IV

Strangers in the Night

Heidi and Tony share a romance and a comfort, affectionate playmates with common tastes, common needs. Passion is intellectual or hormonal or sometimes both. Versatility is good, Tony thinks; it allows dynamic communion between free souls. They dance like flames when her eyes sparkle his way and her lips curl as if to say, “It’s crazy crazy crazy, and here we are.” Sometimes they leap into it. Sometimes they have another drink and talk it over. They give modern context to their refuge in the hills. They imagine their adventurous selves living lives of adventurous potential. They rub the lamp and let themselves out. “Rub the lamp, Heidi,” Tony often requests.

“No. I won’t rub the lamp,” Heidi often says, until he explains to her that he does not want to establish a routine like George and Gracy, does not want to bear down on the same tired shtick. So if her Royal Highness wouldn’t mind, he would like the lamp rubbed. She holds the lamp, closes her eyes and makes wishes only a genie could grant. He knows she teases him, that she loves the lamp, but he isn’t in the mood for teasing, and his needs are every bit as important as her own. She calls him a big baby, which would really peeve him, but she rubs the lamp and plays fair, granting wish for wish.

When their love charade ends they roll over and sleep, sated and superior, all needs attended to in the warm breeze and soft light. They believe that a mad world passes them by. Her snoring is often dainty.

Tony usually wakes first and lies there measuring his distance from the world. He loves this little anarchy, in which he often feels like a king, or a duke anyway. Sometimes sipping tequila, he remembers traffic jams, suburbs and malls. He often sleeps again, and they usually wake together in time for a cocktail or two before dinner. Most importantly, they wake in Mexico. What a relief.

Oh, they are happy, Tony and Heidi, far from gas stations and burger joints and starless nights under the streetlights. Sometimes they discuss what the world has come to and the ignorance so pervasive in this, its final phase. No parking lots for them, no, they find peace in the land of organic stink and dust and a firmament twinkling with freedom. Untimed, irrational, selfless and giving, they share a love at times berserk with liberation. They wallow in it, sometimes squirming freer still. It feels so good, yet he wonders at times if feeling is the be all of living. But his quandary is brief.

Heidi taught school in her former life. In the fourth grade for years in a blouse, skirt and matching jacket, she helped children through arithmetic, geography, spelling and the rest. Most couldn’t get past Big Macs. Most knew that you can see the golden arches from the top of the Kremlin or the Eiffel Tower or the Space Needle or the Empire State Building. The children love geography relative to franchise icons. Heidi loved the children until she didn’t. They changed, feeding like scavengers on television and Ding Dongs, loving most what is most ugly. She saw the ugliness infect the children, so she quit, got free of that mess and got down. She wants to plug in and play out. She dreams of what could be, if only … “I don’t know what,” she says. “This could be it. I like it so much it scares me. We don’t do anything.”

Heidi came south for simple truth, for brown dirt and blue sky, room to move and not so many goddamn people. She didn’t quit teaching one day when the truth hit her; she quit one day when her uncle died and left her a half million dollars. She told the principal: “Fuck this.”

The money allows her to be herself, a romantic with a hacienda with a maid, a cook, a plant-waterer and a fountain man so all the fountains flow clean and sweet, trickling poetically as mountain brooks. Her tiled courtyard is big enough for one on one or an echo or long shadows that shimmer on breezy afternoons. Four floors of bedrooms, sitting rooms, a library, a museum, a main parlor, a dining hall, a kitchen and a handful of dressing rooms and bathrooms surround the central courtyard with its fountains and festooning plants. Archways line the terraces on each floor over the courtyard. Thick curtains drop easily by rope to cover the archways for privacy, and mosquito-nets over the beds allow for easy sleep.

Heidi collects objets d’agony—stigmata, thorns, rivulets of blood stream down the walls among the ivy. Big paintings of cross-bearing, cobble-stumbling, back-lashing, stoning, scorn, banshees, more thorns and blood flow from one room to the next.

“Why all the Jesus?” Tony asked.

“Isn’t it wonderful? Don’t you love it?”

“I don’t think so,” Tony said. “I get nervous around these things.”

“Well, learn to relax, bub. Get used to it. You don’t have to believe in it. But you got to admit, these guys make the greatest art in the world. Don’t they?”

“It is different here,” he said. “It’s not evangelical. It’s simple, something for them to latch onto, easy access.” He was willing to discuss it.

“Don’t forget the passion,” she said.

“Mm, yes.” He considered the passion. They sat silent on that note. He considered staying. “I saw a good one yesterday. An old Datsun, been to the moon and back, with a cross on the back window. Masking tape, two strips, up and down and sideways, just … torn off at the ends.”

“God, that is great,” she said, on her way to the kitchen for her masking tape and coffee.

That was their first daylight conversation, after their first night together, after Tony’s first tour of Hacienda Heidi. A side table runs alongside the staircase for twelve feet. On it sits a tiny self-portrait in clay—a doll painted yellow with wire joints, pointy breasts with red nipples, a red slit for a vagina with hair pasted on, a red dot in back, and little gold hoops for earrings.

“It’s you,” Tony said.

She blushed. “Thanks. It’s my hair.”

