Mosquitoes above the windowsill.
The dead sunflowers.
The thock of arrows in the stampeding herd.
The braves running on to catch more game. The butchers remaining with their long knives of antler and bone.
“Noo nu puetsuku u punine,” they call to one another before they part.
That was then. The city’s pulse a drumbeat of cars and feet. A million people breathing in unison as the alarm sounds seven.
It’s not worse, merely different.
The right angles, symmetry. The smell of cannabis, garbage, eucalyptus. Urine.
My father would say that the Comanche missed out on the great secret of the universe. The linking of the five most important numbers in mathematics by the formula eiπ + 1 = 0.
My father.
What does he know?
Nothing.
Voices in the living room.
The pair of them.
Laughing, talking.
And then the silence betrays a more intimate encounter still.
A knock. A third voice.
Two men and a girl.
Happy.
She’s cooking.
They want me to come out but they think I’m sleeping. They’re letting me lie in. Still, the smell of food is bringing me back to life.
Even a junkie has to eat sometimes.
But if I don’t go out, the world out there can’t hurt me.
If I don’t go out.
I go out….
I don’t know what Ethiopians eat for breakfast, but it seemed unlikely that it was this. Areea had made us French toast with fried eggs, links sausages, and bacon. Faux maple syrup and coffee, too. Pat and I didn’t have the greatest appetites at the best of times, but John wolfed his portion and there was no denying that everything had a delicious flavor.
All very amiable. Areea in the middle of a story about her life in Ethiopia and why, of all places, they’d come to Denver. Apparently, it had the second-biggest Ethiopian community in America, though it was hard to concentrate since she was wearing a miniskirt that showed off her long, dark, beautiful legs, which complemented her flashing eyes and beautiful smile.
Still, everything clicked along until she and John started kissing again.
“Not at the breakfast table,” I protested.
“Alexander is right,” Areea said, removing John’s big hands from her bum.
John gave her a kiss on the cheek, and turned around to look at us.
“Well, boys, are ye not eating, how’s the grub?” he asked, smacking his lips.
“Everything is just wonderful,” Pat said.
“It is,” I agreed. “You’re a great cook, Areea.”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” Areea said, “American food is easy to make.”
She went to the kitchen to get more coffee.
“Isn’t she great?” John moaned happily with a goofy expression on his face.
“Jesus, you’re not in love with her, are you?” I whispered under my breath.
“I might be,” John said with a grin.
“You bloody eejit. You realize, of course, the relationship has no future,” I said.
“What is it with you, Alex? You’re such a grumpy boots every morning,” John replied.
Pat lit himself a cigarette and stared up at the ceiling. I clenched my fist under the table. I felt I had been very patient with John. Not one time had I brought up the fact that he had pushed a man over a balcony and bloody topped him.
“I’ll support her, I’ll look after her, I’ll get a job,” John said thoughtfully.
“Yeah, you’re doing a fine job now,” I muttered. “Me working my ass off all day long and you smoking pot and making love, living the life of bloody Reilly.”
“Why is someone else’s happiness such a burden to you? It’s the fucking ketch, robs you of feeling for your fellow man, don’t you think, Pat?”
“I’m keeping out of this, boys,” Pat said, and continued staring at a point above his head.
I took a sip of the coffee. John was a wanker, but maybe he was on to something there. I shrugged. I didn’t want this to develop into an argument. The situation was as much my fault as his.
“Sorry, John. Look, my head hurts, my sinuses are aching, my feet are killing me from all the walking. Problems, you know?”
“The sinus problem is from the pollution,” Pat said. “They should be dealing with that and the fucking drought, not going after minorities in this state.”
Areea came over with another pot of coffee.
“Wonderful,” Pat said, and gave her a grin.
“You have sore feet?” Areea asked me, and we all reddened with embarrassment, hoping that she hadn’t heard the rest of the conversation.
“Yeah, I do, I never walk this much normally.”
