by David Cole
Rich. My housemate. My partner. I hadn’t sorted him out yet.
So for the first week, all I’d done was sort these things without any real conscious effort to think about it. Somewhere in the second week I realized the arrangement of physical storage spaces, of what was getting piled where, and of Rich constantly neatening up the piles, stacking boxes in corners, aligning the edges of the boxes as I added haphazardly to the heaps.
At the beginning of the third week I laboriously went through all the stored files and documents and software programs. I read notations I’d made over the past ten years. Sometimes I’d hunt through the hard copy piles, wanting to correlate different versions of a document and surprising myself with my own handwriting. Often relaxed, usually when I had no contracts. But more usually cramped scribbles, cryptic, enigmatic, even eccentric comments that occasionally had no common sense at all, wildly inconsistent notes written in a riot of different-color inks and pencils and Magic Markers, scrawled with whatever writing instrument was nearest when I needed something. Although little of it was dated, I could make out comments from my years in Yakima, St. Louis, Phoenix, Tuba City, and, finally, Tucson.
So, in that random, nonlinear way, I haphazardly sorted and cataloged my past. At the end of the second month, my left brain began to assert itself against that indulgent right brain, an illogical way of dealing with my work and my life. I’d gone through this right to left progression many times, and only realized it when I turned up the sound of my TV set. Thinking was, for me, primarily visual. I know, I hear you saying how little sense that makes. But for me, I could watch one of my DVDs, any kind of movie, as long as the sound was off. It distracted my head, you see, until suddenly pieces of my mental puzzles snapped into place and I’d hit the Pause button and make notes of what to look for, write out computer hacking scripts in longhand, or put notations somewhere in the reams of data I was trying to organize for a client.
And through all this disjointed time, Rich came and went with his affable, ordered peace and quietness, his wonderful support and lack of questions. Except, somewhere in all my sorting out things, I realized I had to sort him out, too.
Like my notes, I cataloged the men from my past years. Jonathan Begay, my Navajo husband, who helped me run away from the Hopi reservation when I was only fifteen, and with whom I had a daughter, Spider, whom I’d not seen since she was two. Another Navajo, Ben Yazzie, a bounty hunter who’d bring in bail jumpers that I located through database searches. Kimo Biakeddy. Another Navajo. Rey Villanueva, a private detective.
Lost for a moment in these memories, I ended the reverie as always. Macho men, all of them. Men on the edge of understanding women, understanding me.
Once, avoiding yet again facing the concept of moving on, I went to a U-Haul yard and bought a dozen cardboard boxes and began throwing out things in that temporary way you always do, fill the carton but keep it handy in case you have to go through it again, you may have missed something.
Somewhere about the third month, I went to a personal trainer in Tucson and began, at last, dealing with the shreds of my Ritalin addiction. In time, all I did was displace one addiction with another. Wanting to make my body better, healthier, different, I began lifting free weights and three weeks later started running.
At first, I’d run a mile or two. Rich pedaling a mountain bike alongside. By the third week I was up to six miles, then seven, and one day eleven. Rich rode silently alongside, but as I began running in the desert, he’d stop to look over some promising fossil site, or to dig up a semiprecious stone.
In the fourth month I was running twelve miles or more every other day.
By this time, Rich had more or less moved into my house, and we settled for a domestic routine that included him cooking Thai and Mexican meals and me making sugar-free desserts, I mean no processed sugar or flours, none of that, but plenty of whole wheat and berries. I felt less and less consumed, frantic, and scattered about sorting things out, mostly because I’d long since sorted everything of value. Rich and I just stepped over or around the piles until he rearranged them. I really didn’t notice the neatening up for two months, and Rich never commented one way or another.
One day he let slip that he’d been married.
“Divorced now?” I said.
