The Other Side of Death Page 3

  “How was what?”

  “You know, sleeping with him.”

  “Who?” My eyes were on the rearview mirror, waiting for the semi’s headlights to appear, signaling me it was safe to cut over. The truck driver flicked his brights, I flicked mine and turned in. Gaudy as they were, I kind of missed having the red lights in front of me. Once they were gone there was nothing to look at but darting, stabbing insects of snow.

  “Rick.”

  “It was fifteen years ago, Lonnie, when I knew Rick.”

  “But you did sleep with him, didn’t you?”

  What could I say? I was stoned? He’d talked me into it? We’d been lovers in a previous lifetime with a karmic debt to pay, or, like some people would have, “Well, yeah, but it only happened once so get off my case”? “Yes,” I said. “I did.”

  “So, how was it?”

  I didn’t remember any whistles or globes. It was an adventure of sorts but it lacked whatever chemistry it takes to make violet purple. “Okay, I guess.”

  “Just okay?”

  It was bad enough I did it, she wanted me to rave about it, too? Sometimes when two women have slept with the same man it creates a rivalry, sometimes a bond, but this had happened so long ago who would expect either? “Everybody slept with everybody in those days, Lonnie, remember? It was a love-in. If it felt good, do it, and if it felt bad, do it anyway. Nobody ever said when, only more. Who knows why? It was hormones, our age, the place, the times, the music.”

  “Everybody but the Malones…”

  It was true that the Malones had been known for being faithful.

  “…and me, Neil. Rick was my first and my one and only then. I was seventeen when I went to San Miguel.”

  I tried to remember Lonnie in those days, La Rubia, the blonde, the girl all the Mexicans wanted. I did some rough calculating and placed her in her early thirties now—younger than I’d thought—which meant she was looking a whole lot older than she should have. She had to look pretty bad at the moment with tears running down her face.

  “Lonnie, it wasn’t the best thing in the world to do but you and Rick had broken up when I slept with him.”

  “We broke up all the time; it didn’t mean anything.”

  “I didn’t know that then.”

  “I know,” she sobbed.

  “Then why are you crying?”

  “Because my life is turning to shit. Because this time it does mean something. Rick’s going to marry shark face.”

  “Forget about him, Lonnie.”

  “I can’t. He’s my soul mate.”

  How can you be a soul mate, I wondered, with someone who doesn’t have a soul? “It seems to me there’s been a whole lot of pain for the pleasure. Has it been worth it?”

  “Sometimes,” she sighed. “Sometimes it has. I need to talk to him, Neil, make him see what he’s doing is all wrong.”

  We’d reached the turnoff to Old Pecos Trail, the scenic route into Santa Fe, and I took it.

  “You remember Nemesis, my gray cat?” Lonnie asked.

  “Well…” Cats and I don’t speak the same language. I’ve never understood what people see in them, and Lonnie had had a whole army since I’d known her. All her cats had the lean, nervous look of strays from the shelter, and I couldn’t tell them apart.

  “Somebody killed him and left him on my doorstep.”

  “Are you sure? Maybe it was a dog. Maybe it was natural causes.”

  “His belly was slit open like that.” She ran her finger from her crotch to her chin.

  “That’s awful.”

  “It was horrible. His guts were spilled all over. It’s just been one crappy thing after another.”

  I know what it’s like to be on a bad-luck roll. A couple of snowflakes stick together at the top of Santa Fe Baldy and by the time they slide to the bottom they’ve become the avalanche that will squash you. I tried to cheer her up. “It’s not all bad. You’ve got a good job and friends, your car runs.”

  “Yeah, and that’s it. There’s only a couple of things to do when I feel like this.”

  “Valium?” It was a drug Lonnie had always been partial to. Broken hearts, she called them, because they came with a trademark v in the middle that resembled a heart and an indentation where you could break the heart in two.

  “I’ve already done that,” she sighed.

  “Blues?” I asked. They were ten milligrams. She called the fives mellow yellows.

  “Yeah. It’s been a blue day but they’re just numbing the pain. I’d like to go out to the ruins and meditate.”

