The Up-Down

by Barry Gifford

  “That’s the great thing about America,” Álvaro Iturri told Pace, “everything depends upon trust. In Spain, nobody trusts anyone, not even themselves. This is the theme of Don Quixote, of course. In America, doubt exists, certainly, but pessimism is not ingrained in peoples’ souls the way it is in Spain and the rest of Europe. The one exception, in my experience, is Italy, where the guiding ingredient is corruption. The Italians make up partially for this in other ways, so they can be most amusing but never less than dangerous.

  “Now that I am an American, I can tell you this vehicle I am selling you will run well and for a long time. And since you are an American, you can trust that I am telling you the truth. Buen viaje.”

  The Pathfinder made it to Philadelphia before it broke down. It was while he was having his SUV repaired that Pace met Siempre Desalmado, and began the third act of his life.

  6

  Pace had never before been in Philadelphia. He got a room in a hotel off Rittenhouse Square, the Hotel Espíritu, and, since the auto repair shop would need two days to fix his SUV, decided to walk around and explore the city. He was on Race Street, near the Greyhound bus station, when he saw a young woman sitting on a suitcase with her face in her hands, crying. Pace stopped and asked her if she needed help and she lifted her head and looked at him. Despite her distraught condition, the woman had the face of an angel—almost oval, an unmarked, olive complexion, with large, dark brown eyes and long, thin eyebrows. Though tears ran down her face, she smiled at Pace, revealing perfect, brilliantly white teeth. She looked to be anywhere in age from sixteen to twenty-six.

  “Who doesn’t?” she said. “Do you live in Philadelphia?”

  “No, I’m in transit, but temporarily delayed due to car trouble.”

  “What does ‘in transit’ mean?”

  “I’m between here and there. I’m not sure where ‘there’ is, but my home of late has been in North Carolina.”

  “You say funny things: ‘in transit,’ ‘home of late.’ You are uncertain.”

  Pace nodded a little. “I guess so,” he said. “And you, are you in need of help?”

  “I guess so, too. I took a bus from Phoenix, Arizona, to here, where a friend of mine said there would be a job for me. I called to the place where she was and was told she had been fired and is gone. Now I’m trying to decide what to do.”

  “Do you have money?”

  She shook her head. “Not very much.”

  “My name is Pace Ripley. Come on, I’ll buy you lunch.”

  The girl stared at him.

  Pace smiled, and said, “I won’t hurt you. We’re both a little stranded and in need. What’s your name?”

  “Siempre Desalmado.”

  “I know siempre means always, but desalmado I don’t know.”

  The girl stood up and wiped her eyes. She was even more beautiful than Pace had thought. Somehow her face was both bright and dark at the same time.

  “You must not believe it,” she said.

  “Believe what?”

  “That I am what is my name, desalmado. It means heartless, or cruel. I do not like having this name.”

  “You should change it then.”

  “Yes,” said Siempre, “perhaps I will. You are how old?”

  “Fifty-eight. And you?”

  “I will be twenty-two tomorrow.”

  “Happy birthday, Always. Come on, let’s get something to eat.”

  Later that afternoon Pace took Siempre Desalmado with him to his room at the Hotel Espiritu. He told her that she could have the bed and he would sleep on the floor until she found a place for herself.

  “Why do you do this for me, Pace?”

  “Because of your beauty.”

  “Do you always tell the truth?” asked Siempre.

  “Not even to myself,” said Pace.

  7

  In the middle of their first night together, Pace, who was not quite asleep, felt Siempre take his hand. She drew him up from the floor to the bed.

  “You will be more comfortable with me,” she whispered.

  “Sin duda,” Pace said, as they began to make love for the first time.

  In the morning, Siempre and Pace made love again. After showering and dressing they left the hotel and had coffee and croissants at a nearby cafe.

  “What do you want to do first?” Pace asked.

  “Look for work and a place to live.”

  “You can stay with me until you find a job.”

  “How long do you plan to stay in Philadelphia?”