They enjoyed getting to know each other after having free rein with each other. Sober in daylight, they treaded carefully, uncertain if they shared the same dream but fairly certain they used a rubber. He stepped nearer. She held steady but looked away. He took her hands. “Good morning,” he said like a stranger at a bus stop. He kissed her cheek, and she blushed again, just like a hundred years ago, when a suitor could have stood there making his intentions known after a lengthy courtship, and a señorita could have smiled with tears in her eyes. “Heidi,” he whispered. She stood still and perfect as an upper-class daughter in the spell of love. He fancied the proximity of old time to new time just as he would fancy the distance from this little world to the rest. He would remember this interlude with fondness, perhaps soon, on the bus, riding to the airport. He had a ticket for that afternoon: “I … uh …”

“Fine,” she says, turning, heading out to install her new masking-tape crucifix. “Go.”

“I didn’t …” But she left him where his lines failed. They’d quenched the thirst, scratched the itch and arrived at rational choice. But indecision overwhelmed what should have been simple, because they had too little sleep, too much hangover.

Tony Drury came to town as many came to town, trying out another town. The merchants took only cash then. You had to fly to Mexico City and take the bus five hours with many stops, which fended off the family-values crowd with their kids, their rental cars, their needs for reasonable comfort, decency and family values. Or you could fly direct to León and hire a tour van if you were in the know. Soon after Tony’s arrival came North Italian cuisine. Then came the sushi bar. Heidi says the plague is on its way—the humanoid fungus moving over the earth reaches for this last refuge; it claws for a fingerhold that will grip in no time. You can see it best flying over anywhere USA, the festering, scabby, decaying, gaseous, breeding habitat for two-legged mites; that’s what we’ll come to. He sometimes presses urgently, while there’s still time. She laughs.

They get along because they share an instinct and can plainly see. The writing on the wall makes him hostile, makes her mean, which is how they looked on the night they met. He watched her from a bench in the jardin, admiring her obvious scorn for delicacy.

At two a.m. she gobbed a street burger like a street cat on a kill. Feed the hunger. Stay alert. Stay ready—that was the look. He was hungry too, and a woman bigger than him and just as tough looked like a hot buffet. She looked strong but flighty, gone in a wink with no look back. She looked like a woman to run with, wolfing in the street when she could have filet with crystal and linen. Maybe it was love at first sight, she got so down. She was with her friend, Suey.

He met Suey earlier at Hernando’s when she climbed onto the next stool like a tortoise in rut, limb by limb. Low profile and a big mouth set Suey apart—that and her stationary hair and cheery face with a smile sweet as sugar. With dewdrops glistening on her brow and a tiny grunt she mounted the stool. She paused for composure, batted her lashes and asked, “Buy a lady a drink?”

“Name your poison.” Tony saw the movie, knew the lines and innuendo that maybe Señor, you and I, esta noche. She said her day wasn’t going so well because Lawrence fell back into the bottle. They’d been together six years. Today was one in a series of days.

“Thanks, Mister,” she said at the end of her drink. “I’m Suey. What’s your game?”

Two nights later, dead drunk, stumbling and mumbling disgust with life and love with her mush crammed full, with grease running down her neck, she cried. She’d thrown Lawrence out. He was alcoholic, on a binge, without hope. She chewed her greaseburger as tears merged with grease. She sobbed; a droplet formed on her chin. She took another bite and garbled that she needed another drink.

Tony was in town a week then, had walked the streets and walked them again, had walked out of town and back in; had drunk no water for seven days and seen many single women, not glamorous women like you see in New York or bathing beauties like you see in California, or sensible women like you see in the Midwest but secret women from middle age. Like Robin Targonik, who sat beside him on the day he met Suey but with more poise than Suey, more grace and flair and much more perfectly blonde hair. “My husband left me,” she said, sliding on, looking off, ready to share the spirit and drinks before sundown. She married her high school sweetheart, she said. It didn’t work out once Rick came along, because, frankly, he swept her off her feet. So they split amicably, she and her husband, and all these years she’d thought of him as her ex-husband. But she saw him again soon after divorcing her next husband, Rick, who she now considered her ex-husband, because her first husband had reverted in a way, come up in stature in a way, as her high school sweetheart. She held her drink in her fingertips and said, “Do you see what I’m getting at? Isn’t it strange? Strange and … wonderful I guess, the way we just … swim up our little streams …” She turned to the man beside her. “… to spawn.” She said they met when he was thirty and she was only twenty-eight; Rick, of course. She’d raised his children.

“They’re your children, too,” Tony said.

“No, no. I have no children, not biologically. Twenty-four years,” she said. The easy math was no accident, nor was it precise. Fifty-two my ass, he thought—you’ll never see sixty again. “He just walks in one night and says to me he’s unthrilled, unchallenged and out of love.” She hooked her drink like it was the antidote.

“Sounds like a straightforward fellow,” Tony said.

“Oh, but he wasn’t. All those years. I didn’t even see it. My friends tell me to take the cure, if you know what I mean. I have men friends but they’re mostly gay. I feel much safer with them because I know they only want me for friendship, and I …” She fluttered up a blushing vulnerability. “I’m just not ready for that. Not now. Not yet. I just don’t think … I mean …”

Tony finished his drink too. She smiled, ready for another; the evening was so young. “I have to use the bathroom,” he said. In the bathroom he took a dump, picked his nose, examined facial pores, plucked a few ear hairs, checked for gray and browsed an old newspaper. When he came out she was gone. So he sat down again.

Then came Suey, his second conversation of the week. She also needed a drink, and on superior presentation of the request, she got one. They became fast friends, but like so many friendships formed in bars, it left a shallow imprint. He recognized her two nights later, but Heidi Heller stood up from the short wall by the greaseburger cart, up to six-one and then some, stretching from her black leather boots to her crazy black hair, stretching like long time, like time for lasting friendship. A woman this free, this tall and thin, shaped this way and covered in black Spandex was an old familiar, a friend for keeps.

