HAMMER FILMS HAD EATEN her mind. There was nothing left. Just crumbs of bad horror, wooden stakes, wooden acting, and rotting celluloid. That’s it, Maya thought, that’s the only decent movie that could come out of this pile of dreck—Hammer Films Have Eaten My Brain—the story of a young professional woman with an advanced degree who catches a deadly brain virus (“More of a meme, or a deadly earworm than a virus, if you will. We’ve located it in the amygdala, Chief, the so-called lizard brain”) from watching too many shitty B movies. When our heroine tells you the plot, like that of 1970’s The Vampire Lovers from the so-called Karnstein Trilogy (“a peaceful hamlet in eighteenth-century Europe is home to a female vampire with lesbian tendencies who ravages the townsfolk”), you barf, shit yourself, and die, and your bodily fluids infect the next poor sucker with rotten ideas till he too explodes with infectious stupidity. She listened to the actual trailer voice over and over in condescending wonderment—“Sample, if you dare, the deadly passion of the vampire lovers—perverted creatures of the night.” What heinous genius!
These creatures of the night overtook her waking and sleeping hours. The long nights especially were Hammer time—her dreams seemingly directed by that Hammer mainstay, the “uncouth, uneducated, disgusting, and vulgar” stylist, Mr. Jimmy Sangster. Perhaps Malouf would like his sexy vampires younger, as in ’71’s Lust for a Vampire, in which a “temptress does Count Karnstein’s [that kooky Karnstein again!] biting at a finishing school in nineteenth-century Styria.” Biting, not bidding, get it? Well played. Styria? She had to look up Styria. It’s a state in Austria that borders Slovenia. Maya wondered how the real estate was there. She thought maybe she’d move to Styria, start over.
But not before she watched The Quatermass Xperiment (1955)—yes, that’s right, you autocorrect cowards, no E in Xperiment, only one R in Quatermass, in Hammer world—wherein an “astronaut returns to Earth after an experimental space flight, afflicted by a strange fungus that transforms him into a murderous monster. After bullets and bombs fail to stop the creature, brilliant scientist Professor Quatermass [oh, she did love that name] becomes mankind’s last hope of survival.” She wasted more time than any human should contemplating the present-day ramifications in the gender politics of 1971’s Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, wherein “the good doctor, experimenting with ways to prolong his life, tests the formula on himself and metamorphoses into a beautiful woman” (well, she could maybe sell Malouf on that—Rob Lowe is certainly still pretty enough to do dual duty … and the Oscar goes to…).
Jekyll’s alter ego turns out to have a very narrow nasty streak, killing prostitutes who, terrified of Jack the Ripper, believe they have nothing to fear from a woman. Aha—so tricky! But why, she mused, as a woman, did Sister Hyde, like the Ripper, kill hoes? Was that a prescient indictment of how strong the urge to murder, to commit violence upon the opposite sex, is in man, that it lasts even through the transformation to woman? Or, more stickily, and oh so politically inconvenient, was it an of-its-time, benighted condemnation of the trans existence itself as a freakish perversion? Or … was it an unconscious attack on womanness itself—because the male Jekyll/Hyde had never murdered before he had a temporary, nighttime vagina and a gravity-defying ’70s vintage push-up bra? The cleavage made me do it? Maya shook her head. Her mind was mush. She fixed herself a tequila and orange juice.
Over the months that she disappeared down the Hammer universe rabbit hole, as she waited for reports on the kids from Rancho Cucamonga, subtle, troubling changes in her consciousness manifested. She lost some drive. Something about contemplating all the time, energy, and yes, love even, that must have gone into these ridiculous movies struck her at first as absurd, even tragic. To spend one’s life like that, taking seriously the Quatermasses and the zombies and the lesbo vampires? To be on one’s deathbed with those images swimming up in your head as you dwelled on your “achievements.” Ugh.