  Pace shook his head. “I’m making my plans as I go along. I have no intention of abandoning you to the wolves of the desert.”

  Siempre Desalmado laughed.

  “Where do they live, these wolves?”

  “Everywhere. They’re always on the prowl, seeking the most vulnerable among us.”

  “You believe I need to be protected from them?”

  Pace sipped his coffee.

  “We all do,” he said.

  “Perhaps I am una loba del desierto. A wolf in, how is it said in ingles, ropa de la oveja.”

  “I’ve seen you without your clothes.”

  Siempre laughed.

  “Si, you have.”

  “You have beautiful fur.”

  “Fur? Oh, si, piel.”

  “But you do have the scent of the wild. Not from your body but from your spirit, your soul. Su alma.”

  “As I told you, I am not heartless like my name says, but I suppose I am not so easy to tame.”

  “I have no desire to tame you.”

  Siempre smiled.

  “Not yet,” she said.

  8

  Pace was certainly pleased by his acquaintance with Siempre; it was his view of the world that bothered him. Most days now his observations led him to conclude that the majority of the planet’s inhabitants were growing increasingly vulgar and ignorant, even stupid. Pace did not enjoy this feeling and wondered if it had always been this way; perhaps he had been too preoccupied or self-absorbed to notice.

  In a dream the night before, he had been bitten by a rattlesnake. He had awakened and gone to the bathroom. After getting back into bed he watched Siempre, who slept soundly. Why this sudden detachment? Pace thought. Or was it sudden? Perhaps this condition had developed incrementally and only now could he recognize it. Pace did not feel confused, only saddened. This weight of sadness, he realized, was the result of disappointment in himself, that he had not accomplished more in his nearly six decades of consciousness; also the deaths of both Sailor and Lula. His parents had been extraordinary people, Pace believed, faithful and generous and blessed with a mutual sense of humor that somehow annealed most of the pain that was part of living. He did not feel himself capable of profound let alone original thought. Pace lay awake a long time before Siempre turned and pressed her warm form against his, then he fell back to sleep.

  9

  Pace spent his mornings writing about his parents. During this time, Siempre Desalmado hit the streets of Philadelphia looking for work. She usually returned by two or three o’clock in the afternoon, and then she and Pace would have lunch and afterwards make love and take a nap together in their room at the Hotel Espíritu. In the evening they’d go to a movie or, if the weather wasn’t too bad, take long walks together.

  This routine went on for several days until one afternoon Siempre did not return. Pace remained in the hotel room all that day and night. When she had not come back by eight o’clock the next morning, Pace went out to look for her. He walked all over the center of the city, even in the alleys, thinking Siempre might have been mugged or worse, and left for dead, but he could not find her. He returned to the hotel twelve hours later, hungry and tired. Pace was about to collapse on the bed when he realized that Siempre’s belongings were gone. He was puzzled and looked
around for a note, but there was none. She had left, that was all. The next morning, so did he.

  10

  Pace did not know what to make of Siempre Desalmado’s unexplained disappearance. Not only had she not left him a letter or note but according to the hotel staff her departure had passed unnoticed by those who were on duty during the hours Pace had been out searching for her. To his surprise, befuddled as he was by Siempre’s defection, Pace had driven halfway back to North Carolina before he realized in which direction he was headed.

  It was the middle of the afternoon when in a matter of a few minutes the sky turned almost entirely dark and it began to rain. Pace switched on the Pathfinder’s headlights and windshield wipers. Still, he could barely see beyond the hood of his vehicle. Pace took his hands off the steering wheel and felt himself spinning, revolving slowly at first then more rapidly until he was in a vortex, caught in a whirlwind that precluded his being able to discern exactly what was happening or even to think. There was no light now and Pace felt neither fear nor pain. Suddenly, a thought did come: he had entered the Up-Down.

  The next thing he knew he was lying on his back in his bed in the cottage in Bay St. Clement and standing over him, looking into his eyes, was Bitsy Parker.