  “You can’t go out there now. It’s the middle of the night and it’s snowing,” I said, although actually the snow was letting up and before it had begun to stick to the road, thank God. Tomorrow the sun would come out and the snow would be gone. That’s the way the seasons happen around here, winter at night, spring in the morning.

  “There’s something else, something in Santa Fe that’ll make me feel better. I’ll show you.” She directed me downtown, around the plaza, which was at its best under the street lamps and a dusting of snow. Without cruising low riders and a couple of thousand tourists hanging around, you could get a sense of the past, the moment, maybe, when the Indians chased the Spanish out. You could also see the place clearly now that it was empty: the long, graceful portal in front of the Palace of the Governors, the curving walls of the Fine Arts Museum, the pleasing proportions and soft colors of the rest of the buildings. It was a rare mix of proportion, color and history. At moments like this I understood why people cared so much about preserving the place. Lonnie directed me a few blocks farther to Paloma Street, where we parked in front of a wall. Santa Fe loves walls, soft pastel walls, walls with broken glass embedded in the top, walls that keep the gardens and fountains in, trouble out. This particular wall, lit by a streetlamp, was a bunch of gray boards slapped together to hide a construction site.

  “There was a beautiful view of the Jemez here before this thing went up,” Lonnie said. She looked up and down the empty street, took something from her bag and let herself out of the car.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “You’ll see.” She held up a can of spray paint and then she moved it quickly across the wall, spraying in ten-mile orange the large four-letter word: UGLY.

  I could have told her that defacing other people’s property is a misdemeanor, but they probably didn’t take misdemeanors seriously anyway in a city where theft is a fact of life. Besides, the wall was ugly. Lonnie posed in front of her graffiti smiling proudly. “You’ve made your point,” I said. “Can we go home now?”

  “Why not?” she replied.

  Lonnie lived on the West Side in a neighborhood where the front houses come right up to the street and the back houses, reached by narrow driveways, have half a number. Lawyers call themselves abogados here and paint murals of conquistadors on their walls, dogs bark all night and your neighbors’ brawls sound like they are live in your living room. Her address was 7½ Miranda. I negotiated the street at fifteen miles an hour as you never knew when another car would come around one of the bent-elbow corners that has a house in its crook. The subcompact was the right size for negotiating this street, the wrong one for hitting anything.

  “That building is a rape,” Lonnie said. “A rape of the most beautiful city in America. They’re ruining historic Santa Fe with white bread designs. It’s too tall, too wide, too out of proportion, too ugly. You should see the model—it’s a goddamn jail.”

  “They must have gotten approval from the Historic Preservation Board. How?”

  “Jorge Mondragon, the chairman, was paid off. They bought him, Neil, and I can prove it.” Her eyes had a glittering intensity as she made this statement; I hoped she wouldn’t tell me next that the CIA had tapped her phone.

  Lonnie’s driveway equaled Tim’s in ruts. When we got to 7½, I turned off the ignition and surrendered the keys because her house and car keys were on the same ring. She climbed the stoop
where the dead Nemesis had been found and opened her front door. One gray cat leaped off the furniture and landed on her, another darted between her legs and ran out the door. “Nemo. Come back here,” she yelled at the escapee as it dashed across the stoop and into somebody else’s yard.

  She handed the first cat, Karma, to me, took a down coat from a hook on the wall and put it on. “I have to go after Nemo, Neil. There’s some crazy cat killer out there. Just make yourself at home until I get back. Please don’t let Karma get out and keep the curtains closed. Ever since Nemesis was killed, I’ve had the feeling that someone is watching me.”

  “Lonnie…” A person who kills cats is not a person you want to come across in the middle of the night when you’re running on Valium and white zinfandel, but she took off into the shadows behind the main house.

