Two

It wasn’t his hand beating the drum. The drum beat in his hand, pounding inside, his fist shoved deep in his pocket. The beating drowned out the football game playing above the bar and the women, shirttails knotted above flashy belt buckles, throwing down shots, shuddering, shrieking as the liquor hit the back of their throats. The rhythm wrapped in his fingers carried Cody Geronimo far away from the annoying people in this ridiculous tourist bar. He had work tonight. The drum would not beat forever.

“Ready for another?”

He looked up at a waitress balancing a tray of empties.

“Alone in your thoughts?” the young woman asked.

“Hardly alone.”

He raised his beer mug. His hand shook a little, not nerves, not the excitement still with him. It was the beating of the drum running through his body. He hoped she didn’t see it.

“Certainly, I’ll take another.” He uncrossed his legs, the silver tip of his cowboy boot catching light as it dropped to the floor.

She took his glass, recognition in her eyes. “I love your paintings. Finished for the night?”

“I haven’t been painting.”

“I’m a slob with a brush. Completely. Half goes on the wall, half on me. Forget ceilings. You only got a little bit on your hair.”

“I said I haven’t been painting.”

“Sorry. I just thought.”

She pointed at her temple before carrying his empty to the bar. He touched the spot she indicated on his own head and examined his fingertips.

Not paint. Blood.

He wiped it off under the table then patted his head to see if he had any more on him. He had tried to be neat. He was always neat in his work.

He rose and left before his beer arrived. He needed his studio while the drum still lived.

He had walked farther than he thought. Across the center of Santa Fe, through the tree-lined plaza, down a narrow alley to the tourist bar he’d never noticed before, on a street he couldn’t recall. He never came here, t-shirt town, a world away from his gallery but less than two miles apart. He retraced his route as best he could, finding he hadn’t been seeing anything outside his own head. Not street signs, nor familiar buildings and businesses, intersections he knew. What he’d been seeing: colors, far too many, overdone, truly a disaster; his hands at work, making sense of the chaos, his own heart beating, like an assistant in the room watching; finally the drum, taking it into his fist, seeing it pulse inside his fingers, actually seeing its vibrations ripple up his arms.

He’d been seeing sounds, seeing tastes, seeing textures, seeing heat and cold against his skin. Everything visual, one medium, one pure, ceaseless line.

Cars circled the plaza. Now he knew where he was. A white car with the hood painted black slowed and steered close to the curb. Bass notes thumped from trunk speakers. He saw them, black mallets flying from the vehicle’s frame.

He stepped under the portal of the Palace of the Governors where, during the day, Indians sold jewelry off blankets. The two-tone car moved past, slowing again near a woman walking alone. She shifted her purse to the shoulder away from the street as something was yelled from the car. He saw the angry words: blacker than night, ravens with talons bared.

Music, laughter, the clinking of glasses drifted from a balcony above him, a sprinkle of reds, oranges, yellows descending in the night sky. More tourists. More ridiculous people. He didn’t like this part of Santa Fe. He preferred Canyon Road, the winding rows of art galleries, his own near the top where the street narrowed. That was where he was headed once he reached his car, outside the bookstore where inspiration had struck.

Did he turn here, or was it the next block? No, a little farther yet.

He didn’t remember closing the door to the bookstore or walking the first couple blocks. His head had cleared later, when he decided he needed a drink to calm himself, give his hands time to settle down.

This wasn’t how he did his work. He had rules, guidelines, procedures. A proper workspace. The right tools for the right job. But the woman had looked at him when she handed him the book he wanted. More than looked. Opened herself. He saw straight into her, to the beating of the drum.

She had not fought much. When she turned away, a quick blow with the same heavy book she’d handed him had staggered her. Her neck fit neatly in his hands and he thought of clay on a potting wheel. He’d found a place to work in the little bathroom in the back. Cramped, but the sink was there at his elbow.

The boxcutter on the counter by the cash register did fine in place of the blades in the velvet purse in his studio. Her skin did what he wanted and he was pleased. He hadn’t been into masks before. It could be a new genre to explore. The problem would be showing this line of work.

At least her mask would enjoy an audience. He wondered who would find her, how they would react. He hadn’t thought of it at the time, but the staging itself became an integral part of the presentation. That’s how the most genuine creative forces worked, without any conscious direction from the artist.

She should thank him, what he’d done for her. A Cody Geronimo original. No woman alive could say that.

Except for the spot of blood on his hair, he’d been meticulous. He used her plastic gloves from a box under the sink. He’d stripped to protect his clothes. Then he’d washed and dried himself with paper towels discarded outside the store. He stopped the sink and left the faucet running. Water was overflowing as he backed away, destroying his footprints, a tide smoothing the sand.

Yes, he had closed the front door on his way out. He hoped so.

He avoided the lights of the La Fonda Hotel and aimed for the darkness of a covered walkway. He paused at the lit window of a gallery offering Indian art. Unpainted frames held portraits of war chiefs shaded in greens and blues, their faces distorted as they morphed into wolves and bears. Eagles rose from their heads. Claws became eyebrows.

Not bad. But he’d seen it before. The godawful pink coyotes, the cowboys in yellow slickers, the repetitious pastels of New Mexico mountains, the Rio Grande Gorge always painted as a gash in dark earth. Only his work was unique, irreplaceable.

Another painting in the window stood out. A continuous single line on a plain background gave form to the face and torso of an Indian woman with exaggerated cheeks and thick upper arms. The simplicity was exquisite. Genius.

It was a mass-market poster of his own work.

That’s how he could paint when his hands were steady. Tonight he worked in a more forgiving medium.

His Range Rover was almost around the corner. He would be alone in his studio, no human assistants, no tourists gawking through windows. He had a gallery opening tomorrow and much to do. He would be busy until dawn.

He was near the old, unfinished cathedral, still missing its spires more than a century after construction began. It should be dark here. It was dark when he’d stepped out of the bookstore. But now adobe walls danced in flashing red and blue lights.