Her laptop had announced the e-mail’s arrival with a sound like an open bottle shoved underwater. Glug.
Hi, Lisette,
I am definitely coming down after the semester’s over, but I’m indefinite about for how long. I mean that I’ll be there longer than we planned. Can’t say how long. At loose ends right now, really loose, stressed out, because I’ve been asked—Ha! Asked? Told, ordered, commanded—not to come back for the fall term. Been fired, in other words. The U. is cutting back. Budget problems. And my student evals weren’t up to the mark. Did you know that? Teachers, even adjuncts, get evaluated by their students. Guess mine weren’t happy with me. Shit shit shit. Don’t need this right now. I guess I’m not good enough. Haven’t sold a painting in MONTHS!! I’m not tenured, just an adjunct, so they showed me the door.
I’ve been busting my butt to sublease my apt. and put my stuff in storage that needs to be there and figure out what I need to bring to Mexico. You can tell the priest, Tim, that I can start on restorations. I’ve got the materials. So much to do, so little time, so I went off the meds, because they slow me down. Need rocket fuel to get through it all. But I’m OK. Really. I’ll go back on. Promise. You can look out for me, you’re the doctor.
XOXOXO
Pam
Lisette was troubled by the e-mail’s stream-of-consciousness flow, its hyper tone, and by her own complicated reaction to it. She should have been happy to hear that they would soon be together, living as a real couple, and she was. But it was a happiness tainted by anxiety; their arrangement, originally intended to be temporary, a testing of the waters, an experiment with a built-in exit should things not work out, was now to be extended indefinitely. What if things did not work out? And then there was that business about going off the lithium. Lisette wanted to be Pamela’s lover, not her doctor. Certainly not her shrink. But it would be irresponsible not to make sure she took her medications. Lithium or no lithium, Pamela was going to have a tough time coping with life in an isolated Mexican town where the dreadful had become commonplace.
Lisette had learned about the murder of Tim’s parish secretary after she’d returned from the holidays in Tucson. It stretched her conception of what was possible in the way of human depravity. And then—an exorcism! Sweet Jesus! It was as if the whole town had fallen into a wormhole and come out in the tenth century. Lisette was tempted to attend the spectacle out of curiosity but decided to stay home. Tim Riordan came into the clinic after the ritual with two young women. The one with dark, tightly curled hair appeared dazed. She had had an attack at the exorcism, Tim said. A fit. “No no no.” The woman’s head whipsawed. “No ataque, no convulsión. Era algo más.” The other woman told her to shut up. She was tall and had the hard good looks of a film noir actress: long, straight, dull-blond hair, a knife-thin nose, gray eyes that were somehow bright and opaque at the same time, like the glass eyes in a stuffed animal. She made Lisette uneasy; waves of malevolence seemed to ripple from her. “Listen,” Film Noir said, her tone icy, “my friend gets these convulsions, you know. So you give her something.”
Lisette answered that she’d have to have a look at her first, which she did in the examination room. The young woman also had a certain tough-chick attractiveness, her cute ass shown to full effect by her sprayed-on blue jeans. A leather jacket and a denim shirt, unbuttoned to reveal a little cleavage, completed the picture of a biker’s mama. She kept insisting that she hadn’t had una convulsión, she knew what that was like, and this had been different. A demon had been inside her.
Lisette made no comment and diagnosed a petit mal seizure. “All right,” said Film Noir, “whatever you have for that, give it to her.” Lisette replied that she didn’t stock medications for epilepsy. Even if she did, she wouldn’t know which to prescribe. There were twenty different kinds, and some had bad side effects. “You should see a specialist,” she said. Film Noir snickered. “Some great fucking doctor you are.”
