was very angry with my father, and Victoria fell apart."

  "I can see that." Snow was beginning to skitter over the windshield, melting as soon as it touched.

  "That was part of it," she said. "But while we were on the trip, my parents freaked over how close Victoria and I were. We slept in the same bed. We finished each other's sentences. We even had our own language. It was natural, considering, but it scared them, and when we got home they sent us to boarding school. Different boarding schools, in different countries."

  He looked at her. "Different countries?"

  "It was decided that we needed balance. Because I was so exacting, they chose Barcelona for me, to loosen up my anal attitudes. They sent Victoria to Switzerland so she might learn discipline." The memory still burned, even after nearly twenty years. "We had no control over any part of our lives, and we both felt like we'd been cut in half. It was awful." She attempted a grin. "And here's the pop psychology part. She starved, hoping my parents would come get us. I just fed myself constantly, trying to fill up that emptiness."

  To her surprise, he reached over the seat and put his hand on hers, just for a second, a brief, comforting touch, then away. "It's sad." Then a puzzled little frown. "So, when you went on your diet, did you call your sister and tell her to start eating?"

  Marissa laughed. "No. We were both planning a surprise—this is so classic—and must have started at the same time. She went for counseling and I started walking the very same day."

  "That's weird." He stuck a wooden match in the corner of his mouth. "I don't get why I like you and don't like her at all. No offense, but she rubbed me the wrong way."

  "The feeling is mutual."

  "Yeah? She didn't like me, huh?"

  "Nope." She shifted, huddling into her sweater a little as the temperature dropped. "But don't feel bad. She never likes any guy I like, and vice versa."

  On the horizon, another city appeared. "That's Pueblo ahead," he said. "We can stop for some lunch and check the weather reports."

  * * *

  The weather reports only said "light snow" for Raton Pass, so after a simple lunch, they got back on the road. Traffic was much milder as they headed into the sparsely populated southern end of the state, and there were only periodic bursts of spitting snow, so Robert relaxed a little. He didn't think about what was ahead or what lay behind—the act of driving had always cleared his head in important ways.

  And just as it always was, he found it impossible to keep himself aloof from Marissa. She disarmed him completely, always, and he couldn't figure out how she did it. Just now, she was leafing through a magazine she'd picked up at the gas station, something thick and glossy and upscale, for which he'd given her a wry smile. Standing in the aisle of the store, she had protested that the celebrity magazines had extremely intelligent writing. "Sure," he'd told her. "That's why guys read porn, too."

  She'd rolled up her magazine and smacked him with it, and at that moment, Robert had caught sight of a youth, maybe sixteen or seventeen, eyeing Marissa with appreciation—and looking at Robert with a little envy. Knowing how much it would please her, Robert had leaned close and said, "Don't look immediately, but you have an admirer at two o'clock."

  A moment later, Marissa had looked up and caught the youth in the act. She'd smiled, and the youth had blushed happily. On the way out, Marissa had flashed a wicked grin and winked at Robert.

  It had slain him. They'd walked outside, and snow had caught in her dark hair, sparkling like diamonds. He'd wanted to just go somewhere quiet and lie down with her. An urge that scared the hell out of him. And he'd put up his walls right there in Pueblo, retreating back into silence. He didn't want to hear any more sad stories from her—and though he'd tried not to show it, that twin thing got to him. He didn't want to like her. Didn't want to tilt his head, listening to that liquid money voice, or thinking about her pearly skin. But as if she were on to him, she simply opened her magazine and started reading, munching on some julienned carrots she'd charmed out of the waitress at the restaurant. Sometimes she hummed along with the radio. In the distance loomed a tall, strange hump in the landscape, an abrupt mesa that rose out of the prairie like a fist. "Huerfano," he said, pointing. "The orphan. In the old days, it was a landmark, a place for people to meet. You can see it forever."

  "Is that the old days as in the West, or the old, old days, as in before?"

  "Both, probably. Can't speak to the latter."

  Tongue in cheek, she said, "You don't have stories from th
e elders about this area? What fun is it to have an Indian guide who doesn't know anything?"

  "I do know something. I just told you."

  She waved a hand, flipped another page in her magazine. "I could have heard that from anyone."

  He laughed, and realized even as he did it that she'd done it again—vaporized his walls like they'd never existed. "First of all, my people aren't from around here."