He watched her. She glanced his way. Suey didn’t see him, or couldn’t see him, or forgot him already. He ordered up—“I’ll try one of those.” He sat on the short wall. “You make it look so good,” he said, wondering if it was a dog, a goat, a pig or a horny toad. Heidi sat down too in primal communion. He ate, accepting amoebic dysentery, salmonella, ptomaine, typhus, diphtheria, hepatitis, anything for a few words of encouragement.

“You like greaseburgers?” Suey asked. He ate. “He does!” She sat up straighter with a twinkle in her eye, praising greaseburgers, remembering now, feeling much better now, honest, she really did. She didn’t want to be drunk any more, she only needed a beer, just one, then she’d be ready to go home. Heidi shrugged and stood up again in simple magnificence, durable as the mountains. She followed Suey, who paused for the dizzies, grabbed the greaseburger cart abreast of Tony and swayed, eyes closed. Heidi waited, slouching, humoring the sludge in her gut. Suey wobbled until more blood reached her brain, until her eyes opened on a brand new night. “Hello,” she said, offering her hand. He took it, ignoring the grease. “It’s so good to see you again. Can you buy me a drink?”

“It’s good to see you, Suey.”

“This is Heidi. She thinks you’re cute.”

“Cute?” Heidi blushed. “Did she say so?”

“I can tell. I know her pretty good. She’s my best friend. My best friend in the whole world. Right, Heidi?”

Heidi smiled. Tony smiled too, and they owed it all to Suey. “Can I buy you a drink?” he asked between them.

“Come on,” Heidi said. “Tapultapec.”

“How far is that?” he asked, happily on his way to the living end.

Tapultapec is a cantina across from the church. Huge spires and imposing breastworks form the shell of the biggest empty room in a hundred miles—in a thousand miles if you don’t count the churches. A stone’s throw away is a gray weathered door flush with the common facade running the length of the street. It opened to a long corridor with a dance hall at the end, with tables and chairs on two sides, a bar on the third side backed by a thousand bottles and on the fourth side a bandstand. A dozen percussives and half as many guitars played a salsa hat dance that could let a Latino live up to a reputation. A well-traveled man who thought he’d seen what there was to see in town could feel the door open on its secret heart, could feel the beat and want to live up to the same reputation, could want another drink and the music to play forever. He could want life to feel like this, because this is it.

They sat at a long table with four other women, cronies who said hello to Heidi and Suey and eyeballed the new guy. “Tres cervezas y tres tequilas,” he told the waiter. When the drinks came, a woman raised a toast.

“Here’s to women,” she said, her voice affirming her stink eye. “To good … strong … brave …”

“Clean and reverent,” Tony said. “Women. God bless them. Down the hatch.” He knocked it back. A group of adults drinking and dancing didn’t need another workout on cruel nature and the evil ways of men.

“Brave … good, strong …” She insisted, “Women!”

“Here here!” Tony ordered again, a round for the table. A flower girl hovered near. He plucked a bunch of gardenias off the top and paid twelve grand for the bunch and tipped another three. Why not? He pulled the string and dealt gardenias, two or three each to the good, strong women, except for Heidi, who got eight or ten. That melted some ice. The flowers shut them up, got them sniffing front and center and remembering love as a concept. What a bargain, he thought, six women on fifteen grand and a few drinks.

Heidi leaned over. “How long you here for?”

“Tomorrow. I’m leaving tomorrow.”

Her eyes went down in the direction of all things. She told her flowers, “You don’t have to leave.”

“No. I don’t. But I wouldn’t stay unless I had a reason to stay.”

“What kind of a reason?”

“Say, a reason like you.” She looked up, startled as a rabbit sensing a troubadour. She smiled. It arced his way; Tony Drury in the bull’s eye opened his heart for the hot shot, for the tingle he too remembered as a concept. He felt humble, ready for deliverance from a world without love. He felt happy and in love—he loved the night and the hills, the smoke and drink and throbbing music. He loved what can happen if you’re lucky, like a thirsty animal loves a watering hole. She looked around the room as if remembering. “I don’t mean … Well, I don’t mean … I mean, I could stay, but I wouldn’t unless I was kept here. You’d have to keep me here.”

“What do you mean I’d have to keep you here?”

“I’d have to stay with you. I mean I don’t usually talk like this, but we don’t have much time, and I don’t know if we’d fall in love—hey, look. Maybe we won’t. Fall in love.” He looked away. She fingered a flower. He looked back. He couldn’t say more and didn’t want to stare, so he finished his drink. Beware strangers with proposals. They shared the hunger of lonely hearts. They knew what could happen in the din and chaos, the liquor and smoke—“But I … sense something. Maybe I’m only horny. Maybe it’s only the liquor …” He drank another, not remembering its arrival. “The night … The burgers … I don’t know.”

She laughed, eased near, dropped her eyes again and smiled. “I’m already in love,” she said.

Veto came between them. Negativity displaced eternity, and the razzle-dazzle band wouldn’t stop its big tin pulse. His head bowed under the weight—they all have boyfriends. He looked with a plea for betrayal and a fling—“Where is he?”

She laughed short, a first scorn for the simpleton so short on faith. “Right in front of me, fool.” It was like the old egg trick, where your friend stands behind you and claps her hands over your head like an egg breaking. Barely touching you, her palms slide down your head, tingling your neck and across your shoulders, oozing down like raw egg. She had him, caught in the matrix of his own treachery. The world and its lovers are soiled as the currency they exchange, sooner or later.