Lisette did not tell Pamela about the murder or the exorcism when she picked her up at the Hermosillo airport. A shrewd decision. Pamela had lost weight since Christmas. She looked almost scrawny and seemed brittle, radiating an unsettling mixture of tension and excitability. She talked incessantly on the drive to San Patricio, all stirred up about a new period in her work, experiments with light and shapes inspired by the Southwest—“Watch out, Georgia O’Keeffe! Here comes Paaa-mah-la!”—and about losing her teaching job—“Imagine, giving me the heave-ho because a few soggypants kids gave me a shitty eval”—and about the response from a New York gallery that had seen one of her new pieces—“I feel like I’m sitting on a rocket ship that’s about to take off, whoosh, you watch, and let’s see what the faculty has to say when they read about me in the Arts section in the New York Times. Their loss, if you ask me.” And about the new luggage she’d bought, Louis Vuitton, and the new clothes to go with her new painting style, her whole new life. New new new.
“Are you back on the meds?” Lisette asked when she found space to get a word in.
“Sure. Why?”
“You seem a little … wound up?”
“Of course I am! I’m starting over! With you!” She wasn’t in complete control of her voice; it hit shrill, grating notes. “What do you want? For me to feel like shit because I got the heave-ho? Well, I don’t. I feel good, really good.”
She whirled and twirled when they got home, unpacking the Louis Vuitton suitcases and the old-fashioned steamer trunk containing her art supplies. Lisette was dismayed by the new wardrobe: cocktail dresses that would be appropriate at an embassy function in Mexico City, flashy, fringed cowgirl blouses, and silver-buttoned charro outfits, as if she planned to costume herself for a folkloric gala.
“How much did this stuff set you back?”
“Oh, tons. Scads. So what?”
“So nobody around here dresses like this.”
“What do I care?” Then came a laugh nothing like the laugh Lisette delighted in. It was sharp, artificial. “Maybe they’ll start when they see me—maybe I’ll start a trend. How do you say—excuse me: Cómo se dice en español, trendsetter?”
Lisette had seen glimmers of Pamela’s need for attention before, but they had been only glimmers. This out-there flamboyance was new and, like her fast, pressured talking, more than a little disturbing.
Her sex drive was likewise in high gear. That night, she stripped down to a scarlet thong—a thong!—and, dangling a sex toy from her fingers, put on a lascivious expression as false to her face as the thong was to her middle-aged body. “C’mon, babe. C’mon and do me.”
Do me? She sounded as if she’d been watching too much Internet porn. Her blatant sexuality was a bit ludicrous, and—this startled Lisette—arousing.
In the morning, while Pamela slept, Lisette phoned a psychiatrist she knew in Mexico City, asking his advice. He counseled patience; it could be anywhere from several days to two weeks before the lithium took effect, depending on how much time had passed since the last dose. “If you have any Xanax or Ativan on hand, give her some,” he said. “It will help calm her.” He couldn’t say anything more without seeing the patient.
She had a supply of Xanax and presented Pamela with a capsule on her breakfast plate.
“What do I need this for?” Pamela said. “I feel terrific.”
“Take the damn thing, please. You asked me to look after you, so I’m looking after you.”
Pamela replied with a sulky, girlish “All right, if it makes you feel better.”
The tranquilizer didn’t do much good. They got onto the subject of their families, which Lisette knew, from previous episodes, could wind Pamela’s spring to the breaking point.
“Iago, that’s her, that’s my mother,” Pam said.
“Iago?”
“A whisperer whispering.”
“Whispering what?”
