I Mean You No Harm

by Beth Castrodale

  “I meant what I said about art camp.” Her small attempt to offer him some good news. “I have all kinds of supplies we can play around with.”

  “And we’ll have that computer stuff, too.”

  “Yup.”

  As far as Jake and Marla knew, Layla was continuing on with Bette’s mission to get the computer-aided art stuff, nothing more. With Layla’s travels in mind, Marla was planning to delay Bette’s memorial service until after Layla’s return. “It would mean a lot to us if you could be there,” Marla had said.

  Now, Layla wondered whether she’d live long enough to make it to the service. Though she’d become nearly certain that the mail stalker was two-thousand-plus miles away from here, that offered little comfort. Some form of doom seemed to be lying in wait for her, between here and home—maybe not a fiery crash, but something.

  She tried to push this feeling aside, focus on Jake. “Until then, keep working on those detail drawings, because they’re really something. The one with your mom doing all those things, I keep thinking about it.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Not every piece of art has that kind of power. In fact, I think that’s pretty rare.”

  Jake was smiling, in a more toned-down way than usual. “We’re gonna copy it for the service. So, everyone can take one home.”

  “That’s a great idea. I’m looking forward to getting one.” My little pledge to stay alive, she thought.

  Jake glanced over Layla’s shoulder.

  “Hey, Em!” he cried. His nickname for Marla.

  Turning, Layla saw Marla approaching, looking as tired as Layla felt, and just as wilted by the early, baking heat. When Marla arrived at the truck, she pulled a brochure from her skirt pocket, began fanning herself.

  “You sure you can’t join us for breakfast?”

  Though she hadn’t eaten since early the previous evening, Layla wasn’t hungry. “Thanks, but I should probably get on the road.”

  “I really appreciate you doing this for Jake, and Bette.”

  “I’m happy to.”

  Marla looked to Jake. “What do you say to Layla?”

  For a moment, he seemed unsure of what Marla meant. Then he sprang for Layla, throwing his arms around her and giving her a big squeeze. “Thank you, Layla.”

  She squeezed him back. “You’re so welcome, Jake.”

  She released him and felt another wave of anxiety about operating the truck. It’s going to be okay, she told herself. Really.

  Marla stuffed the brochure back into her pocket. “Call me once or twice from the road, okay? Just so I know you’re all right.”

  This small kindness ambushed Layla, brought her to tears. Back home, whenever Layla was about to drive a distance of any significance, Alice used to ask for reassurances like this, before her dementia set in.

  “Sure,” Layla said.

  “Let me give you a hug good-bye, too,” Marla said.

  The embrace that followed couldn’t have lasted more than ten or fifteen seconds. But Layla sensed in Marla, and felt in herself, a reluctance to let go.

  Layla barely knew Marla, or Jake, but with the loss of Bette, both of them felt precious to her; Jake especially. Right now, that didn’t seem like a good thing. Right now, it seemed she’d just been given more to lose.

  As she steered the truck from the parking lot, honking its horn in a final farewell, Layla’s anxiety crept back. She thought of the gun in the glove compartment, and the ammo under her seat. For the first time, she wasn’t completely sorry they were there.

  Chapter 20

  East of Gallup, New Mexico

  Clouds. Sky. Rocks up close. Rocks far away. The road and the road and the road and the road ….

  Layla jolted up from the edge of sleep, steered the truck back between the lines. If she didn’t get off the highway at the earliest possible opportunity, she’d manage that fiery crash all by herself.

  Though it was only two-twelve in the afternoon, last night’s pittance of sleep had finally caught up with her. And her nervousness about driving the truck, at first a bracing source of adrenaline, had waned all too quickly. She’d grown more comfortable than she could have imagined driving this thing—maybe too comfortable. Now, she saw her goal of reaching Phoenix by suppertime for what it was: a death wish.

  Thankfully, there wasn’t any urgency on Zav Leos’s end. Day or night, he’d be ready, according to Bette. But Bette’s words had done the opposite of putting Layla at ease. Since hearing them, she’d begun picturing Leos as a Nosferatu-ish character prowling at all hours past crypt-like stores of money.

  Like an answer to a prayer, a sign materialized to her right, advertising an upcoming assortment of restaurants and motels. If she could keep herself awake for a mile and a half, she’d live long enough to fill her now-growling stomach, then find a bed to crawl into.

  Gallup.

  Layla had no idea how or why the town got this name, but it felt like more than something random. Though she’d been here less than an hour, it seemed she’d already seen more cowboy hats and boots—on signs, in stores, and on people—than she’d encountered during the whole of her trip so far. This made her wonder, not for the first time, whether name-as-destiny, or name-as-encouragement, was something more than bullshit.

  Fueled by a lunch of tamales and a giant iced coffee, she got a second wind. Not a strong one, but enough to head toward a motel that a travel app said had once been “a home away from home for Hollywood stars filming Westerns in the thirties and forties.” The bigger draw, for Layla, was that it was the cheapest place she could walk to.

  She wandered past more people in cowboy hats and boots, past store windows showing off Navajo rugs, turquoise jewelry, saddles, and moccasins. The baking heat, or fatigue, or both, distanced her from all of this, sent her back to Bette’s bedside.