Areea took a long look at my feet and offered to give me a foot massage. I looked at John, I didn’t want to get into macho head games with him, but John nodded to show he didn’t care. I retired to the couch and Areea proceeded to torture the soles of my feet with her incredibly strong fingers. Ten minutes later she was done and my feet felt much better.
“Wow, that’s really amazing, you’re totally multitalented,” I said.
“That’s not all she’s good at,” John said. He and Areea dissolved into giggles.
“Honestly don’t know what she sees in you, she can’t even get a green card off you,” I said to him.
Areea asked Pat if he wanted a massage too. Pat refused out of politeness because his feet were in a bad way, but Saint Areea insisted, ignored his calluses and an open sore and gave him a gentler massage than me, but still effective nonetheless.
My watch said twelve and, sadly, it was time to leave this scene of domestic tranquillity. Pat begged me to have at least one martini before I went, but I couldn’t. I’d had a weird high this morning, inverted and almost a bad trip, and I wanted to stay off the booze. It turned out that the heroin supply in this town was very patchy and you never really knew what you were getting. Manuelito, my dealer, always complained about it. Around here the crack cocaine was of the finest quality but the smack could be dodgy. Smackheads were all in New York: singers, starving artists, Goth girls, anorexic fashion models.
I was reluctant to go, though. I was tired and this was the best part of the day, hanging out in the morning with John, Pat, and Areea, chatting, messing about, sharing the fire escape with Pat, looking down on the world.
Of course, last night I hadn’t been able to sleep. Two nights of that now. Ever since Amber.
Amber. Hypocritical me telling John off.
For it was all about her.
It’s an old trope, the peeler who falls for one of his suspects or a witness or a victim. It’s a cliché. They even tell you about it in the police academy, apparently it’s very common in domestic abuse cases.
I should have had more sense, anyway. After seeing Redhorse, I should have scarpered. Smart thing to do. But Amber was the magnet. She had caught me. Something about her that could not be denied. Smart, beautiful, sexy. Maybe if I’d been older I would have been immune. I should have run. But I didn’t want to. And there was that feeling I’d had that she was somehow Victoria Patawasti’s polar opposite. A looking-glass version of her, a Victoria in the parallel world. WASP, blonde, prim as a counterpoint to Victoria. Both incredibly clever, but Amber lacked Victoria’s wit and Amber did not have Victoria’s sense of humor, how could she? Victoria, who had been the only Paki in the whole school, darker even than her brothers, she needed a defense mechanism right from the start. She’d verbally taken apart anyone who’d screwed with her. Sarcastic, ironic, cool, in fact. I shouldn’t have let her go. And this was before ketch and Mum’s illness—no excuses. I suppose I was too immature, too caught up in my own universe.
Too clever by half, the teachers used to say about me, and they said the same about her. But she went on to be head girl. I wasn’t subtle, that was my trouble, how could I be, growing up
in that crazy house with those pseudo-hippie parents and aloof siblings—subtle would have gone unnoticed. And also, she was out of my league, destined to go to Oxford University, graduate with a first, and eventually be head-hunted by a nonprofit who would offer her a green card, free rent, a good salary, responsibilities, rapid advancement, and a chance to live in the USA. Aye. Fucked up then, fucking up now.
I sighed, went out.
Colfax Avenue. Heat, light, pollution, three Mexican guys being questioned by a motorcycle cop. A protester outside Planned Parenthood wearing a fetus billboard. Bikers in the park dealing pot.
The CAW building.
The Haitian concierge sitting at his desk and reading a green pamphlet, which was the latest security briefing from the Denver Police Department. He looked at me, smiled.
“Ça va?” he asked.
“Ok,” I said, hoping there wasn’t a description of me in there.
I pushed the button for the fifth floor. The elevator dinged. I got on. The day began.