  “Oh, Pace, thank goodness,” she said, “I’m so glad you’ve come back. We did it, darlin’, we did it! I’m pregnant.”

  11

  Of course Bitsy had told Del that the child she was expecting was his. As far as she could tell, Bitsy said, her husband had no inkling of her affair with Pace. Bitsy then kissed Pace on the lips and said that she had to run to keep an appointment with a client. They’d catch up on his news later.

  Pace lay on his bed still puzzling over how he had gotten there, seemingly safe and sound. Through his bedroom window he could see the Pathfinder parked outside. Had he really momentarily experienced being in the Up-Down, Pace wondered, or had that been an illusion? Perhaps that’s what the Up-Down is, he reasoned, an illusion. But how did that explain his blanking out on the trip back from Philadelphia? He was certain he had gone there, that Siempre Desalmado was a real person with whom he’d spent time. After all, Bitsy had welcomed him home. Pace noticed that he was fully dressed, but was he in his right mind?

  12

  In the middle of his second night back home, Pace awoke when he heard a voice say, “God is a disappointment to everyone.” He looked around his bedroom in the cottage but he was alone. The voice had been in his head, a voice he did not recognize. Pace was certain of the words, which he contemplated as he lay in the dark. It was a moonless night, lit only faintly by the stars. Pace closed his eyes, wanting to fall back asleep, hoping to hear the voice again.

  13

  The following morning, while Pace was sitting at the kitchen table in his cottage having a cup of coffee, he opened a book he had taken with him to Philadelphia intending to read, The Death Ship by B. Traven. A piece of paper, stationery from the Hotel Espíritu, folded into the book, fluttered out onto the table. Pace picked it up, unfolded and read what was written on it:

  THE BOOK OF EXCUSES

  This is The Missing Book of the Old Testament unearthed in the Valley of the Nobles in Egypt by Abdoul Kerim a self-described Wolf of the Desert and believed now to have been written by the same Unknown Author who used Solomon as a shield for the Book of Ecclesiastes but in truth was composed by Solomon’s mistress a blackskinned woman known only as Shulamith a shepherdess kidnapped by Solomon and kept apart from all others but eunuchs in his palace in Jerusalem therefore it was she who said There is an evil which I have seen under the sun and it is common among men.

  Adios,

  Siempre

  14

  “If it’s a boy,” Bitsy said, “I’d like to name him Sailor. And if it’s a girl, Lula. Only if it’s all right with you, of course.”

  Pace said nothing. He was sitting at his desk and was actually in the middle of writing a sentence when Bitsy entered the cottage without knocking and told him this. Her announcement, Pace realized, was not totally unexpected by him. At least she had not suggested that the child, whether it was male or female, be named Pace.

  Bitsy stood next to him, caressing her swollen belly with her right hand. The fingers of her left hand were entwined in her hair, which she had let grow long. Bitsy’s honey-colored hair was not only longer now but more lustrous. She had never looked better to Pace but for some reason he fought the feeling.

  “Come on, Pace, tell me what you think. Even though I didn’t know your parents, I feel like I almost do through you. What you’ve told me and the way you are. Also, I love their names.”

  Pace stared at Bitsy, looking her over up and down. Most women, he thought, became more beautiful when they were pregnant, even if they didn’t think so, and Bitsy was no exception. Her color was richer due to the twenty-five percent more blood in her body. She glowed. This was not the same woman with whom he had made love.

  Finally, Pace said, “Have you asked Del what he thinks?”

  Bitsy nodded. “I have. He’s happy leavin’ the namin’ to me.”

  “It’s okay, I guess.”

  Bitsy pushed herself up against Pace and kissed him on the top of his head.

  “Thank you, darlin’,” she said. “It’ll mean a lot to me, just like you do.”

  Pace placed his right hand over hers. She put it under her own, on her stomach.

  “That’s little Lula or Sailor kickin’ in there, Pace. Ain’t it just thrillin’ knowin’ that?”