Malouf was sadistically attentive to her Hammer work. Was he really looking for a diamond in the rough or was he slyly roughing her up, testing her resolve, because he could? He wanted ten synopses a week. He wanted her to identify at least one remake per month. He made her go to lunches with desperate writers who would pitch her and then try to fuck her. It wasn’t hard work, but it wasn’t what she had spent her life training for, and it hurt her somewhere inside. She lost all energy to move for a weekend in mid-November. She’d drag herself home from Praetorian wondering, And what am I making? How am I better than Hammer? I’m worse, maybe; I’m merely pushing paper, moving numbers from one side to the other. Is my entire life an abstract endeavor to move the decimal point farther and farther to the right? And at the end of it, I won’t even have the slightest comfort that my pathetic contortions blissfully occupied some bored kid or social outcast in some rainy Saturday afternoon matinee. Am I a paper clip in smart business attire? She didn’t have a shrink to tell or close friends or a lover. Her associates, the Turks, would tell her she needed to get laid. Her doofus trainer did mention that he thought she’d “plateaued” and maybe she’d like to try some black-market supplements from China, rhino horn or tiger penis powder or something gross and animal unfriendly like that.
One winter day, Malouf called her into his office to give a twenty-minute presentation for a remake of The Vampire Lovers to him and the Young Turks. Taking their cue from the boss man, the Turks sat stone-faced and grim during her pitch, with their best schoolboy “listening” faces on, seeming to perk up only whenever the word lesbian made a cameo. Of course, Malouf had called the meeting for 2 p.m. so the boys were sleepy and maybe even a little tipsy from lunch. A couple of the Turks twitched and drooped. When she was finished, the boss thanked her courteously and dismissed her. She was a few yards down the hall when she heard the door shut and the room erupt in muffled laughter. She thought of quitting. If this was a test, she didn’t know yet how to pass—take the lumps or fight back? WWMD? What would Malouf do?
Then the pendulum started to swing back. It came when she was contemplating the life and times of Peter Cushing, Hammer’s preeminent star from the ’50s through the ’70s. Cushing played Baron Frankenstein six times and Dr. Van Helsing five times, along with numerous other heroes and villains. Doctors Frankenstein and Van Helsing; he’d looked at clouds from both sides. She imagined Cushing on his deathbed, surrounded by loved ones in a huge mansion in the English countryside that all that child’s play had bought. And she thought—he knew. He knew the truth. Not the truth of how to make a living man out of killing corpses or the best way to dispense with a gay Styrian vampire, or even the inner life of Grand Moff Tarkin, but the truth of life itself—it didn’t matter. None of this shit mattered. It was all child’s play after all. And that was fucking beautiful, not tragic. And the energy expended! The energy endowed by the creator, in Mr. Cushing’s case, had been used, over and over again, in his mock fight for truth or evil or whatever that week called for. Cushing didn’t need an Oscar on his deathbed in Canterbury in 1994 to make it all worthwhile; he was whole, and holy.
Through Cushing contemplation, Maya’s condescension flipped to wonder, and her lethargy turned around. She still didn’t know what exactly the fuck she was doing with her life, but it seemed to matter less. If Praetorian was her Hammer, then so be it. Was this growing up or giving up? She didn’t know. She wondered if there was a difference.
She turned her revitalized attention back to the Powers deal, and thought maybe it was a good time to visit Bronson, poke the bear. She drove to San Bernardino to see Janet Bergram. For her part, Janet seemed invested in the project almost against her own better judgment. She cared about the kids. But the news Janet relayed was not good for Maya. Deuce was doing well, but not Pearl or Hyrum. The California educational system was failing them. It looked like Powers might be winning this wager and his land, and her all-or-nothing gambit would end up a zero.
Maya couldn’t stand by passively and watch her unicorn die like this. Maybe it was time for some horse-trading. Maybe a little meddling was called for. Maybe if I put a stone in Bronson’s boot, he’ll do something stupid, and we can turn things back the Praetorian way so that my outside-the-box production of The Mormons Come to Town might one day soon pay huge dividends. I will move the decimal point to the right of eight zeroes. There was still plenty of time left to improvise. Conditions were ripe to hit the desert again, without the ’shrooms.
As Maya was leaving her tiny office, Janet said, “And oh, that hundred grand your boss promised the San Bernardino school system? No sign of it.”
“No?” Maya bristled. Malouf was like his buddy Trump in this regard, making a show of charitable donations without any actual follow-through. It was morally disgusting—everything to men like that was gesture and signal with no meat, like a tweet, and it reflected badly upon her as well, tainted her.