  I know who the Wolf is—was. It was Gordon Cross.

  Once again, these words unleashed a scene in Layla’s mind: Cross trailing her mother in the woods. Her mom stopping to listen after a rustling in the leaves, or a twig snap. Her mom glancing over her shoulder, then breaking into a run, trying to gain distance he was already closing.

  Stop it. She needed to stay focused. Get to the motel, get some sleep, then get to Phoenix. The sooner, the better.

  She moved farther along the sidewalk, then stopped. To her right, in a courtyard the size of a two-car garage, various artisans were displaying their wares: jewelry, pottery, dyed and woven scarves, other objects obscured by shadows.

  It was the exhibit out front that most intrigued Layla, and it looked so haphazard, so impromptu, that she wondered whether it was some unauthorized add-on to the courtyard display. Under a Magic-Markered sign that read “Stop and Look,” photograph after photograph dangled from lines strung between two poles. By the thickness and glaze of the film, and by the muddy quality of the color, Layla could tell they were Polaroids.

  They captured passing cars, bikes, and pedestrians—some images in color, most in black and white. If she wasn’t mistaken, the cars, bikes, and pedestrians had passed down this very street, or down the opposite sidewalk.

  “Let me know if you have any questions.”

  Layla turned and saw a woman about her age. In one hand, she held an iced coffee about as big as the one Layla had recently downed. In the other, she toted a worn leather satchel.

  “You’re the photographer, I presume.”

  “Yup.”

  “Cool.”

  The photographer set her coffee on a stool by one of the poles, then took a camera from her satchel: a vintage Polaroid 600 just like the one that had belonged to Layla’s longest-term art-school beau. During the year they’d been together, he’d taken the camera almost everywhere, sometimes even into bathrooms.

  Do you think he fucks it? Layla’s friend Eliza had meant this as a joke,
but the question made Layla so uncomfortable that she sensed a grain of truth in it. Whenever they entered his bedroom, or hers, she insisted that he leave the camera outside. Not to discourage nude shots, which weren’t his thing anyway, but because she’d never been a fan of threesomes.

  “So, what’s the story with ‘Stop and Look’?” Although the sign was somewhat self-explanatory, Layla wasn’t sure what was driving this work.

  Something on the opposite sidewalk, a sixtyish cowboy-hatted woman pushing a balloon-festooned stroller, caught the photographer’s eye.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Do you mind?”

  “Go for it,” Layla said.

  The photographer stepped forward and took the shot. Then she pulled out the developing picture, laid it on the stool.

  “So, the story,” she said, setting down the camera. “It’s been kind of getting to me how with selfies, and with phone photography in general, more and more of us are extracting ourselves, moment by moment, from life. Especially from aspects of life that have nothing to do with ourselves. And most pictures we take? They might as well be vapor. How often do we even look at them after we take them or post them? They’re just helping us make instant trash out of our experiences, our surroundings.”

  Layla detected notes of a master’s thesis. Current or former art student?

  “By taking and showing these pictures, I’m just trying to say, ‘Here are other moments, other lives that are taking up space and time. Don’t lose sight of that. Don’t lose sight of the world beyond yourself.’”

  She attached an adhesive hook to the new picture and found a space for it on one of the lines.

  “Do you take pictures just in this location?”

  “Nope. Every Wednesday, I pick a different spot around town.”

  Although Layla appreciated that a particular mission could drive an artist, and connect a body of work, she’d never had that experience. Each of her own paintings seemed to grow out of a fresh interest or obsession, and to exist in a world separate from her other works. During art school, when she’d tried to express a unifying purpose or theme for a group of paintings, whatever she came up with felt like a lie. And the exercise made her wonder how many other “artist statements,” and catalog descriptions based on them, were also lies. These photos, at least, seemed connected by something genuine.

  The photographer took a healthy sip of her coffee, then got back behind her camera. “If anything catches your eye, just take it. I only charge for my studio stuff. In there.” She nodded toward the courtyard.

  “Good to know. Thanks.”

  Layla needed to move on: get to that motel and crawl into bed. So, as not to appear rude, she cast a final gaze over the photographs. Then she froze.

  It couldn’t be him.

  She knelt to get a closer look at the picture, saw that it was. Unless “Uncle Wes” had an identical twin in Gallup, New Mexico.

  He’d been caught mid-stride on the opposite sidewalk, his usual suit coat slung over his shoulder, his Oxford unbuttoned at his throat: the only apparent adjustments to the climate. The shirt looked just-from-the-dry-cleaner’s crisp, and his face was all business, too. He seemed not to be taking in the sights but running his mind on some private gerbil wheel.

  Layla felt the photographer’s eyes on her, sensed that her panic signals had been received. “Did you take this picture today?”

  “All those pictures are from today.”

  Of course, Layla thought. That was the whole point. “Do you remember when you took this one? Roughly?”

  The photographer stepped to Layla’s side to get a better look.

  “At least a couple of hours ago. Do you know him?”