* * *
That night, for the second time that week, I was paired with Amber Mulholland. We were soliciting in a town called Evergreen right up in the foothills. Big houses, lawns, American flags, kids on bicycles. It was odd that Amber and I would be together, for a couple of reasons. First, I had been working at CAW sufficiently long now that I didn’t need training or a partner anymore. Second, Amber told me when she did go out she did it only to keep Charles company. And yet here we were again. I wasn’t complaining. I hadn’t seen her for a couple of days, not since the night she’d caught me in a lie and I’d seen her steal and we’d rescued the kids and had hard, crazy sex up against a wall. I wanted to see her, I needed to see her.
She was wearing a white crew neck over khaki slacks. A little cooler here in the foothills. Needless to say, she looked stunning. We walked away from the van, and when the others were behind us, she turned to me. Her face flushed, rosy, biting her lip.
“Alex, listen to me, I lost my head the other night. I love Charles, I don’t know what happened, but it can’t ever happen again. I blame myself, the fire, the excitement, I don’t know, I was overcome, if you value my friendship you won’t mention it, please.”
I didn’t know what I was expecting her to say. But not this. Not the brush-off.
“Ok,” I said.
“Friends?” she asked, and offered me her hand.
“Friends,” I said, concealing my amazement at her behavior. It seemed so wrong, so immature, so silly. And yet maybe that’s what adults did. We walked in silence for a half minute and took out our maps.
“I think we’ll do better tonight. Tonight we have the Glengarry leads,” Amber said with a little smile….
She proved correct. A short night, but good work. Two hours, ten members each. A hundred and fifty bucks for me.
It was only on the way back to the van that we managed a real conversation. I tried to be lighthearted.
“You know what this neighborhood reminds me of?” I asked her.
“What?”
“It’s the sort of place a lot of Spielberg movies begin in, you know, picket fences and kids playing and stuff and then something ominous happens, aliens come, or a poltergeist, or government agents, something like that.”
“I don’t really go to the movies,” she said.
“No?”
“No.”
“Oh, that’s right. You said you like the theater,” I said.
She nodded and the conversation died. With annoyance, she brushed the hair away from her face. How dare one strand of hair be out of place again. She knocked her hair clip to the ground. I picked it up, gave it to her. Our fingers touched. She smiled at me. I swallowed.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Look, about the other night, I’m glad you didn’t say anything to the police,” I said.
“It’s ok, I understand. You’re from Ireland, you want to work, and you don’t have all the papers, nothing to be ashamed of,” she said, sympathetically.
“Not every American takes that attitude,” I said.
“Well, I do, I come from pretty straitened circumstances myself,” she said.
“Your parents weren’t well off? Thought you went to Harvard?”
“I worked hard,” she said firmly.
“Tell me about your background, if you don’t mind,” I said, and again she returned my smile.
“It’s very complicated,” she said carefully. She blinked a couple of times, angled her head away from me.
“I’d like to know,” I said.
“Well, my parents were divorced, you know,” she said.
“That can be very hard on a kid, did you have brothers or sisters?”
“No.”
“What did your parents do for a living?” I asked.
“Dad was a mechanic, he went to college part-time, and he became a union rep and did well. Mom worked in a place called Dairy Queen, which you probably haven’t heard of, I haven’t seen any in Denver.”
“So you were solid working class?” I asked with a smile, since some people can take offense at that kind of question.
“I suppose so, I don’t have a, uh…”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“What?” I insisted.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but I don’t have a relationship with my dad, we haven’t spoken in years.”
“How did that happen?”
“Well, he divorced my mom and he’s a real operator, he had good lawyers and she got screwed over and got nothing. That’s the first thing. And then when I was going to college, he’d promised he would pay but he stopped paying. He wouldn’t give me anything until I went to see him, to beg in person, but I didn’t want to do that because of what he did to Mom.”
“I’m sorry. He sounds like a bastard,” I said.
“Yeah. He was, still is, probably. I don’t want to talk about it. What did your parents do?”
“My parents were both teachers, math and English. Dad’s retired, Mum’s dead,” I said.