  I shut the door, put Karma down, tried to make myself at home, but it didn’t come naturally in a place as cluttered as Lonnie’s. If you don’t have any money, you’re better off with a few cheap pieces than a lot of them, but this place looked like she spent her weekends negotiating at the flea market. She had a couple of overstuffed armchairs and an equally stuffed sofa, all covered with Indian bedspreads that hiked up and wrinkled like tight pants on a fat ass. There was a fringed green scarf thrown over a lampshade, giving the room an underwater glow. The obligatory R. C. Gorman print of a mopey woman hung on the wall. The curtains were closed. I went to the kitchen in an aisle that led to the bath to see if I could find something to drink. My foot bumped a box on the floor and made the kitty litter chatter. There were a couple of bottles of white zinfandel in the half-a-refrigerator, a mint seltzer, a six-pack of Tecate, orange juice dated two weeks ago, moldy bean dip, an open package of Ortega tortillas curling at the edges. I picked out a Tecate, popped open the tab and was spotlighted suddenly by a blaze of headlights coming through the window. The lights blinded me but I could tell from their location that it was Lonnie’s car and, since she had the keys, no doubt she was in it. She was going somewhere. I was going nowhere until she got back, which convinced me all over again that you should never ever be stuck without your own wheels.

  “God damn it, Lonnie,” I said.

  I went into the living room, picked Karma off the overstuffed sofa, sat down, drank my beer and wondered how long it could take to find a cat that had left tracks in the snow and why you would need a car to do it. By the time I’d finished the beer, there was no sign of Lonnie and I was falling asleep. Lying down on that sofa would be as comfortable as burying your head inside a down pillow. It was covered with gray, white and black cat hair and Karma was doing her best to climb up and leave some more.

  I got up, made sure the front door was locked, went into Lonnie’s bedroom, sat down on her unmade bed and watched a pink fiberfill comforter slide to the floor. Karma followed me and crawled up on the pillows, purring loudly. Some red petunias on the windowsill leaned out of their pot looking for water. On the bedside table there was a container of mellow yellows and a glass with some pink stuff in it. I opened the drawer, found a fat journal and closed the drawer, having absolutely no desire to read about the soap opera of loving Rick First. There was an afterthought of a room at the back of the house, I remembered. I picked up the comforter and took it with me, shutting the bedroom door to keep Karma in. The room was sort of an attached shed and Lonnie’s studio, which she used whenever she had an artistic inclination. There were a few half-finished watercolors leaning against the wall. On a card table I found an old typewriter, some Bic pens and several cans of orange spray paint. A woven Guatemalan hammock hung from the ceiling. It was a summer room, poorly heated and cold, and the screens were still on the windows. Before going to bed I passed through the kitchen into the bathroom. The light switch wasn’t in any normal place so I sat down on the toilet seat and peed in the dark. Then I got into the Guatemalan hammock, curled up under the comforter and went to sleep, if you could call it that. The sleep I had didn’t say much for Tim’s decaf.

  Sometime during the night the snow stopped. I woke up noticing that the insulating layer of silence was gone. A woman screamed vile accusations at someone, or was it a monkey screaming at a tree? I was in my hammock in the rain forest at Tikal. I put my hand down to rock myself and an army of red ants ran up my arm. I didn’t know it until I laid my head on my arm and the ants ran all over me stinging. I tossed and squirmed, but I was afraid to get up and step on the nest. Something threw itself against the window screen, a monkey with its arms and legs outstretched, or a cat with claws that scratched at the screen. Footsteps crunched on gravel, kitty litter rattled in a box. Snow sagged, melted, dripped, flushed. At the first sign of daylight, I got up, wrapped myself in the comforter, went to the door and watched the yellow-bellied dawn. The sun’s early rays coming from behind Santa Fe Baldy lit the undersides of dark, rounded clouds. A neighbor’s black dog stuck his head over a wall and barked. A large raven (or was it a crow?) squawked at me from a bare branch. Lonnie’s car was not in the driveway. I shut the door, let the comforter drop to the floor, went into the dark bathroom and sat down hard on a cold porcelain bowl. Someone had been here before me and left the toilet seat up.