And she was off, leaving most of her breakfast on the plate. “In Dad’s ear. Oh, he was a wonderful man … not Othello.… A wonderful man, really kindhearted at heart … Whispering … Hssssss … She whispered suspicions about me, knew I was gay before I did and she was upset because she’s very rigid, you know. We had to have dinner at exactly the same time every night. Six-thirty. The cook was under orders. We had a cook. Mommy dearest couldn’t fry the proverbial egg and wouldn’t have even if she knew how. I never came out.… Knew I was gay.… Why do you think my teeth are this fucking mess? We had enough money to buy ten orthodontist practices.… She wouldn’t get them fixed because she thought I wouldn’t need them to attract a man.… Iago whispered in Dad’s ear, ‘Pammy’s a lesbian. Don’t expect any grandchildren from her unless she goes to a sperm bank to make a withdrawal.’ He didn’t care, loved me anyway. Oh, he was a wonderful man.… She doesn’t know about you, about us, no way I’ll ever tell her, that awful woman.… Seventy-seven and still…”
Pamela’s voice cracked and Lisette stroked her arm, not so much to reassure her as to cue her to dam the torrent of words. Lisette had learned that Pamela’s favorite theme, when mania seized her, was to cast the people in her life as Shakespearean characters. She wondered what part she might be given. Cordelia? Glendower? When Pamela’s serotonin levels dropped, the snakes in her pretty head hatched out. She wasn’t insane in the sense that she heard voices or saw things that weren’t there. She wasn’t insane at all, medically speaking. Her type of bipolar disorder, bipolar II, acted on her like too much alcohol or cocaine, liberating the Pamela that Pamela otherwise kept chained in the attic: the hypertalkative, hyperactive, hypersexual, vulgar, self-aggrandizing Pamela B, filled with inflated notions of her talents (“Watch out, Georgia O’Keeffe!”) and dark, furious memories of her bitch mother and kindhearted father. Lisette had fallen for the reserved, reticent, self-effacing Pamela A, and wanted her back.
She thought Álamos would be good for Pamela, hasten B’s departure and A’s return. But the getaway would also be good for Lisette. She had friends in Álamos, and she needed an escape from Pamela’s exclusive company. Straight-line distance, the town was only a hundred and fifty miles south of San Patricio, but it was a thousand miles away in other respects: considerably larger, cleaner, and richer, a pueblo mágico crowded with American expats who had spent huge sums restoring colonial mansions or refurbishing them into B&Bs. Blood did not stain its ancient cobblestones; its citizens did not fear being kidnapped; extortionists did not prey on its merchants. It was neutral ground in the narco wars, a kind of mini-Switzerland, and every winter it staged a music festival, drawing opera companies and chamber music ensembles and music lovers from the world over.
The festival was on when Lisette and Pamela arrived. They checked into a casita at El Pedregal. Lisette knew the owners, an American couple who gave her a discount. Pamela had come down from her high—the lithium taking effect? A swing to the depressive cycle? She claimed never to suffer from deep depression, and Lisette had yet to see her in a black mood. Dark gray, maybe, when she got down on herself.
While Pamela sat on the patio, captivated by the white, disk-shaped blossoms falling like tiny parachutes from a palo santo tree, Lisette phoned her friends, the Hartigans—obscenely rich expats who lived in a hacienda with the square footage of a ballpark, the sort of people she normally disdained. But they were, like Manny Cardenas in Tucson, among the philanthropic donors who kept her clinic in business.
Louise Hartigan answered. “Lisette! You’re here? Why didn’t you let me know you were coming?”
“It was kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing.”
“Well, you must stay with us. There isn’t a room to be had this weekend.”
“We found one. At the Pedregal. Lucked out. A last-minute cancellation.”
“Lucked out, sure enough. Who makes the ‘we’?”
“Pamela. Pamela Childress.”
A pause, then: “The painter?”
“You’ve heard of her?”
“Heard of her? We caught one of her shows, in … in … Houston, I think it was. Last year. Right. Houston. We almost bought one of her oils. Or maybe it was an acrylic. It didn’t quite go with our place. The colors were a bit off.”
Lisette groaned inwardly. “She’ll be thrilled that you know her work.”
“We’d love to meet her. George is off in the reserve, checking on his trip cameras. He got a picture of a margay last week, hoping for a jaguar next. How about meeting me at the rehearsal for the opera this afternoon? The Marriage of Figaro. In the plaza at four, okay?”
“Sure. Thanks, Lou.”