“Neither hide nor hair. Not a penny,” Janet groused.
“Maybe it was anonymous.” Maya looked at Janet’s face to see if that was a good joke. Nope. “Here,” Maya said, taking a checkbook from her bag. “Can I write you a check for ten thousand, say?”
“Well, not to me, but yes.” As Maya wrote the check, she flashed on that bitchin’ new silver Tesla truck she could not now afford, “But ten is not one hundred,” Janet added.
Maya spent a pleasurable night at Twentynine Palms, putting in some time in the spa and a few interminable hours on her iPad with soul-destroying fare—The Devil Rides Out and The Gorgon. In the morning, she drove to a meeting point arranged with her favorite park ranger to get off-roaded out to Powers’s land.
Ranger Dirk was happy to see her, and very talkative; she was a big tipper. “Back for more Hollywood research, huh?”
She laughed because this time, immersed as she was in the world of Hammer, he was closer to the mark than before. “Oh yeah,” she said. “I’m making money moves.”
“I grew up on Westerns. I miss a good Western,” Dirk confided in her. Oh God, she didn’t want to talk about movies with this guy. She didn’t even like movies. Period. He droned on to his captive audience, “Costner was good for a while, but Clint Eastwood. That’s my man. ‘Go ahead, punk, make my day.’”
“Clint Eastwood, sure.” She could tell Dirk was quoting something, but she didn’t know what. All she remembered of that guy was when he talked to a chair like a loon at some political convention. She always got him mixed up with the crazy gray-haired dude from Back to the Future.
“They shot all those old Westerns out here,” Dirk proclaimed. She was pretty sure that wasn’t true, though. “When I’m driving around out this way, I’m always on the lookout for a familiar backdrop. Yup, I was born in the wrong era. A six-shooter, right? Haha, I’m a Western guy.”
“You sure are, Dirk,” she said, thinking, I’d like a six-shooter right now.
“You look sleepy.” Dirk misinterpreted her abject boredom, then added in a semi-leer, “Rough night?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Do you mind if I close my eyes and try to nap?”
“Not at all, but good luck on this terrain. I’ll do my best to make it smooth, m’lady.”
“Thanks, Dirk. You’re my hero.” She closed her eyes and faked sleep for the hour or so it took to get to the Powers property.
“Last stop, Princess. Wakey-wakey.” Maya opened her eyes to see Yalulah and some of the Powers kids walking toward her, drawn to the intruders the way she imagined zombies are when they smell living flesh, but nicer, if only slightly.
“Thanks, Dirk, you’re amazing, but I can take it from here.”
“You want a ride back?”
“I could be a while. Why don’t you head back and if I need you I’ll call.” She really didn’t want him around to annoy Bronson or any of the kids with his friendly nonsense. Maybe Bronson could give her a ride back to Twentynine Palms.
“Sounds good to me. These folks give me the creeps.” Maya got out of the vehicle and walked toward Yalulah and the kids as Dirk turned tail back to civilization.
“Hi, Fam!” Maya called out, though she knew that the hipness of the salutation would be lost on them. “How is everyone doing?”
“What’s wrong?” Yalulah asked immediately. “Did something happen in Rancho Cucamonga? The kids? Mary?”
Maya realized now that her mere presence might have spooked everyone, and instantly felt stupid and callous. “Oh no, no, no…” She calmed Yalulah down. “I’m sorry. Everyone is fine. Everyone is doing great.”
“They’re all dead,” a little boy of about seven said. “Everyone is dead of cancer.”
Yalulah chided the child, “Cut it out, Alvin, you know they’re not dead. That’s not funny. You’re scaring your brothers and sisters.”
“You’re a philistine, Little Big Al.” Beautiful sighed.
“Aliens took them so they could look at their buttholes,” Lovina offered.
“Wow,” Maya said.
“Do you have cancer, too?” Alvin asked Maya.
“Interesting sense of humor,” Maya said, patting the boy on the head, secretly thinking maybe she should have chosen this loser weirdo for the test.
“Please don’t touch the children.”
“Oh right, I’m sorry.”