“I got to warn you,” he said. “I’m not drunk, but I had a bunch of drinks.”

“So? What’s to warn?”

“I think I … well, I feel something with you. I’ve never said that. I mean, not to a woman I just met. I mean, it might all be, you know …”

“Yeah. I know. It all ends in tears.”

“I’ve heard that.”

“Everyone hears that, if they drink at La Mexa.”

“People cry at La Mexa?”

“One person cries at La Mexa. Especially when he quotes Kerouac.”

Tony Drury wondered if Jack Kerouac ever sat next to this kind of Spandex. “Do you feel … I mean, do you …” Drinks arrived.

“I know I feel something,” she said, staring, then shaking her head. It was too much, too far, too fast, so they danced it off like the night wouldn’t end. They danced faster to keep the night alive and to get higher, where they longed to be. He rode a white horse. She wore glass slippers. The rats were coachmen; the roaches drove, until eternity cracked once more with daylight.

They don’t exist, neither perfection nor eternity. The love saga between Heidi and Tony boils down to where it began, on an offer of deception disguised as love. One flawed moment led to the rest. They hurried, because they knew about truth and romance and transient nature.

They reached her hacienda by quiet streets, amazed with circumstance and each other. Yet knowing of the half life of magic, she paused at the guest room and said, “This is the guest room.”

“I stay here?”

She shrugged. She asked, “If we become lovers, how many times will we make love?”

“Ever?”

“And ever.”

He looked her over. “I think many. Maybe many many.” She leaned in and kissed his eyes, reeking of beer, greaseburger and nicotine. She walked down the terrace. He also knew by heart the story of strangers who find each other and cling, only to part like they met when they wake up with nothing between them but spent lust. She spared them another round of the joke. Because who needs another shot glass of friction with a snore back at this stage of the game? Heidi Heller had had enough. Tony Drury understood. Waiting would give their love a chance to breathe, to flesh out and gain a footing, would give her a chance to shower down.

In the guestroom he wished he was twenty years younger and not so drunk, wished he didn’t know what he knew and she didn’t smell like a slaughterhouse. He wished he could get a hard-on and she didn’t stink.

He couldn’t sleep, too drunk; she likewise. She came and got him. She’d brushed her teeth and washed her face. She rousted him in the dark and led him down the long terrace, up the dark stairs and down a hall toward the end of that leg of their forced march to nowhere, where they hurried once more to beat the dawn or the reaper.

Too late. Spandex lies worse than desperate lovers do. She showed a bad diet, no exercise, no tone, iffy pallor. Flabby in first light, torching another fag on a two-pack habit, she looked like a naked cowgirl—dirt between her toes—and had the soft touch of a bronco buster for twenty-one seconds flat. What a kick in the ass, he thought, as she eased him down, stripped him naked, and solved the other problem. As he wondered about product liability on Spandex and darkness, he knew he still loved her, recalling the lithesome beauty with nary a wrinkle in starlight. He wanted to go back for what seemed so real, but you can’t, because it wasn’t, because it isn’t.

Just before the little bully blew its top, he said, “Uh …” She looked up as if from another greaseburger. “If you … don’t stop …”

“Can’t you make more?”

He considered more. “In the best of conditions …”

“Relax.” Gazing out the window to wish upon a star, she said, “I dreamed of this.” Taking the bully by the horns, she finished him off like a doggie roper in twenty-one seconds flat, no pussyfooting around. The perfect evening proceeded to a smoke, a drink, a rest for him and a hump for her, for which she seemed indifferent, despite the many women conjured for the occasion.

She smoked before; she smoked after. During, with casual resignation to one more peckerwood who couldn’t ring the bell, she told a story.

He slowed to a trot and then to a canter and finally a walk. She wanted another smoke but held off in deference to romance. She said she knew this guy who worked the stable in Sonora where she rode for awhile. The guy seemed happy enough, but she read in the paper he was found dead in the desert. He tried to hike to America with his family. The desert turned the family back but the guy went on, to make the kind of money you can make in America. He would bring the family up later. The guy hiked two days on the mesa with the coyotes, snakes and buzzards. He made another forty miles. Then he died.

Tony wrapped up his own trek as well and rolled over with a sigh of regret. “Greed’ll get you every time.”

“I keep thinking of him. I’d have driven up and given him a ride. I didn’t know.”

“Sure you knew. You could drive up with a riders wanted sign and get a load any day you want to.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean?” She rolled his way, yanked his pillow and rolled back, stacking it under hers. She propped herself up to better mull it over, like this was an angle she hadn’t anticipated. So the evening ended on contemplation of death and the erratic sleep of the toxically drunk. They dreamed of romance and averages.

Waking at noon is worse than a heavy nap. When his eyes cracked open he said, “Nnuh …” Curled in the sheets she struggled to the surface. He didn’t feel like a wish come true; her fantasy was a man of vigor, a man she could eat like no tomorrow, who would make more and ring the bell at random. He only auditioned for the wish. He didn’t get the part; a man can tell. She twitched until he reminded her, “Nngh …”

“Mmhngh,” she agreed, throwing the sheets back, swinging her legs over and staring like a boxer after a knockdown, remembering who, where, how many fingers. “Ohh, …” she complained, “Mm …” She turned to him. Her forehead wrinkled; yes, I brought a guy home. “Coffee?” she asked, standing up, rubbing her eyes, scratching her head and then her ass, then slew footing for the bathroom and a two-minute piss.