  Layla didn’t feel like getting into the details with a stranger, even a well-intentioned one. “He just kinda reminds me of someone.”

  Take the picture? No. What purpose would it serve, other than to continue to creep her out? This was one sight of the world beyond herself that she could do without.

  As she made her way back to the truck, she tried to remember how much he knew about the money in Phoenix, according to Bette. He knows it exists, and that I need to get to it safely. But not much more.

  Then what was he doing in New Mexico?

  Was he following her?

  No, that didn’t make sense. Two hours ago, when that picture was supposedly taken, Layla hadn’t even known she’d be stopping in Gallup.

  The farther she got from the picture, the more she doubted what she’d been so sure she’d seen. She was exhausted, perhaps on the edge of hallucinating. And wasn’t that picture just the slightest bit blurred?

  Still, she didn’t want to lay down her head in this place. Checking her phone, she saw that Window Rock was only a half hour away. Something about the name suggested escape. So did the tourist-bait picture most commonly linked to the locale: a hole in red rock with sky on the other side. It presented a Twilight Zone-like possibility of passing into another dimension, anyplace other than here.

  Chapter 21

  Alien Things

  Some motel in Window Rock, before dawn

  Unlike the other aliens, this one had been naked. No clothes to suggest gender, interests, or intent. Its usual alien habitat, Layla’s home, had been exchanged for a motel room—this motel room, the bed next to hers. It sat there, loading bullets into a magazine.

  Why was it here? Why did the magazine loading feel no less banal than the vacuuming, soup-stirring, and baby cuddling of this alien’s predecessors?

  Why? Why? Why? Why?

  Her throat still ached with the questions she’d called out to her visitor, who seemed not to hear them, or see her, until it finished with the magazine. Then, it locked its almond eyes on her, and pushed the magazine into a contraption that had materialized from a fold in space and time: a Polaroid 600.

  Still staring at her, the alien lifted a long index finger—Wait. Watch—and took the camera to the window, pointed it through the part in the curtains. The flash of the shot ended the dream, or blotted the rest of it from her memory.

  Now, as she downed her breakfast of vending-machine coffee and peanuts, Layla felt she could answer almost every Why? from her dream. The bullet loading, the Polaroid 600, the echo of Bette in the parting of the curtains, surely these were products of the electrochemical stew her brain had made of random memories, fears, and obsessions. During its overnight simmer, the stew made movies in her mind.

  Yet, the biggest Why?—why another alien?—remained unanswerable. Kiki had explained the previous alien dreams as coming from Layla’s lack of attention to “self-care.” Most likely, she’d say the same thing about this one.

  But right now, Layla was laser-focused on self-care, of a variety Kiki couldn’t have imagined.

  Yesterday, after checking into the motel, she had unlocked the compartment beneath the driver’s seat and found the ammo Bette had told her about: four boxes of bullets.

  Back in the room, still too jazzed-up to sleep, she tried to acquaint herself with Bette’s gun, which seemed to be a more compact version of the pistol Cooper’s cousin taught her to load and shoot. She released the magazine and pulled the slide back to check the chamber: empty. Then, she chose a target: the framed print over her bed, a geographically incorrect seaside scene, complete with a lighthouse. As she backed away from the picture, the cousin’s advice played through her mind: Get that target in the front sight; forget about the rear one. Pause your breath as you fire. Don’t hold it.

  She aimed for the lighthouse’s cupola and “fired” again and again, from different angles. An empty exercise, answered only by the click of the trigger. But it made her feel less uneasy with the gun, less detached from it. Comfortable? No. She’d never want to get to that point, even if it were possible.

  As exhaustion settled in for good, she loaded the magazine with bullets from the truck, slid
it into the gun. Then, after storing the gun in the nightstand, she fell into a deep, though alien-haunted, sleep.

  Now, as Layla finished her breakfast, she checked her phone once again, found no new texts from Unknown. Not necessarily a good sign, but she was grateful to be spared another horror, at least temporarily.

  If he knew she had a gun, would that give him pause or just make him laugh at the thought of her using it?

  As long as she’d been aware of guns’ power to annihilate, Layla had been afraid of them, and this one was no exception. As present in this room as another being, it was a force of indifferent malevolence. And it brought back the vision of the giant magic magnet that had come to her when she was a kid. Now and then during daydreams, the magnet lowered itself from the heavens and sucked every gun in the world into oblivion.

  But once, during a camping trip a college roommate had nudged her into, she’d very much wished for a gun, though not until the two of them were far into the middle of nowhere. Layla hadn’t foreseen how much their surroundings would remind her of Ross Woods, how every crack of a twig or rustle in the brush would make her jump, eventually testing her roommate’s patience.

  During their single night in the woods, fear and longing left Layla sleepless: fear that a man like the one who had killed her mother would stalk his way toward their tent; longing for a gun, so she could blow his fucking head off.

  This memory returned Layla to Ross Woods, to the sight of her mother walking through fall leaves, then freezing at a sound from behind, then glancing over her shoulder—

  She willed herself out of the scene. You have a job to do.

  She tossed the empty peanut bag into the trash and faced the question she’d been trying to avoid. Carry or not?