  "Who are they?" She looked at him and pursed her lips. "No, let me guess. Apache?"

  "Some. And a little Cheyenne and Ute and Shoshone."

  "Oooh," she said lightly. "Exotic. I've never met anyone who was Shoshone before."

  He looked at her. "Are you making fun of me, Ms. Wasp?"

  That rich, almost bawdy laughter. "I am not a WASP, sir. I'm a Scot, thank you very much."

  "Ah, you guys all look alike to me."

  "That's what you all say." She lingered over a picture in the magazine, a young woman in a devastating dress.

  "Wouldn't mind seeing you in that, princess."

  "Me, either," she said. "Maybe I'll just fly out to Italy next week and buy it."

  "Really?" He was taken aback.

  "No." She rolled her eyes. "I'm not that spoiled, you know."

  He lifted a shoulder. "You flew into Denver and bought a new dress for some fancy party last week. Why not Italy?"

  "Last week, I was the guest of honor at a fund-raiser. I had to have a new dress." She flipped a page. "But there's a lot to be said for quick plane trips, you know. If we'd flown out of Red Creek, we'd be in Albuquerque by now. No traffic jams, no worry about nasty passes."

  The snow was beginning to pick up and he eyed the sky with some concern. To distract himself, he said, "What does your dad do, anyway? Is he from old money or something?"

  "Nope. He made every penny himself." She closed the magazine and crossed her arms over her chest. A position, he couldn't help noticing, that pushed her breasts up very nicely into the demure sweater.

  "Stock market?"

  "Everything. He's just a whiz with business. He has incredible instincts—knew when to buy, when to sell, what failing company could be turned around, which foreign investments would pay off." She shook her head. "And yes, the stock market. He's uncanny with the stock market."

  "And you don't like him much, do you?"

  "I don't know him well enough to like him or dislike him," she said. "I mean, we talk cordially once in a while. But he's just not part of my life. We were at odds so much about morality when I was younger that it's very hard to have a civil conversation now."

  "Morality?" It made him think of sex, of bellies slick with sweat, and he shifted a little. "Were you a loose woman?" he asked with a grin.

  "Not that kind of morality," she said, and he wondered if it was sidestepping the question. "The morality of having that much money and not doing more with it."

  "That's a do-gooder mentality, sister. Doesn't do anyone any good."

  She lifted one shoulder. "That's what he's always said."

  "And you don't agree with him."

  "No." The word was distinct. "I don't."

  "What would you have him do? Build homes for the poor?"

  "It's not up to me to tell him. Once my trust passed into my hands, I started doing it my way, and it seriously annoyed him."

  A stab of something bothersome hit him—a vision of officer's wives doing a fund-raiser for the local hospital or library or whatever, their hair coiffed and their perfume expensive as they passed out pencils in a bad neighborhood. "Philanthropy?"

  She didn't look at him, only smiled. "Something like that."

  "I've gotta tell you, princess, you're not doing a damned bit of good." He thought of the coats the church used to give away every fall, thought of his humiliation as his mother dragged him over there to try on corduroy smelling of cigars and down vests leaking feathers, and the lipsticked mothers from other places, other neighborhoods giving him that pained and pitying look. "All they do is laugh at you."

  "I'm a big girl," she said. Serenely. As if she already knew about the laughter.

  Darkly he clenched the steering wheel. That summed it all up, didn't it? He'd been the kid getting the jacket, and she'd been the one giving it away. Not exactly level ground. "How rich are you, anyway? A millionaire?"

  Dancing eyes met his. "You really don't want to know, Robert."

  He slanted her a look. "How much?"

  "That's a very rude question, Mr. Martinez. What if I asked you how much you're worth?"

  "I'd tell you. I have mutual funds and assets myself, you know. Jake taught me a lot about investing when we were in the army."

  "That's excellent. Most people don't bother."

  He wanted to straighten, preen a little under her praise, then scowled at how neatly she'd changed the direction of the conversation, reflecting it back to him. "You gonna tell me or not?"

  "No," she said. "I'm not. You'll just use it against me."

  He probably would. "Ten million," he guessed.

  "Robert, do you know who my father is?"

  He frowned. "No." He ran through lists of millionaires in his head and didn't come up with one named Pierce. "Should I?"

  "A lot of people do. Especially if they're in the stock market world. He's one of the richest men in America. He is a billionaire."

