August removed his shirt, hoping Ruby might notice his tight little muscles. He’d been lifting weights. Alas, Ruby never noticed anything about him. She only let him fool around if she was drunk. Then, she might agree to hump him in the truck. A Pyrrhic victory for August for while his lust was sated, his pride was demolished.
He put his shirt back on. His left foot was asleep. His jaw ached.
Ruby conceded he could play the Beatles. “But only Rubber Soul,” she said.
“Want to smoke another joint?” he asked, falling back on the pillow.
“Got some?”
“I thought you did.”
“Maybe Troysaurus Rex left his stash.”
“Would he do that?”
“He was in a hurry,” Ruby snickered. “When Hector and familia showed up with guns, the dude thought a mob had come to string him up. It was scary.”
“Feel this,” August said, curling her fingers around his biceps.
“Righteous, dude.”
“It’s good, isn’t it?”
“Good? What’s good about it?”
August’s brain shrank. It always came to this. She made him feel stupid. He hated her. Then, he decided he was stupid and respected her honesty.
“Find the pot,” he said dejectedly.
Ruby swung her knobby feet off the bed and placed them on the rug. Staring down, she listened to the sweet familiarity of the Beatles. Their voices suggested life was sweet. She could once remember feeling as light as their music.
“What are you doing?” he asked impatiently.
“Looking at the rug,” she said.
Beneath her was an antique Navajo rug, its asymmetrical design woven in black, beige, and red bars.
“Haven’t you looked at it a million times?”
“I like looking at it.”
“Are you stoned?” he asked.
“I like looking at things, asshole. Like I don’t have to be stoned to like it. Especially things people make. Somebody made this rug. Somebody I never saw and will never see because she’s dead. I look at this rug every day. It tells me something deep.”
“Ru-by,” August stuttered with amazement. He loved listening to her. It turned out smart girls were sexy. No one was as smart and sexy as Ruby Ryan.
“Red dye used to come from crushed bugs, millions of scaly cactus bugs. Somebody hand-dyed the wool in the rug.”
August wasn’t really interested in dyes. He wanted Ruby to be impressed with his muscles.
“Go find the pot,” he said.
Ruby stumbled around the house, rummaging in cupboards and on shelves, scanning the vigas, checking behind the fridge and under the sink. She located a baggy in her mother’s treadle sewing machine. A baggy marked HM with a pink Sharpie. She sniffed. It was pot. She filled a soapstone pipe, lit a match, sucked on the stem. A single deep inhalation followed by a crash.
“Ruby,” August called out.
Ruby lay on the rug next to Kate’s bed, a larger rug with different colors and a different design. August contemplated that it was made by somebody, a Navajo long dead, a woman whose great-great-grandmother learned her craft from the Spaniards and taught it to her daughters and granddaughters, whose husbands and sons raised sheep and who dyed the wool with cochineal to make it red.