At lunch at La Terrasita, owned by another expatriate couple, Lisette told Pamela about the Hartigans. She was indeed thrilled that they admired her work. Maybe too thrilled, crackling with excitement.
“I should have brought my portfolio. I would have if I’d known.”
“Save that for some other time,” Lisette said.
“Save what?”
“Pitching yourself.”
“I’ve got some on my phone. Or I could do a new one of the palo santo tree. Just the blossoms, falling, falling. Like teeny parachutes. They might like that. What do you think?”
“I think, honey, this isn’t the time to go angling for a commission.”
“When is the right time?” Her tone changed suddenly; there was an aggressiveness in the question. “I’m sure you’ll tell me when the right time is to angle and pitch.”
The waiter arrived with the tab.
“Sorry for the bitchiness,” Pamela said, her voice softening as quickly as it had hardened. “I’ll get lunch.”
“So how do you like Álamos so far?”
“Bello! Bello! How do you say that in español? Beautiful?”
“Hermoso. Or lindo.”
“I like lindo. Pueblo lindo mágico.”
* * *
Louise Hartigan was an anomaly: an overweight vegan. Her height—she was almost as tall as Pamela—combined with her bulk made her an intimidating presence. Breasts like pontoons preceded her as she strode across the Plaza de Armas with the momentum of a great ship. Her big arms enveloped Lisette, and she gave Pamela an equally crushing embrace, her deep voice booming greetings and praise for Pamela’s art. But Louise lacked a filter. Right after the encomiums, she said that she and George had not bought the painting they’d seen at the Houston show because it clashed with their decor.
“How do you mean, it clashed?” Pamela asked, her face clouding over.
“It didn’t go with the wall where we wanted to hang it. The wall is terra-cotta, and there was too much red and orange in the painting. It would have been lost. We needed something with contrast, more blues maybe.”
“Why not repaint the wall?”
“Because we like the terra-cotta,” Louise said.
“I am not an interior decorator,” said Pamela, sounding at once haughty and offended.
Louise finally realized her gaffe. She squeezed Pamela’s arm. “Aw, I’ve got a big mouth and the foot to go with it. It would have been a shame to lose such a fine piece of work on that wall.”
Mollified for the time being, Pamela whipped out her phone and began swiping through photos of her recent work.
“Have a look at these,” she said, passing the phone to Louise. “If you see something you like, something that goes with your terra-cotta decor, let me know.”
Lisette was embarrassed for her. She sounded like a shopgirl, peddling sweaters. Louise returned the phone.
“Hard to see them in this bright light,” she said.
“The first three in the stream, the thirty-six-by-twenty-fours—those go for … how does fifty thousand sound?”
Louise drew back, giving Pamela a curious look. “Expensive is how it sounds.”
Lisette poked a thumb into Pamela’s ribs, provoking a burst of high-pitched, affected laughter. Louise smiled uncertainly and threw a look at Lisette that asked, “What’s with this woman?”
The soprano and the baritone stepped out of the old Governor’s Palace, now a theater, and began rehearsing on the front steps. A small crowd had assembled to listen in.
“They’re from a Spanish opera company,” Louise said in an undertone. “He’s playing Count Almaviva, and she’s, I think, Susanna. No, Rosina, the countess.”
The man was tall, thin, and too boyish to play the lecherous count, Lisette thought. The woman was ravishing, her pale complexion contrasting with her long, raven-black hair. The rehearsal got off to a bad start. The singers weren’t half a minute into a duet when they were interrupted by the appearance of an odd conveyance: a four-seat golf cart decked out to resemble a carriage and drawn by a team of white fiberglass horses attached to the front. It circled the plaza, the carnival-ride horses pumping up and down on steel poles to a tinny calliope tune. A sign hanging from the fringed roof advertised guided tours of Álamos. The driver pulled to a curb nearby as the male half of an American couple called, “How much, señor? Cuánto?” The driver gave him the price, and the couple climbed in while the baritone scowled at the intrusion.