“Oh, I’m sorry, uh, what did your mom die of? I mean, if you don’t mind…”
“She had cervical cancer, it was misdiagnosed for a while and when it was diagnosed it was probably too late, they tried some alternative treatments, but those things don’t work,” I said simply.
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” she said. “How old were you when she died?”
“I was eighteen, it was my second year of university, it was really hard, my siblings were in England and my dad was doing all this political shit, Mum was practically on her own, it was awful, really. She was tough, though, she said we should all get on with our lives.”
“I’m so sorry,” Amber said, and stopped for a minute to give me a look of real sympathy. She touched my hand again. I squeezed hers.
“My poor mother might as well be dead,” she said, her face sad with the memory.
“What’s the matter?”
“She’s only sixty-eight, but she has early-onset Alzheimer’s, hardly recognizes me, it’s awful. Charles had her flown out here to Denver, to a wonderful place. Oh, my goodness. Actually, I don’t want to talk about that, either, it’s terrible.”
I nodded sympathetically. But sharing that had brought me closer to her.
“To be honest, I don’t really like it here in Denver that much,” she offered after a while. “It’s a poor excuse for a city.”
“If you don’t like it, why do you stay?” I asked.
“Oh, Charles has to be here, for political reasons, you wouldn’t really understand. All politics is local in this country. We have to be here.”
“And does Charles have political ambitions?”
“I suppose so, don’t we all?”
“Not me. You don’t really hear about many national figures coming out of Colorado, though.”
“No, no, you don’t, the last was Gary Hart and we all know what happened to him.”
“The
girl on the boat, that scandal thing,” I said.
“Monkey Business,” she said.
I swore inwardly, for we were already back at the van. Everyone else there, Charles beaming, wearing Dockers, deck shoes and a button-down Oxford shirt. His hair gelled. He looked younger, like the millionaire commodore’s wanker son at a yacht club function. And of course he was a millionaire’s son and he was a wanker. I had to bite down a real hatred for the man. He bounded over, kissed Amber, shook my hand.
“Well, folks, hope you’re ready to party,” he said.
“What is it, Charles?” Amber asked excitedly.
“We just signed our ten thousandth member,” he said, and gave her another big kiss.
“That’s wonderful,” Amber said, her face lighting up with pleasure.
“It is, ten thousand members and the timing couldn’t be better. Momentum is what we need right now. And we have it. Ten thousand members, if we could use the mailing list and hit them up for a hundred bucks a pop, we could have a million dollars in our PAC before anyone else even begins to raise money….”
Charles suddenly realized he was being indiscreet. He looked at me and forced a grin. He turned to Amber, kissed her again.
“Darling, Robert and I have been thinking, we’re going to have a big party, honey, tell me it’s ok, but the offices are so boring, I was really thinking we could go to our house, it’s big and nice, comfortable, everyone would love it, but if you don’t think so, we could go to the offices, tell me what you think?”
“If that’s what you want, Charles,” Amber said a little reluctantly.
“Terrific, I’ll tell Robbie and Abe,” Charles said, and ran back to the others.
“So we’re going to your place?” I asked Amber.
“It’s not as clean as I would have liked, the maid only comes every other day, I hope we’re not embarrassed,” Amber said.
* * *
Amber was not embarrassed. The house was spectacular. An Edwardian pile on Eighth and Pennsylvania, the heart of Capitol Hill, a block from the governor’s mansion. Easily six thousand square feet, with a big open-plan living room decorated in what I took to be southwestern style: Indian artifacts, prints, throw rugs, pastel furniture. A Georgia O’Keeffe painting of an adobe house. Pottery that looked to be pre-Columbian. It must have cost a bloody fortune, which meant the brothers couldn’t really have been as poor as Klimmer claimed, although wealth is a relative thing. Perhaps they weren’t that well off in comparison to their fabulously wealthy father. But even so, all of us humble campaigners were awed.
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