  “It’s still a little hard to believe.”

  “Not for me,” said Bitsy.

  After she left, Pace looked at his interrupted sentence. “Men got a kind of automatic shutoff valve” Lula was telling Sailor. Pace wrote: “in their head? Like, you’re talkin’ to one and just gettin’ to the part where you’re gonna say what you really been wantin’ to say, and then you say it and you look at him and he ain’t even heard it. Not like it’s too complicated or somethin’, just he ain’t about to really listen.”

  Pace stopped writing and looked out the window in front of his desk. A large crow landed in the yard and stared so hard and fixedly at him that Pace turned away. When he looked again, the crow had gone and a little rain was falling.

  15

  In the fifth month of Bitsy’s pregnancy, her sister, Rapunzelina Cruz, came to stay with Bitsy and Del. Rapunzelina was twelve years younger than Bitsy, the baby of the family. She had been living in Mexico City for the past two and a half years where she’d married a much older man named Abstemio Cruz, a cocktail lounge singer and piano player who specialized in harmlessly crooning the songs of Águstin Lara, Johnny Mathis, Dean Martin and Fred Buscaglioni. Rapunzelina was finished, she told Del and Bitsy, with her husband and Mexico, both of which had lost their charm: the city because of its impossible traffic, smog and all too common physical dangers such as rape, robbery and kidnapping for ransom; and Señor Cruz, who turned out to be an insufferable and abusive drunk. Rapunzelina intended to stay in North Carolina and go back to college, which she had dropped out of after her sophomore year. In Mexico she tried to convince herself she was a painter, having fallen under the spell of the myth of Frida Kahlo, whom she now considered to be vastly overrated as an artist. Rapunzelina admitted to herself that she possessed no real talent and planned to go to nursing school and devote herself to helping people. She had not, however, told her husband that she had no intention of going back to Mexico City or to him and feared that might become a problem if he decided to come after her. When she met Pace and mentioned this, Pace asked, “What are the chances of that?” “We’ll see,” was all Rapunzelina said.

  Rapunzelina did not know when she arrived that it most probably was Pace who was the father of her sister’s child. Her predilection for men considerably older than herself had not abated and soon after moving into Dalceda Delahoussaye’s house she set about advertising her
availability to Pace. Not only was Rapunzelina twelve years younger than Bitsy but she was even more attractive and not shy about wearing skimpy outfits that showcased her hourglass figure and amply complemented her abundant ash-blonde hair and green cat’s eyes. She took to visiting Pace in his cottage at late hours and for the first few weeks of her residence he resisted her obvious advances. He feared straining his relations with Bitsy, who gave clear indications to Pace of wanting to resume a sexual component to their friendship. This, too, Pace avoided. He had no exaggerated belief in his own attractiveness and had never thought of himself as an exceptional ladies man, even less so now that he was nearing sixty years old. It was a mystery to him why this was happening.

  Then one night Rapunzelina—whom Del and Bitsy and now Pace called Punzy, her childhood nickname—knocked on Pace’s door and when he answered asked him, “Is it true, Pace? Are you the one knocked up Bitsy?”

  “Did Bitsy tell you that?”

  “Who else could have? She spilled the beans after I told her I had a crush on you. Here I’ve been tryin’ to get you to screw me and all the time you’re my big sister’s man.”

  Pace winced. “I’m not Bitsy’s or anyone else’s man,” he said. “And the child could be Del’s. He doesn’t suspect it’s not, does he?”

  Punzy pushed Pace down into a chair and plunked herself on his lap. She strung her arms around his neck.

  “Of course not,” she said. “Are you still sweet on Bitsy?”

  “Nothing’s happening or will be between me and your sister. “

  “Then will you please take me to bed?”

  Punzy kissed Pace on the lips and pushed her peppermint-tasting tongue into his mouth. Pace had not been with a woman since his brief encounter with Siempre Desalmado, and now he had no desire or reason to resist Punzy, so he did not.