  3

  THERE WEREN’T MANY places to hide in this house. I checked them all, noticing as I did that the door to Lonnie’s bedroom was open. Karma had gotten out and was sleeping on the living room sofa. The boom box and TV were in place. Impossible for me to tell if anything had been taken or if robbery had even been a motive. I took a look at the windows and the door. Except for the room I had slept in the windows were still wrapped tight in plastic, poor people’s insulation. The windows in the studio were covered with screens. They would have been easy enough to pry off, but could anyone have come in that way and put a screen back on without my noticing? It was hard to believe I’d slept that soundly, when it felt like I hadn’t slept at all. The outside door was the kind you lock by turning a button in the knob. An idiot with a credit card and a screwdriver could open it. With the screwdriver you pry loose the strip of wood that is supposed to protect the lock on the outside, insert the credit card, press open the lock. The strip outside Lonnie’s lock gave no sign of having been tampered with. She should have gotten herself a deadbolt the minute she moved in here. Santa Fe is devoted to the arts and higher consciousness; it also has more than its share of crimes against women and many of them never get solved. The door was locked when I went to bed; it had been locked when I went out to see the dawn, I remembered turning the button. Whoever had been careless enough to leave the toilet seat up had been careful enough to lock the door on the way out. It was beginning to look like that person had their own key, unless Lonnie had brought somebody home with her and taken them back out again without my hearing. I opened the door and looked carefully at the doorstep and the driveway, which I hadn’t when I watched the dawn. There was still a light dusting of snow on the sheltered stoop and it continued for a few feet into the driveway before it had melted or blown away. The tops of the ruts had a cap of snow but by the time you got to Miranda Street there wasn’t any snow on the ground at all. The dirt of the driveway was hard and cold enough not to take any prints. There were mixed footprints on the stoop—small ones of a high-heeled boot, Lonnie; medium-size ones of a running shoe, me; and, cutting across the two of us, another larger running shoe that left a series of V impressions like a bird in flight. Lonnie’s prints went into the driveway, so did the other’s and they both ended at the hard brown dirt. The phone rang and I went inside and answered it. “Hello?” I said.

  “Who’s this? Neil?”

  “Who’s asking? Tim?”

  “I guess you got home okay.”

  “More or less.”

  “I couldn’t sleep…”

  “Me neither.”

  “So I went out early…”

  “It’s pretty early, Tim, just getting light in fact.”

  “It’s the best time of day if you’re up for it. I took a look at your car. Could be a new
carburetor you’ll be needing.”

  “How much will that cost me?”

  “Three hundred dollars maybe.”

  “Crap.”

  “Do you want me to find somebody here or get it towed back to Albuquerque?”

  “Tow it,” I said.

  “Paul at the Citgo station will do it tomorrow if you want.”

  “Okay, tell him to take it to the flying red horse sign at One Callejon Blanco. Thanks. The guys there will pay him.”

  “Lonnie up yet?” asked Tim.

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “Is she all right? She was pretty out of it last night.”

  “I have no idea. She went out in the middle of the night and hasn’t come back.”

  “Lonnie went out? Where?”

  “Beats me.”

  “You’re all alone there?”

  “Just me and the cats.”

  “Well, if you see her tell her I called. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Oh, and Neil. Let me know how you make out with the car.”

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  I found some Red Zinger, made myself a cup and sat down in the living room to drink it. I was fed up with Lonnie, sick of the cat hair in her place and hungry for one of Santa Fe’s Sunday breakfasts that people wait in line hours for. I went through the closets, found the sweater with the least amount of fur on it and borrowed it. The snow on the stoop was gone when I went out and so were the footprints. A gray cat was sitting on the stoop. I let him in.

  It was the kind of morning Santa Fe does well: blue sky, clear air; brisk, but not freezing; the aroma of piñon burning that you smell in the street, but seldom in your fireplace; white snow topping brown adobe and melting softly; mist rising from the pavement. I walked downtown and beat the morning crowd to Pasqual’s, and had fresh orange juice and huevos rancheros with wake-up green chile.

  I circled the plaza—the Pueblo Indians were just beginning to set their wares up under the portal—and went into the lobby of the library to use the pay phone, but somebody had beaten me to it. While I waited I examined a bulletin board that listed places for rent, rides east and west and New Age workshops. There was Jungian dream analysis, journal keeping, meditation, astrology, tarot, massage, being a woman—you were required to bring a pillow and a blanket to that one. A guy wearing jeans, boots and a cowboy hat looked at the notices with me, waiting for the phone, too. He was thin and wiry and had eyes of faraway blue. His hands were stained from work, I noticed: a cowboy, or a sculptor maybe who worked in hard-edged metals and wood.