“God only knows what viruses and diseases you all are cooking up out there. What have you come for, then?” asked Yalulah, not exactly rolling out the welcome mat.
“Just to give you a general update and to go over some logistical stuff. Is Bronson around?”
“No, he most likely won’t be back till sundown. Maybe later.”
“Shit.”
The children laughed at the curse word.
“You ride a horse?” Yalulah asked.
“Well, I’ve ridden a horse, I wouldn’t say I’m a horse rider.”
“I can put you on one of the kids’ ponies and give you directions.”
Maya didn’t know if she was joking. “Directions?”
“I can’t leave the kids, can I? He might not even be back tonight. If you wanna see Bronson, that’s the only way you’re gonna see him today.”
“You’re gonna die,” that little shit, Alvin, said.
“Alvin, cut it out,” Yalulah scolded him, but she looked pleased. “I’ll give you a compass. It’s simple, head straight east.”
“Well, giddy up,” Maya joked.
Maya was terrified she’d get lost. She was told the journey might take over an hour and to simply head east straight for a peak that would never be out of view. Simple enough, but she was in the Mojave, all alone, a rain-shadow desert absent of landmarks to the uninitiated, with redundant, similar-looking (to her) peaks in every distance, and eventually it would get dark. She wondered if Yalulah was trying to kill her. That thought started small and idle, but grew bigger and louder as the sun passed its zenith and started angling back toward the earth. She kept hearing Alvin say, “You’re gonna die.” She thought she was in a Hammer flick and lizard zombies might attack at any moment. Actually, that thought comforted her in its absurdity, and she laughed.
Reception for her phone went in and out, so she turned it off to save the battery, just in case. She erased some lingerie photos she’d taken of herself a few weeks ago (’cause her abs were getting so ripped) in case she died and all that was left of her was the phone. She erased her search history just because. About an hour and twenty in, she began to think seriously of turning back, but then she feared she’d wander dangerously astray. She tried to keep her eyes on the peak Yalulah had shown her, and due east on the compass, which she began to mistrust. She began a panic spiral—how does a compass work anyway? Magnetic something or other? What if there’s a disturbance in the magnetic field? That was a thing, wasn’t it? Why didn’t she know how anything worked? Why didn’t she learn anything useful in college? Can a compass break?
She tried to swallow the rising panic in her throat, it felt like broken glass, and she realized how hot and thirsty she was. What was she thinking? Who was she trying to impress by coming out here alone? Malouf? Bronson? Nothing good happens in the desert. You get an arrow shot at you by a child, a rattlesnake sneaks up behind you, and you die of exposure. She was obsessing on rattlers and magnets when she heard Bronson yell, “What the fuck?” Maya thought she was hallucinating, till she made out a form riding fast toward her on a horse twice the size of hers.
She hadn’t realized how freaked out she was getting till she saw Bronson’s face and couldn’t fully stifle a heaving sob. Bronson offered her some of his water. She was shaking. “Oh Jesus, you’re scared to death, poor thing. Who let you come out here alone? Yalulah?”
Maya nodded.
“Jesus H. Christ.” He shook his head. “You okay?”
“Now I am.”
“Sorry about that. Yaya’s a hard-ass, bless her.”
“She gave me a compass.”
“Magnanimous.”
“Well, I get it. I think I know where she’s coming from.”
“The devil’s hindquarters, that’s where she’s coming from. Follow me now,” Bronson said, and he led them a short way to a shady spot that was quite pleasant.
Maya started to cool down and relax. She noticed again how handsome Bronson was. She’d been pursued by handsome men before, pretty men, she’d fucked a few even, and watched the power their looks had over her fade with time and bad manners. She thought she had a healthy view of what looks meant and didn’t mean to her. But gazing at Bronson, and those forearms again, she got buzzed. Jesus, what was she, she wondered, a forearm freak? Was she gonna go back home to Santa Monica, get on Pornhub, and type in “big sweaty forearms”? Probably get diverted to some “fisting” movies; best not to have that on her history. There’d already been a wonky sex scandal at Praetorian about five years ago involving an exec, now fired, and the eating of much cum.