“No. It’s Tony.”

“What?”

“Yeah. Coffee.”

“What?”

“I said sure, I could use some coffee.” He sat up, pondering gravity, its complexities and fine points, its first cousins, spin and dizzy. The place was different with sunlight pouring through the arches. The walls were mottled brown and cracked with rooting vines that crawled up and shimmered green in the spilled blood of Jesus, who made no complaint.

A breeze wafted. The fountain babbled. She flushed and slumped in the doorway, stoop-shouldered, electric-haired and baggy-eyed. At odds with rebirth one mo time, she cracked a smile over half a laugh and delivered the news, “You look different in the morning.”

“Not you,” he said. “You’re still the most beautiful woman I ever saw.” She laughed again pushed him back on the bed and straddled him like a kid winning a fight. He loved a woman he could look up to. This one towered, bouncing until the suction glopped his stomach like a sump with no prime. Pounding him giddy she let him know: she was bigger and maybe tougher, and some things you don’t fool around with. He lay passive, like he’d read you’re supposed to do. Let her get this one up, he thought. But no, she only wanted the sheets; they’d shared their love on dirty sheets.

“Your shower’s on the other side of the parlor,” she said, wadding up the sheets for the maid, dragging herself back to the bathroom.

Showered and clothed they met again and toured a few floors, then fell silent. Touching near her self-sculpture in clay was like a first touch. She was lovelier still over coffee, lighter on her feet with cordial delicacy. Lifting her cup, sipping, she asked, “So? You staying?”

He shrugged. “I got a bus this afternoon. Mexico City. My flight is tomorrow. Back to America.”

“So?”

“I don’t have to go, I guess. They might burn me on the ticket. I don’t care, not really.”

She brightened. “We could ride,” she said.

He thought she meant more pumping the jam, or maybe she had bicycles out back. “Ride?”

“Yeah. Ride. Horses. Remember?”

“Yeah, I remember.” Did we discuss horses?

She laughed, remembering potential. He wasn’t the first stray dog to slurp coffee in her kitchen with a ticket back to nowhere. They wondered what next. A minute passed. The merry-go-round slowed down so two of the older kids could jump off. He wondered if another night would be worth trying. She wondered what kind of lame ass she dragged home this time. The silence said it best, until Suey dragged her load across the atrium.

Down the last long hall to the dining salon, she called over the fountain babble, “I drank so much my shit smells like liquor.” She stopped in the kitchen doorway. “Well it smells like liquor-flavored shit anyway …” Little wrinkles on her forehead said she didn’t remember him either. She got coffee and mumbled recollection of a long time ago, getting drunk and eating monkey burgers all on account of Lawrence. She looked up. “Why him? Why now?”

“Excuse us,” Heidi said.

“Excuse me,” Suey said, shuffling off to the parlor for a colorized Erroll Flynn and a love funk of her own.

Heidi said, “I don’t do this.”

“No. I don’t either,” he said. They stared, seeking belief and believability. “It was natural. Electric.”

“You believe that now, daylight and sober?”

“Who’s sober?” he said.

She worked a napkin with her fingers, tearing it to bits. She said a grown woman should know why she does this sort of thing. For years she viewed romance on a casual level and hadn’t changed her mind but no longer needed to risk her peace of mind or her health. And here they were. She said she wasn’t sure it existed, romance. It was a delusion suffered by women, even into the years of drinking and banging their friends because their friends were pretty good guys who insisted. She said she knew women who looked worn out—big drinkers, chain smokers, all-nighters—still hoping for the magic after bedding some road guy. She laughed and asked if she looked familiar and said she’d rather see a thing for what it is, especially if it’s nothing at all. She wasn’t ready to forget her emotions, but some seemed put away for awhile, and, well …

She had a friend once, a woman who loved many men. “She didn’t like the sex and didn’t think she was very good at it and never was satisfied and was always scared, even with condoms. She said she did it for love, so she could feel love.” She made two piles of napkin bits, then one. “I told her that ain’t love. She said maybe not, but from about ten to two they think they might get lucky and want her so bad they can taste it. She’d have some drinks and pretend the guy wasn’t dopey and was a great lover who’d keep coming on. She said it was nature’s gift to women that men are so blind horny over any woman in the world.” She stared off, end of story.

“You mean like us last night?”

She gave him the half smile that meant no, last night was different, or else yes, like last night, horny and drunk. But she was done and stayed mum. If he didn’t get it, then he was one more cool jerk. But he got it. He’d sat here before, off the merry-go-round and talking it through. He’d sat here plenty over the years of too much liquor and banging his friends, the women; sat here wondering if he should stay or go.

He wished the coffee would kick in so the day could look up. She wanted to talk about love, wanted to know where they stood, what was up and who was which, because women pay with their hearts for nature’s gift of horny men. She wanted to know if a few more hours lie ahead, or if forever might move in and stay awhile. Maybe this was it, romance at last, as seen on TV.

Tony got it but played it safe. “I don’t get it.”

She smiled. “Of course you don’t.” She lit a smoke and tugged; smoke was truth. She let out a skyful smooth and easy, turning their coffee klatch to a cloudy day. “You were something last night.”

“You mean from five to seven?”

“It was more like six to six-fifteen.”

“Yeah, well, not so bad for an old guy.”

“Yeah,” she said. “They don’t get rowdy like the young’uns, but they don’t hightail it at sunrise either.”

“Can’t. Some can’t even drag their asses down the hall before lunch,” he said.