  He choked on that. Maybe she was right. He didn't want to know what she was worth. Closing his mouth, he focused on the road and tried to ignore Marissa Pierce, heiress and siren, and just drove.

  * * *

  Chapter 13

  « ^ »

  They made it over Raton Pass without incident and hit Albuquerque in the late afternoon. The snow that had been spitting around them all day had just begun to fall in earnest—big thick flakes drifting down from a windless sky—and Marissa expected Robert to find a room before he dealt with the problem of Mario. He did not.

  As they hit the city limits, winding through traffic that was moving thick and sluggishly along the highway, Marissa watched a change come over him. A lightless mask come down over his features, thinning his mouth, narrowing his eyes. His hands were tight on the steering wheel as the truck left the interstate and headed into a world that did not appear, at least to her eyes, that threatening. It certainly didn't look like the "barrio" of her imagination—and staring out the window, she had to wonder what exactly she'd imagined it to look like. High-rise tenements, she supposed, the images of old, Midwestern and eastern cities.

  This was the West. This barrio was filled with blocks of single-dwelling houses, with front porches and small yards that were often fenced in chain link. On garages, she spied graffiti in a dozen styles, puffy letters and stylized gang marks, but she also saw colorful murals of Southwest scenes, a Native American woman with a basket, a mariachi guitar player in black and silver, a mountain scene.

  As they drove deeper into the blocks, she saw more evidence of hopelessness—yards gone to dirt and weeds, porches piled with old mattresses and other detritus, lots littered with dead cars. Graffiti marred even the murals that were painted—she realized suddenly—in a defensive move.

  Even here, though, there were holdouts—a house with freshly painted window casings, a garden of bright tulips, a yard neat as a pin. A perfectly maintained car, housed neatly under a carport.

  There were a lot of dogs, behind fences and tied with ropes to the front post. A trio of them trotted athletically down one side street, their fur wet as if they'd been in a ditch or river.

  Robert pulled up in front of a shabby adobe house. The stucco was cracking along the side wall, and there was not a single blade of anything alive in the yard. A giant tumbleweed had blown into a corner and shivered in the wind, its prongs collecting shards of paper. "This is my sister's house," Robert said. "I won't be long, so you can come in or stay out here."

  "Do you have a preference?"

  Flat eyes met hers. "It's up to you."

  She went in with him because she wanted t
o meet Crystal's mother, see where the girl had come from. As they slammed shut the doors to the pickup, a woman came out on the porch, her arms crossed, her face unwelcoming. Her beauty was startling—here was a female version of Robert, an older version of Crystal. She was sensual and hard-looking at once, with heavy eyeliner and clothes that clung to her aging but dramatic figure.

  Seeing Robert, she didn't smile, only raised her chin in greeting, and had not even that for Marissa. "Who's with you?" she said.

  "A friend of mine."

  Obviously reluctant, she led them inside to a room faded in every sense of the word. Faded carpet, faded furniture, faded paint on the walls. It smelled heavily of cigarettes and dust. A television played in one corner, showing a game show. Marissa felt cold.

  They settled uneasily and Robert asked questions, then told Marissa to stay here while he went out to talk to some neighbors. Alarmed, she gave him a beseeching look, one he ignored. Her words came back to her—Show me what I don't know. Show me how impossible it is that I could ever fit in your world.

  But maybe he thought people wouldn't talk about things if Marissa was with him.

  Alicia, the sister, leaned back when Robert left, reached for a pack of cigarettes and lit a long white one, eyeing Marissa through a defensive cloud of smoke. "Are you some social worker or something?"

  Marissa laughed shortly. "No. I'm a teacher."

  "Hmm." A grunt that said nothing Marissa could decipher. "So you know my daughter?"

  "Yes. She's very bright."

  "Stupid, too." Bitterly she exhaled. "I told her and told her not to get pregnant. It ruined my life. Now she gets a taste of it."

  Marissa nodded. "It doesn't have to ruin her life. It's just a mistake. Things happen."

  The woman snorted, pulled on her blouse. "What do you think, she'll give it up for adoption? That mixed-blood baby? Who would take it? It's just gonna be another brown kid nobody cares about."

  "I don't think she wants to give it up," Marissa said mildly.

  A grunt. The woman looked at the television, evidently absorbed in some game show question, and Marissa settled back, thinking maybe that was the easiest way through this. Just watch television until he came back.