No, it was something else, ’cause Bronson wasn’t young anymore, and the sun had taken its toll on his white skin, especially around the neck. She realized it was that his beauty was “functional,” that Bronson worked, that everything about this man worked, and she couldn’t believe how much that functionality was starting to turn her on. Shit, she thought, this is weird, maybe I’m just scared and he’s like a knight in shining armor right now ’cause I was about to bite it in the desert and this is some silly romance novel shit I’m getting off on; or maybe he’s got this off-kilter, old-timey charisma that got through my protective shields and modern-day, state-of-the-art bullshit detector—he’s a fucking polygamist after all, right? He keeps multiple women happy. He’s like a cult leader; he’s got that cult leader vibe, too, that Manson-type sneaky power. She wanted to get to the bottom of it and get away from it at the same time. Shit, she was in the desert with Charles Bronson Manson. That’s not good either. She’d come out here to play him, and now she was freaking and spinning out. She realized he’d asked a question and he was smiling.
“What?” she asked.
“I asked what you came out here for. Like a minute ago.”
“Oh … I wanted to give you an update on the kids.”
“Mary’s been doing that.”
“Oh, right, of course. I just wanted to check in.”
“Check in? Like we’re on the same side? I didn’t think we were on the same side. I think we want very different things.”
“We do?” she asked. He nodded. “What do you want?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I know what I want. That won’t change. I don’t need to talk about it. What do you want?”
That was a good question. What Maya wanted, from Praetorian, from life, might have changed in the last few months. The Cushing/Hammer effect. She wasn’t sure. She decided she’d start talking and they would both find out at the same time. She trusted her gut; the play would arise. “I came here ’cause I wanted to make a fortune. I saw an opportunity. I had a vision. I’m sure you can relate to that.” Bronson looked inscrutable. “Remember, at first, the offer was to buy a piece of your land, less than half, and we’d keep the government off your backs? And we’d leave you with a buffer zone so you could live the way you were living? Peaceful co-existence. I think that’s the best deal. I’d like to figure out how to get back to that. Get your kids back to you right now. I make a lot of money for the boss and you get to be the way you were.”
“The boss?” He laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“You don’t know who the boss is.” He got up and roped her little pony to his horse. “And we can never be the way we were.” He said, offering her his hand, “It’ll be dark soon. And cold. Let’s ride back. I’ll help you up.”
Bronson put Maya on the back of his horse and he jumped on in front. He didn’t speak for ten minutes. It was starting to cool down and the early December sun was no match for his August incarnation. Maya shivered as the sweat evaporated off her skin. What was she doing with her arms around this strong man’s waist? She had to be honest with herself. But, in order to do that, she’d have to know herself. And she knew enough to know that, in this moment, she was unknown to herself. She imagined seeing the two of them, from a distance, as an objective observer, this man and woman on horseback. They could be father and daughter. Or they could be lovers. They could be in love.
Finally, Bronson spoke, or seemed to speak, because Maya didn’t understand what was coming out of his mouth at first, whether they were words or not. He was pointing, too, as he spoke in tongues. “Acmispon argophyllus. Asclepias erosa. Cucurbita denticulate. Agave utahensis. Xylorhiza tortifolia.” She realized he was identifying all that he saw by the proper Latinate names of the flora. It felt like a Catholic mass performed in Latin. It felt holy, it made Maya feel holy.
She remembered and the words cascaded through her from the deep past, “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.” Maya hadn’t been to church since she was a child, with her Catholic mom, but the ancient Latin flooded back to her, smuggled in on the backs of Bronson’s words. She lifted her eyes to the sky and realized she was in church again, had been all along, and that the desert was a place of worship, mystery, and revelation for this strange and powerful man. The observer at a distance in her thought now these two on horseback could be teacher and pupil, priest and penitent. Bronson continued, “Verbena gooddingii. Stipa speciosa. Rafinesquia neomexicana.”
The old words flooded back to her from God knows where. She said, “Judica me, Deus, et discerne causam meam de gente non sancta: ab homine iniquo et doloso erue me.”*
“Igneous rocks/skull rocks. The desert thinks with that skull.” Bronson pointed out boulders that looked eaten away by millennia of rainfall fashioning divots like eyes and smooth fronts like foreheads, like nothing else but a huge skull made by the maker, a self-portrait, the earth thinking itself at the beginning of time, dreaming itself into being. “There’s Phoradendron californicum. Yucca schidigera. Sometimes I think,” Bronson continued, “that my only job is to say the names, to speak the names, to bear simple witness. That because I saw them here and spoke their names, I existed, and because I bore witness and spoke their names, they existed. Ah, Yucca brevifolia—Joshua tree.”