“Yeah, you’re doing great.” He folded his napkin, sat back and sighed, calculating rates on the two-night package. “I didn’t mean physically,” she said. “I had a feeling last night. I had it once with Charles but not since. That was a long time ago. It feels like a long time.”

“Charles?” Tony had not come to know Charles, hadn’t learned the lay of the land.

“Yeah. He’s a tour driver and an actor.”

“Yes, I met Charles,” he said. She remembered more about Charles and love than another man wants to hear. She told what a woman wants. He listened, refiguring.

She got up for a fresh pour. “It was nothing,” she said. “He’s not interested.” She sipped and stared, either doubting her assessment or wishing it wasn’t so. “He’s not present. It was clinical. Two humans copulating. It was nothing.” She’d thought it through.

“It must have been something. You don’t do this. And here you are doing it again, telling me about the last time. It had an effect on you. Was that the last time?”

She shrugged. “You’ll get to know him. You’d wonder. I wanted to get it out of the way. He’s a great guy. You’ll like him.”

“So I’m staying?”

“Looks like it. But the main thing is—I’m not just telling you this—I felt good last night. I haven’t felt that way since, you know …”

“You mean you felt good with Charles, but he didn’t come back for seconds?”

“No. He didn’t.” She sat down, staring, sorting. “He didn’t come back and I don’t blame him. We never got … You know.”

“No, I don’t know.”

“We never got warmed up,” she said.

“You’re losing me.”

“Well I’m not going to spell it out for you.”

“Did we get warmed up?” he asked.

“No. You didn’t.”

“But that is your preference, warmed up?”

“Stop talking like an idiot. Don’t you remember when your wife left? That was because you couldn’t get warmed up. I think you probably did though. You’re not dull. A little bit tired. But you are old.”

“She didn’t leave,” he said.

“Gotcha, huh?”

“Yeah, right. You got me.” He looked around for answers to obvious questions. What if Charles wanted back in? He didn’t ask, because he might need a fresh rider on this pony express.

“It’s not just the sex part,” she said. “My best sex date spoiled me for anybody else for a long time. He was so slow. Who the hell likes foreplay for forty-five minutes? That’s what I thought. He could honestly make you think he could take it or leave it, you know, doing just the right thing.”

“Mm. I can only imagine. But I have heard women talk. He was a sex athlete and you couldn’t get enough, but it was all slip and slide with no love. Right?”

“You are a smart man,” she said.

“He took the time to look. He sniffed. He tasted …”

“Stop.”

“Just a hunch. A man shouldn’t think a woman is played out because she’s experienced. A girl needs to dabble, right? She needs to explore radical sex with no love. You show me a woman without a few meaningless sex adventures under her belt, I’ll show you a woman who still lives at home.”

“You do get it,” she said. “So many men think they’re doing you a big favor to drop a load in your pants. We learn that the hard way. Who needs it?”

“I know I don’t,” he said. She looked up, half-smiling, and took his hand. He got up for more caffeine. “So we got Charles who was sensitive and made you feel good, but he wasn’t a sex athlete that we know of, and then we got the sex athlete. I forgot where we started.”

“Don’t get me wrong. Charles is a terrific lover.” She called him a lover, upgraded from a lay. “Charles is a great guy. But we didn’t do it in the library, or in the middle of dinner, or during the intermission at Lucinda Wells’ art lectures …”

“In the library?”

“You have to be quiet or you get caught.”

“I’ve known women who wanted to get caught. But an art lecture? He missed that? Because he didn’t hang around? Have you told him?”

“Why should I? Why should I tell anything?”

“Mm. Good question. Was the sex athlete warm enough for cultural adventures?”

“Not the lecture intermission. I never did that. But I want to.” She savored her fantasy. “Lucinda Wells goes on and on. Historical context. Influence. Comparison. Hue. Color. Stroke. I get restless. I have a spot.”

“I read about that stuff.” She laughed. “I love art,” he said. “Except for influence and pretext. When does Louella Hall talk again?”

She leaned close. He could smell her fresh cotton blouse. “You won’t be ready till Tuesday. I’ll tell you then, maybe. Besides. I’m saving it. You just got here.”

“But I’m in the running with Charles?”

“Not with Charles. He split. That’s what he does. Every man requires forgiveness. Charles is okay. Pretty good guy. He’s just a fucker.”

“And I’m just a fucker too, a little bit tired but a good fucker who stayed for coffee?”

“I think you understand.”

She dealt truth like horse pills, sometimes too much to swallow. But he played along. It shaped up as a good time with decent conversation, some friendly if demanding sex and some insight now and then. Prospects were better than yesterday and way ahead of last week. She finished her coffee and walked out. He sat back, wide-eyed and tired, arrived again at somewhere else. What a view.

When she stood again in the doorway she said, “We should get your things. Then we’ll head up to the hills. You’ll love it.” She cracked a smile; Tony and Heidi were going out to play. He loved again, loved something so simple as a new day. He stood slowly into his new life that would last the weekend anyway and followed what felt like a reasonable lead.

She held his hand like she had last night and led him out. The clear sky shone way too bright for a hangover. “At least we’re at six thousand feet,” she said. “It’s hell in the heat.”

“Maybe, but you can’t breathe so easy up here.”

“That’s correct,” she said. “That’s why smoking is so important.” She lit up. “If you smoke and you get hungover, you can lay off the smokes and break even.”

“You must not be hungover.”