“Lasted just five weeks,” he said. “God, that woman talked like a faucet. Only thing she liked better than talking was buying women’s magazines, which gave her most of her ideas of what to talk about. After two weeks, I got used to tossing out six or eight magazines a day, totally pissed her off. ‘I love my magazines,’ she told me, ‘I can’t live without those magazines giving me new ideas for cooking dinners and fixing my hair and pleasuring you.’ Pleasuring herself, mainly. She only made frozen dinners, lots of frozen pizzas, and finally I realized that I couldn’t see any sense in wasting all that time and energy on magazines, and that boiled up to my thinking that I couldn’t much see wasting time with her.”
One day I ran twenty miles, the last half by myself because Rich had stopped at what he said was a fantastic find of a dinosaur bone. That evening, he made enchiladas stuffed with crab meat and covered with suiza sauce, and I baked a raspberry pie. After two forkfuls of the pie, I looked at him contentedly eating a second piece and realized what a comfort he’d been over the past months. I felt a huge emotional debt for all he’d done to help me rid myself of anxieties and panic attacks and dependency on Ritalin to keep me going.
And watching him efficiently wash all the dishes and wipe down the counters and the table and all other surfaces, I also realized it was time to throw away all those cardboard cartons, gather the few things I wanted, and move on. Without him. That night, I tried many times to tell him this when we made love, but it took an enormous effort just to look at him, caress his shoulders, touch noses, and wordlessly make love again until he finally fell asleep.
I was going to tell him next morning, but Don Ralph made that unnecessary.
3
On the Fourth of July, three days after the Death Valley run, I slept in, late. Rich slipped out of bed sometime about five, I barely registered the time on our digital clock with the red numbers, and went back to sleep. He was going to Phoenix later that morning to set up and explain a large mock-up of a dinosaur to kids at an outdoor party.
I sat on the edge of the bed, fully awake. I’ve always been like that, not drowsy in between, one minute drooling on the pillow and the next my eyes popping open. Lay there for a minute or two, then sit on the edge of the water bed, start my morning stretches, then get into the first of my free weight routines.
After a hundred reps each of squats, military presses, dead lifts, and bicep curls, I showered, pulled on a pair of running shorts and nothing else, wandered toward the kitchen. Rich was outside, but had laid out all the makings for my breakfast, with the Gaggia espresso machine on and fresh triple-roast beans ready in the Braun grinder. I drank a whole twelve-ounce bottle of mineral water, enhanced with vitamins, turned to catch my upper body partially reflected in the glass fronts of our old handmade cabinets.
This was something new for me, probably a part of the hunger to move on, part of my addiction to my body. I turned my head sideways, shook my long hair like a TV model, flexed my biceps, knew my small breasts would never pass the pencil test. But that was okay. My body was okay. I liked my body. Another first in my forty-six years.
Behind me I heard Sunset snuffling in her food bowl, crunching the few remaining bits of dry dog food, scooting the bowl in front of her, never looking at me, but the wagging tail a strong hint that she wanted more. I opened a bottom cupboard and scooped out a full bowl from the forty-pound bag, something I’d never done before. Sunset was a five-year-old female purebred red Siberian husky. She weighed approximately forty-five pounds, stood eighteen inches high at the shoulder, and was four feet long from the tip of her nose to the tip of her tail. Sunset prowled the desert behind our house for hours at a time, no matter what the heat, so there was
little fat on her rib cage. But if we let her eat a whole bag, she’d pig out, so we rationed her food. Today seemed different.
I looked at the half dozen or so cardboard boxes piled in the corner. Today, I thought, I’ll tape them shut and take them to St. Vinnies down in South Tucson.
Eating some grapes, I stood at the open sliding glass door opening on the patio and leading down to the small grapefruit and lemon grove. Sunset nudged me with his wet nose, wiping a few bits of dog food onto my thigh. Several mourning doves cooed at us, so familiar with our feeders and company that they barely moved aside if we came near. The resident mama Gambel’s quail strutted by with her latest brood, this time seven chicks. There had been nine, but we’d heard a coyote near the house the last few nights and he’d probably eaten quail chicks for dessert.