“Joshua tree,” Maya repeated, like a child.
“Let me tell you what I’ve noticed since I got here, it’s getting hotter, it seems, and dryer every year.”
“They call it climate change back there. Maybe we need the Latin for that.”
“You can call it whatever you want, but see that ring of Joshua trees there?”
He pointed out what indeed was a circle of the Joshuas, almost as if they had been planted in such a geometric shape. “Because of ‘climate change,’ you say—hotter temperatures—the Joshua trees are migrating to what they call climate refugia; the trees are finding the better, more temperate climate for themselves, which is great, smart nature, but the problem is they are leaving the Yucca moth behind. The Yucca moth hasn’t been moving with the Joshuas, she’s a terrible flier, she can’t make the trip, if you touch one, it just falls to the ground writhing, but the Yucca moth is what pollinates the Joshua tree, on purpose she does that, never eating the pollen for herself. Why? Perfect symbiosis as God ordained—she lays her eggs in the Joshua. It’s a succulent, ain’t a tree, and they need each other to procreate. But the moth can’t keep up with the migrating plants so they’re not getting pollinated and not bearing fruit, but are asexually reproducing from their roots, creating the ‘fairy rings’ you see there—circles of newer plants radiating out from the empty center where the living Joshua used to be. But these asexual plants don’t reliably reproduce—so they die out.”
“Jesus, asexual reproduction, that’s like a horror movie,” Maya said, thinking inevitably about Hammer films. All I ever fucking think about is dumb movies, she thought, before wondering seriously if there was the germ of a scenario in there for Malouf, playing fast and loose with the science metaphors, climate change perverting the planet, transforming it into a ghost of itself, asexual, incestuous. Stop, she told herself. She had come to realize, since working at Praetorian, how she habitually tried to monetize information. Climate change? Fascinating subject—what will it do to real estate? Or now, what’s the movie? But that training started way before Malouf, at home in America and in school, she couldn’t lay it all at his Ferragamo-clad feet. But wasn’t this, she could almost hear Malouf in her head—and the idea that she was internalizing his voice freaked her right the fuck out—wasn’t this a prime example of making Arnold Palmers when life gives you lemons? Seeing the silver lining in the hurricane.
Sure, sure it was, but soon, Bronson seemed to tell a cautionary tale, soon there would be no water anywhere, only lemons. Then what? Bronson monetized nothing. Reaching for the cliché, she thought, he knows the price of nothing and the value of everything. She wanted to compliment Bronson, but all she said was, “There’s a metaphor in there somewhere. Or a movie.”
She thought she saw him smile at the mention of a movie. Maybe he missed his old life sometimes? She snapped her fingers. She had the title—The Moth Effect. She said, “If a moth flaps its wings in Joshua Tree, a storm ravages Europe.”
The smile left Bronson. He looked away. “Lepidoptera Tegeticula” was all he said, as if in final benediction for a friend. She could feel his grief for the lowly moth. It was real. “That sucks,” she heard herself say. Ugh. What an inadequate and inarticulate response to his passion. She felt like a dilettante, an interloper on a planet she should be loving and taking care of. Yeah, she drove a Tesla, eschewed plastic whenever possible, and carried a metal straw in her purse, but maybe that wasn’t enough to save the world.
“Do you know why it’s called a Joshua tree?” he asked, like a favorite professor again, she thought, like a real-life, present-time Indiana Jones. “Named that by the Mormons who settled this area.”
“Mormons settled this area?”
“Old school.” She laughed at his attempt at hip lingo. He continued, “Reminded them of when Moses raised his hands up in prayer for Joshua in battle.”
“Why isn’t it the Moses tree, then?”
“Good question. Pearl used to ask me that exact thing. I’d tell her the definition depends on your mood. Figure you can call that tree Joshua or Moses or Bill or Ted, but he still won’t come. Can you see him—Joshua or Moses or whoever it is?” He raised his arms to the sky in prayer. “Can you see him praying?”