“You must be new in town.” She opened the door and eased him in like he was old. She paused, reflective as the Marlboro man, then circled her beat-up truck and got in. She started it with a roar, like a woman insensitive to a machine. She drove too fast on the cobbles, all the axles and macho tires and cogs and differential U-valves clattering in appropriate backdrop for life in transition.

“Nice car,” he said. His door opened.

“Slam it,” she said. “It’s a piece o’ shit.”

He slammed it. Inside felt like it sounded, like many miles over rough terrain. “You run it hard,” he said.

She smiled. “It’s a piece o’ shit either way. Isn’t it?” She laughed, like he was old-fashioned, like he didn’t understand it was just a truck.

“Piece o’ shit,” he said, and they pounded down Canal Street and over two blocks to get his things. The road smoothed out outside town when the cobbles eased into dirt. Past that was pavement, Mexican highway—two-lane blacktop crossing the high plateau, no gas stations, no billboards, no oil company beacons, as if corruption in this part of the world was kept under the table where it belongs. Tumbleweed, sage, cactus, rocks and some scraggly longhorns defined both the past and future here. It felt clean as a Promised Land.

She pulled a joint from behind her ear, fired it and passed it like the good old days. He took it, eyes open to what life comes to if you’re lucky. It comes to pain and regret, to a load of coal for breakfast, over easy with a side of past love, to an old habit that can still dull the edge for awhile—to a new day and another go round.

The truck was too loud for talk. She yelled that they were headed up to Pozos, and if they had time they would ride. He couldn’t hear, but who cared where they headed? She eyed him with concern like he might croak any time but then smiled her good smile. He wouldn’t surprise her if he did. He liked that. She put her hand on his. She liked it too; she must’ve. She’d drawn some gore with a red felt-tip on the masking-tape crucifix, so the back window signaled their own insane faith against the odds. Paisanos waved. Twenty minutes out he asked if they were close. She wagged her head. He asked if they were halfway. She yelled that Taboada was a third and San Gabriel a third, and from there to Pozos is two-fifths.

“It doesn’t add up.”

“Add up to what?”

“Two thirds and two fifths. That’s too much.”

“This trip tends to be a little long,” she yelled, firing up the joint again, pulling hard for good times and another buzz, heading up the road again.

In awhile he could see a citadel on a hillside a mile or so off the road—ornate with medieval walls, parapets and towers in defensible alignment along the slope, with a natural ravine as a moat. A fortress with old-world charm built for missionaries but now in ruins, the compound looked ghostly and ghastly, a scene of hardship. “Pozos,” she said. It was a deserted mine; more than a mine, an encampment built in the last century to mine silver in this life for the Church, for Kingdom Come in the next life for the miners. Missionaries lived in the tower, where they oversaw the Indians working below. She said the silver brought the missionaries, who assumed the burden of wealth so the Indians could inherit the earth meekly in poverty. “Glory. Hallelujah.”

They pulled up. She said it looked empty now but was full. They got out and walked to a row of sleeping garrets, each with a single window. “Can you feel it?” He felt it, souls working a different vein, seeking. “I come out here sometimes,” she said. “Town is full but seems so empty. This place is empty but feels busy. Huh?”

“Yeah, huh.”

“Come on,” she said. Back at the truck he peeled off the masking tape. He apologized. She shrugged, fired up the beast and the reefer and made dust across the plateau to the wall around the campo that grew higher on the approach. It kept outsiders out and insiders in, defending the silver from banditos who didn’t want to work.

“It’s like now,” he said. “We’re the banditos who don’t want to work. Yes?”

She looked sympathetic. “Oh, you’ll work.”

Breezes swept the ruins with sighs and whispers, decomposition audible in the silence. Bottle caps paved the path from the high side to the compound, where more walls defined the hierarchy. No ceilings here except on the corner turrets facing the campo grounds and on the apartments where the priests lived. Across the hill sat more ruins of haciendas where mine owners and priests drank lemonade and tequila. Gaping shafts here and there felt like falling in a dream. Heidi and Tony rolled a boulder over and waited forever for the splash.

Between the miners’ compound and the haciendas were barracks where women cooked and washed full-time, women who might lie down for a miner if she got caught up on cooking and washing. The priests looked away, knowing their flock needed sin in preparation for salvation. Clean clothes came once a week, which was all you needed, Sunday morning, for the Glory. She’d been here before and thought this through.

Thirty or forty people now lived in crumbling adobes surrounded by rubbish with twisted wire nailed to scrap boards on top for TV antennas. The silver played out. The priests left instructions to keep the faith. Then they left, leaving outside contact mostly to the Coca-Cola truck in the next century. Following it across the plain two miles led to another ghost town, empty for a century except for the faces peeking around ramshackle doors and through broken windows. A tienda facing the deserted square looked different, like it was painted only a hundred years ago. The big sign said: Adivinaste. Drink Coca-Cola.

Inside children browsed penny candies in glass jars and an old woman sold Mexican beer for a grand—about thirty cents. The children stared in awe at the miracle Tony Drury performed. The gringo magician no sooner wanted than he had. He could have anything because his pockets spewed cash. He fumbled with a handful of it and peeled off whatever it took, casually. He gave Heidi a beer and raised one for himself. They drank fast with a toast to the milestone: first beer. It soaked in like rain on a desert, returning color to the drinkers faster than cactus flowers blossom. He browsed the giant jars and grabbed candy in handfuls like a miner scooping nuggets from a mother lode. He filled the place with awe, filling the dirty little hands with candy. He and the gringa chuckled over one more cold one, having fun, playing God, feeling better. He got another round for the road—make that two. “Gracias, Senor” said the old lady, eyes down.