Ten o’clock.
Already ninety-five degrees. I’d been to Houston on a whim just two weeks before and although it was also ninety-five degrees there, whenever I went outside the high humidity enveloped me like a sauna. One day I’d driven over to Beaumont to get some financial data that a hacker refused to transmit on the Internet, no matter how much I assured him that I had nonpenetrable security for my network and satellite connections. The only safe computer, he reminded me in his Finnish accent, is one that’s not connected to any other computer. Beaumont was incredibly more stifling than Houston. I couldn’t even get the Cherokee’s aircon to keep out the afternoon sauna. Another hacker connection of mine in New Orleans told me that Cajuns called southeast Texas the coonass Riviera.
But not Tucson. Higher elevation than Phoenix, somewhat cooler, and the summer humidity maybe just ten percent. Or lower.
I slid open the screen door. Sunset surged past me toward the orchard. At least he’d waited. I’d replaced the screen door seven times so far, because if Rich or I weren’t around and Sunset saw anything else on four legs, he’d lunge through the screen door, making a wide hole, the mesh hardly slowing him at all.
Pouring some nonhoney muesli into a bowl, no soy milk today, I held it in one hand and ate with the other as I walked, half naked, after Sunset, figuring Rich was down there at the redwood picnic table he’d built from a kit.
Sunset disappeared quickly and came back in the next moment, frolicking, tail going whoosh whoosh, left to right to left, nonstop.
“Okay, girl,” I said, putting down my empty bowl, getting into a race-start stance. “Let’s go see him.”
Off. Twenty feet later, I could see Rich’s head and shoulders through the trees, half hidden behind a clump of creosote bushes. His long brown hair was loose, not being in his usual ponytail. Like a woman, Rich would twist the hair around to one side of his neck or the other, maybe roll it into a loose braid. A few steps closer, I could see he also was naked to the waist and I felt that conflict when you see somebody you like, somebody you really care about, but you don’t love and you know that at some point the two of you will drift apart. Still, naked from the waist up, it was a good way to end breakfast.
But another ten feet of running and I heard voices. Two voices. Both men. The trail narrowed between two lemon trees and I couldn’t stop in time, bursting into the picnic area to see Rich and Don Ralph drinking coffee and eating bagels. Don comfortable in his wheelchair and looking directly at my mostly naked body.
“Jesus,” I said to Rich, stopping finally and crossing my arms over my breasts. “You could have told me.”
“Hi, Laura,” Don said, a slight smile crinkling his tanned face.
Rich laughed out loud and Sunset beat me with her tail as I started backtracking. If Don hadn’t been in his wheelchair, Sunset would have warned me. She’d been trained to guard against any stranger standing on two legs. Anybody sitting down, though, usually meant friend or guest.
“Get some more clothes on,” Don said. “Please. You look kinda, well, I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen you so…so embarrassed.”
4
Ten minutes later, when I came out of the bedroom with a tanktop and had brushed my teeth and hair, I heard the Gaggia wind up and groan several times. Rich had wheeled Don up to the house and they sat on the patio with small mugs of espresso, one set aside for me.
“Hey,” Rich said.
He touched noses with me, somewhat apologetic that he’d not told me Don had come to the house.
“Hi, Laura,” Don said. “Sorry to…well, intrude, I guess.”
“Glad to see you, Don.”
He poured some half-and-half into his espresso, drained the cup, held it out to Rich for some more. Rich’s cell phone jingled and he started talking while he went for more espresso.
“Love that orchard,” Don said. “Love the smell of lemon blossoms. What does a place like this cost? Down here in Tucson?”
“I’m leasing it. Twelve hundred a month.”
“Good place for healing.”
“Owner is in Italy,” I said, ignoring his comment. “Don. Why exactly are you here?”
“Just driving through.”
“From Phoenix?”
“Yeah.”
“Just out for a drive? From Phoenix?”