“Yes,” she said, seeing his forearms again, and raising her hands in prayer as well. “I can see him pray.”
She kept her arms aloft for a while, but they got tired. There was no Equinox machine that could prepare her for lengthy horseback prayer. Bronson pointed out some surprisingly vibrant flowers beneath their dangling feet. “There’s some Bigelow’s monkeyflower, Mimulus bigelovii, ain’t he cute? Ah damn, look there”—he pointed to a big, gorgeous five-petaled pale yellow flower, a color so subtle no master paint mixer could ever approach—“Mentzelia involucrata, the sand blazing star.”
“Wow,” Maya said. Again with the inadequate response to the wonders Bronson was sharing. But she knew nothing about flowers except the famous “Dutch Tulip Bubble” cautionary tale she’d studied at business school. Bronson didn’t seem to notice or mind.
“There’s Pearl’s favorite,” he said, “and her mom’s—the desert five-spot.” He dismounted, helped Maya down, and stooped down to a light purple bulb. He didn’t pluck it. He bent it Maya’s way and motioned for her to join him. He gently spread the bulb. “See inside here, Eremalche rotundifolia, five red spots here, like the best poker hand you ever got. Royal flush.” She looked inside the bulb at the painterly beauty within, the hidden order out here in what she had thought was a chaos of random desert. A sublime hierarchy that only initiates could uncover. She was thankful for Bronson, her guide to this otherworld.
The flower seemed to overwhelm Bronson momentarily. He stroked the fragile, weightless skin of the bulb comfortingly with the tip of a finger, saying, “There, there…” He seemed to drift off somewhere.
But just as quickly, he was already standing up and striding away. “Goddamn cheatgrass and Sahara mustard are bad out here.” He began yanking the grass out of the ground angrily. “Invasive species,” he said. “I consider myself a guardian, like the angel Michael with a flaming sword. Cheatgrass shall not enter.” He had a smile on his face. He knew he sounded a bit pretentious. She noticed he didn’t give cheatgrass or Sahara mustard the honor of a Latin handle.
“What’s cheatgrass ever done to you?”
“This desert should be barren of fuel to burn. Naturally it is. Cheatgrass doesn’t belong here. It’ll burn. It’ll make a fire burn way farther than it should and burn what it shouldn’t.”
“Oh.” Oh? Jesus.
She watched as he pulled up the vandal roots. She got the feeling he wanted to purify the entire desert with his bare hands. He just might succeed. “You sure we should be out here? Humans?” she asked. He stopped yanking at the grass.
“You mean, like we’re cheatgrass, too?” Maya nodded. Bronson inhaled. He seemed to consider the possibility. “I suppose humans are fuel for fire, too,” he said. He sat back and scanned the horizon, seeming to take in the quixotic nature of one man’s quest against runaway nature. “Ever fire a gun?” he asked.
“No,” she replied, though the question startled her, and scared her out here all alone.
“Come here,” he motioned to her, and withdrew his gun from a side holster.
“I played paintball once,” she said.
“Oh—paintball.” He smirked. “Then you’ll be fine.”
“Hey, don’t hate on paintball.”
He pointed at a cactus maybe twenty yards away. “See that saguaro?” She nodded. “Okay, here, take this.” He placed the gun in her hand, way heavier than they seemed to be in the movies. “Nothing to it. Just make believe it’s an extension of your finger, the barrel, just point and shoot.”
“Like a camera.”
“Sure, if that helps.”
“Wow, it’s so heavy.”
“Uh-huh. That’s the weight of life and death you feel.”
“Show me,” she said, realizing that her tone had become flirty.
Without turning around, Bronson gestured with his head. “Okay, see that boy back there over my left shoulder? He’s not praying, he’s got his hands up ready to go.” She looked where he pointed. There was a big cactus about thirty yards away, its two branches, she didn’t know what else to call them, almost perpendicular to its trunk and directed their way as if it wanted a hug or to fight. She could easily imagine a man with a gun. “He thinks he’s got the drop on me, but…”
In one fluid motion, Bronson snatched the weapon from Maya’s hand and spun around like a gunslinger in a Western, shooting from the hip. The cactus in the distance popped wetly, three times, some of its succulent flesh sprayed out right where one might assume a head would be, dead center. Pap, pap, pap. He’d shot holes for eyes and a nose, boom, like that. He spun the gun on his index finger. “Pearl calls that ‘old man strength.’”