He and the female singer carried on. Pamela applauded, crying out, “Bravo! Bravissimo!” in a harsh falsetto, her rs rolling like barrels. She seemed unaware that she was cheering in Italian. Also that the duet wasn’t quite finished.
Just moments later, to Lisette’s alarm, Pamela ran over to the carriage and hopped onto one of the horses, sitting it sidesaddle.
“Avanti, signore!” She raised an arm, holding the pole with the other. “Avanti presto!”
The driver didn’t appear to mind; he was laughing. So were his passengers and most of the people in the audience, all of them gawking at the long-legged blonde on the plastic horse. That was the point, of course. Pamela had stolen the show.
“Is your friend on something?” Louise asked with a bemused frown.
“She’s acting like this because she was off what she’s on.”
“I understand.” Louise made a gesture of sympathy. “I’ve got a relative with a problem like that.”
Pamela tested Louise’s understanding, and Lisette’s patience, that night when they were invited to join the Hartigans and some of their friends at the callejoneada, the nightly street procession led by music students. Determined to make an impression, she had put on greenish eye shadow, dark red lipstick, and a charro suit consisting of a frilly blouse, a green jacket over a long skirt embroidered in gold, and high-heeled flamenco shoes. The costume, which would have looked ostentatious, if not ridiculous, on anyone else, made her more alluring than ever.
She flirted shamelessly with George as the procession flowed down streets ablaze with lights and jammed with festival-goers. She touched his arms and shoulders, lavishly complimented his tastes in art—he and Pamela shared a passion for Rothko—and feigned interest in his trip-camera photos of spotted cats. George was a good deal older than Louise, in his early seventies, a man whose once-handsome looks now had the charm of a ruin: hair gone white and thin, like strips of paper, face webbed with wrinkles, broad shoulders stooped. He pretended to ignore Pamela’s flirting, but it was obvious that the attentions of a beautiful woman pleased him as much as it displeased his wife. At first, Lisette thought that Pamela was trying to woo him into buying a painting; then she thought that Pamela, for reasons known only to herself, wanted to make Lisette jealous; at last she realized that this seductress was but one more side to the many-sided Pamela B.
The music students, garbed in Renaissance costumes of maroon jackets and white knee socks, strummed guitars and sang old Spanish ballads. The throng following them joined in. Pamela skipped ahead and began to dance alongside the troubadours, marching behind an old man who led a donkey carrying cowhide botas slung from its packsaddle and two wine casks, one on each side. Pamela grabbed a bota and, raising it overhead, squirted wine down her throat. Lisette, feeling as though she were swimming through a river of human flesh, caught up and grabbed her by the arm, like a bouncer ejecting a rowdy. Wine dribbled down Pamela’s chin, staining her white blouse. A couple of drunk young men nearby cheered her on. “Bravo, señora! Hurra!” Right then, a look of malicious merriment flared in Pamela’s eyes. She broke Lisette’s grip, hopped up to an elevated sidewalk and, using it as a mounting block, swung herself onto the donkey’s back. The packsaddle slipped, dumping her onto the cobblestones. One of the casks broke loose, but it remained attached by a rope. The startled donkey bolted, knocking a bystander down, dragging the saddle and the cask. The old man ran stiffly in pursuit, shouting, “Gaspar! Gaspar!” George went to help Pamela up, but the young drunks got to her first. Giving her another Hurra!, they pulled Pamela to her feet. “Gracias! Grassy-ass, my amigos!” she screeched, laughing.
For days, Lisette been counseling herself to be forbearing, to remember that her lover’s condition was not a character flaw but a disease no different than diabetes or cancer. Yet everything Pamela had done today seemed somehow willful and deliberate. Lisette faced her and told her to for Christ’s sake get ahold of herself. Pamela laughed again—that harsh laugh with a hint of cruelty in it—and Lisette slapped her cheek, hard enough to feel her palm strike bone.