“Mmmm.”
Yeah, I thought. Right.
“And the business?”
“Heavy. Nine people now, about to hire another few. Contracts.”
But he didn’t make any effort to tell me about his new computer security company in Phoenix, his clients, his contracts, or his staff. He accepted another cup of espresso from Rich, slowly added some more half-and-half.
“Got to cancel Phoenix and go up to Casa Grande,” Rich said. “Coolidge. Some housing development. They found some old bones, and I’m on call with NAGPRA.”
“Good to meet you,” Don said. “I might have some more small jobs for you, now and again. What’s NAGPRA?”
“Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.” Rich bent to kiss me on the forehead and went in to get dressed. “Don, nice to meet you.” He left.
“He’s a keeper?” Don asked.
“Maybe.” I ignored his question. “So?”
“So nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Just dropped in to say hello. He was a surprise.”
“Out for drive.”
“Nice surprise. Yeah. Driving over to Bisbee. See that big hole in the ground. That old Silver Queen mine. Or whatever they call it.”
“Don’t shit me, Don. You know exactly what it’s called.”
“That’s a true fact.”
“So,” I said. “We’re right back to this ‘so what’ routine.”
“I’ve got this contract.”
“No.”
“Just hear me out.”
“You gave me however long I wanted. After San Carlos, only small jobs. After all those…those people dead.”
“Long as you want.”
“Maybe even forever.”
“If that’s what you want. Yes. But it’s been almost five months.”
That’s when I knew he really needed me for something he couldn’t handle. I assumed the worst, which was that after I said no, he’d keep at me, and he saw that in my eyes and shook his head.
“Just hear me out,” he said. “It’s not what you think.”
“I think you want me for a contract.”
“Look. Laura. I know you’ve had some…some problems. With your friend Meg. Your friend Rey. With that whole messy business down in Mexico, down in San Carlos. I’ve never bothered you. Let you deal with it. Kept out of your way. Except for signing the partnership papers, for the Phoenix thing, I’ve just sent you your money, given you small jobs. Easy jobs. You don’t ever have to come to the office. But I’ve got to push on you a bit. It’s special, it’s one-of-a-kind. Never quite had anything like this. So. Hear me out?”
“Sure,” I said reluctantly. “Just this one time.”
revelations
The gray Chevy Citation came north up Campbell Avenue, slowing as traffic bunched together in front of the m
ovie theater just south of Grant Road. Windows tinted dark, a silvery mirror from the outside. Alongside, a plumber in a battered ’55 Ford 150 pickup took out a pocket comb and used his reflection as a mirror, fiddling with his hair.
Theresa Prejean watched the plumber from the backseat of the Citation. Still wearing the orange jumpsuit, but no longer handcuffed, she shrank back and slid partway down the seatback.
“Can he see me?” she asked the driver.
“Don’t worry. Just a plumber.”
She worried at two fingernails on her left hand, frightened, anxious, with no idea where they were going. As he’d done for the past forty minutes, the driver paid close attention to his mirrors and her nervousness.
“Almost there.” He turned to smile at her again.
“What’s there?”
“A house we use. You’ll be safe there.”
“This red light is like going on forever.”
“Busy corner,” the driver said.
“I don’t like this. All I want is to get back to Norleans, and you’re stuck here in the middle of goddam Tucson.”
“For your own protection.”
“Yeah. Well. I told my story. My best protection is back in my hood.”
“Sorry. Maybe by tomorrow.”
The driver’s cell phone sounded a squeaky version of the Darth Vader music.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. No.”
The plumber put his hand to a red sore on his neck, stretching his head to look at his profile. Theresa cringed, but the plumber switched to his rearview mirror, positioning it so he could rub his neck. Through traffic stopped on Grant as a long line of drivers snaked slowly into left turns onto Campbell, but the line cutting into northbound traffic got hung up in the intersection and when the lights turned green, traffic gridlocked in all directions.