“Oh God! Don’t hurt it,” Maya said, surprised at how her heart went out to the ambushed saguaro.
“Nah, it’ll take more than a bullet or two to take down cactus-man. He can take whatever God and man throws at him. His skin will heal. Now you,” he said, handing the gun back to her. “I’ll help.”
He was showing off. She liked that. He got behind her and held her arms tight, his hands around her hands. He placed her finger on the trigger and said, “Inhale, exhale, pull.” She inhaled, exhaled, and pulled. The bullet disappeared with a spray into the cactus again into one of its “arms”—a hit. She yelped with genuine delight.
“Sorry! Sorry, Mr. Cactus, or Joshua or Bill, Ted, whatever your name is,” she called out.
“Okay,” he said, “not bad. Now you try by yourself, Killer. Hit that bad man.” She liked that he called her “Killer,” like Malouf on a good day. She turned back and aimed at the injured saguaro. “Steady your right hand with the left.”
“I know. I’ve seen Law and Order. I’m gonna hundred-percent Hargitay this shit. Or maybe go full-on Wonder Woman.”
“Wonder Woman had a lasso.”
“You didn’t see the reboot.”
“The lasso of truth.”
“Shut up, Mr. Powers. Inhale,” she said as she inhaled, “exhale, pull.” She pulled the trigger, the gun recoiled, but that was that. There was no sign that she had hit anything at all.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Paintball,” he said, “whiff.”
“You mean I missed the earth?”
“Apparently, and that ain’t easy out here, there’s a lotta earth.” He laughed. “Try again. Use your sight there. Inhale, exhale, pull.” She did as he said. She squinted through to find the sight and fired. The bullet plunked into the lower half of the cactus. “That’ll work,” he said. “Good shot. You’re a natural with a mean streak—you got him right in the cojones. Hyrum calls that a ‘balls’-eye.’”
The sun was going down by the time they got back on the horse. She was getting tired of balancing with her inner thighs, and wrapped her arms around Bronson’s waist. The desert was a beautiful peach-pink. She thought she could see the house in the distance. They must be close to home.
“Back when I used to be in movies, they’d call this the magic hour. But it’s no hour, more like twenty minutes. Ain’t that the way.”
“All Hollywood lies, huh?”
“All lies.” He sighed. The landscape was barren and lunar and glowing. Maya swelled with feeling at the sheer unwelcoming, almost hostile beauty of it all.
Maya put her hands on Bronson’s shoulders and turned him to her. She liked making the first move; it jibed with her preferred image of herself. She kissed him deeply. He returned in kind. He tasted of sand and rock and sun. The observer in her watched and thought these two beautifully backlit golden-hour riders were lovers, and then flew back into her body, making her one, whole, no longer split, in that moment, between the one who observes and the one who does. She lost all thought and self-consciousness and was filled with something wordless and electric.
Though the observer in Maya had rejoined her, what the two on horseback didn’t see as they kissed was that there was still yet another observer out there in the desert, coming from the house, riding out to meet them, hidden in the lengthening shadows of sundown. Pearl, bored, frustrated, and angry at school, had come back to see Bronson, had run away from the city, unbeknownst to Mary. No one knew. She’d gotten her Adderall/Ritalin/Xanax-dealing senior buddy to lend her his motorcycle with vague promises of future favors that could haunt her one day but so what. Bronson had taught her how to ride on his Frankenbike when she was ten. She arrived quietly at the house when Yalulah and the kids were inside having dinner and, unseen, went straight to the barn, saddling up to go meet Bronson in the special place where she knew he must be. She’d only gotten a few thousand yards from the house when she saw Bronson and that woman from LA making out on the horse. Same as she and Bronson had before.
Pearl gently turned her horse back to home, before Bronson and Maya knew she was there. She easily beat them back to the house, jumped on her motorcycle, and roared back to Rancho Cucamonga. An apparition.