Outside he stopped and went back in for another goose on the power throttle—four icy brews for a buck and a quarter in South Jesus was better than porters. You must savor the moment when it finds you, and you must stay alert to see it. He scanned the place for something to buy—to buy massively with no thought, for the fun of it. But after beer and sugar what else is left? He peeled off a few singles, greenbacks, and gave them to the old woman. “This is for more candy for these kids, after they finish the first round.” She nodded, stashing the cash. “We don’t want to go too fast.” He ignored their begging hands. “Don’t want their teeth to rot before they’re nine anyway.” She looked down, waiting for him to leave.

Heidi had the motor running. He came out with eight more beers for the bargain, because they get more valuable down the road. He remembered a few times he would have paid ten for one. The truck rolled as his feet left the ground. “Hey, what’s the rush?” He jumped in, door squealing, bottles clanging.

“We have to hurry,” she said. “Or they get warm.” They guzzled, and the day looked better still. They got lost on a shortcut, backtracking from Greater Pozos, and by the time a main road turned up, they weren’t sure where or which. Thirty miles up, another road crossed, just like the last road. She turned right, and in awhile they came to a town.

“Seems different here,” he said.

“Yeah. No gringos.”

Guanajuato, the city, is capital of the state of the same name. She took him to Diego Rivera’s house and told him Rivera’s wife, Frida Kahlo, was a stark beauty with a rapacious unibrow who understood that a man needs other women and cocaine as long as her man understands the harmless nature of a woman having lovers. Tony bought a picture of Frieda Kalo looking beautiful and unibrowed and another of Rivera in old age, fat and decrepit in a chair. “I could look like that,” he said.

“If you’re lucky,” she said, taking his hand and leading him down the street. “Then you’ll look like this.” They arrived at los momes, the mummies, a place of rare chemistry that inhibits decomposition—of the flesh at any rate. She explained how dead people got stacked in tiers in the caves of los momes because graves were rented; eternity on a month-to-month. She suspected missionary influence. Poor people came to the caves sooner or later, then got dug up when the rent ran out. “It used to be better,” she said.

“How good could it get?”

“It was open caves full of dead people instead of an exhibition hall. Some were fresh dead, in the last ten years or so. Their faces drooped. Their breasts melted. Breasts are nothing. They go first, like wax.”

“Hm. Goes to show you. I always thought they held up the longest.”

The cave had been walled with a proper ceiling and linoleum floors and viewing windows on compartments holding forty or fifty bodies, each with a photo from the deathday to demonstrate the miraculously retarded return to dust. Two guys dressed like pimps—living guys in velvet hats, hip-huggers, brocaded vests and heavy cologne—charged three grand for a walk-through.

Shadows slid across the gruesome walkway. Children played there. “That’s good,” Tony said. “Learning the score from a tender age.”

The clock pushed six, time for solid food and nightfall, so they headed back, asking directions at a fuel stop. The pump jockey said, “You mean the town with all the gringos.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s the one.” Gassed up they headed across the twilight plains. She fired another joint, and homeward bound felt good. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll ride another time.”

“Yeah. Something to look forward to.”

The long haul was a straight shot to the horizon, scrub plains going gray to black. He slept, waking when they slowed, wondering who, what, where. They cruised through a village. “Dolores,” she said. “They make ceramic.” He asked if Dolores depended on the gringo pottery market up the road. The natives watched them pass from forlorn shadows. “Nobody depends on anything,” she said, easing up to sixty.

He said it looked tough, being Mexican in a sleepy town, and he slept again. He woke suddenly when the cobbles rumbled. He’d slept the whole way, but she was younger, hardly past thirty. “Yup,” he said. “Something to look forward to.”

They got out and stretched. They started up the sidewalk. She took his hand. “Eighteen hours,” she said. “Six more and we’re past the one night stand.”

“Ought to be cake from here.” They ate burritos and he fell out while she read, ending day one in comfort. He woke in the dark beside her. He kissed her. She said thank you. He didn’t know if it would last but repressed consideration of alternatives.

In a few days she showed him the range of her wardrobe and moods. She had a skimpy dress that hung off her hips and shoulders and made her nipples point. She liked the effect. Skimpy could go to denim and from there to dirt or naked or both—she cut loose when she could, seeking the depth of every well. Moods ran from lollygagging and goofy-footing outside the corral to holding hands and touching. Or she had a bone to pick with the world she’d fled. She ran away from what went bad and took the loss personally. People should be good, and look what they’ve done.

Tony Drury and Heidi Heller seemed well-matched. He wondered if she really cared about goodness. She measured his indifference.

She showed him how to ride. “You relax and pay attention or the bones in your ass get pounded up into your neck.” Out on the trail they approached a stretch of green that stood out brilliantly against the plains. She scanned the horizon, laboring with a theory. She said, “Let’s face it. It all fits. That doesn’t even matter. Sexual intercourse is nothing next to spiritual communion. That’s what we have.”

Maybe she let him know they could be pals forever, that friendship is best. He heard disappointment but let it pass. “I don’t know what you’re thinking,” he said. “I like the sex.” He shrugged in concession to weakness. “All green in through here.”

“It’s an aquifer fed by hot springs. You can see where it flows by the green.” She turned to him. “Don’t tell me different from what I know,” she said. “It won’t work.” She kicked into a gallop, leaving him with condescension and deep currents and a pain in his ass. His filly wanted to follow but he reigned her down, not yet ready to run.