by Ward, Robert
As the light turned green, an old flyer blew up on his windshield. Jack reached out and pulled it off—an advertisement for a holistic health clinic that was located in town. According to the article, a curandero, or witch doctor, was on twenty-four-hour duty for “Spiritual Guidance.” Various Miracle Aloe plants were advertised as “Cactus Curatives.”
Jack smiled, balled the flyer up, and tossed it out the window into a garbage can.
He’d never heard of this town until Charlotte Rae had called him five days ago. But since he’d agreed to meet her here, high in the San Cristobal Mountains, he’d done a little research and found that Las Virgines was known as the Town of Miracles.
According to a travel guide, the place had a cancer clinic called the Malobar Hostel and a fountain in the center of town in which the local residents regularly saw the reflection of Jesus Christ. There was an artists’ colony too, the kind of place for painters and writers who’d fled Los Angeles.
The Town of Miracles, Jack thought, turning the Mustang into an open parking space. Well, there was one miracle he could attest to in the town today; he and Charlotte Rae were both still alive.
He walked up the three short steps to the old-fashioned western boardwalk and through the swinging doors of the Coyote Cafe.
Inside, the place was dark mahogany wood. There was an old bar, with a Navajo bartender who sported a ponytail. Sitting at the bar were two elderly Indian men playing liar’s dice. They shook the dice out of a leather cup and grunted at each other to signify the scoring of points.
Jack walked to the back of the restaurant and sat down. A young Indian barmaid walked toward him. Jack ordered a shot of Herradura tequila and sat back and waited for her.
He thought of what Zampas would say if he knew that Jack’s vacation days were being spent meeting with Charlotte. The truth was, if anyone found out, he might be brought up on charges. She was, after all, a fugitive.
Then, suddenly, a hand touched his cheek from behind. He turned, startled, almost went for his gun.
But then she was sitting down in the hardwood chair in front of him, and he was shocked by her appearance.
Her blonde hair was gone. Instead, she was a brunette, with a pixie cut. The heavy makeup was gone as well and no lipstick at all.
“Hi, Jack,” she said.
“Hi,” he said, but he couldn’t hide the astonishment in his voice.
“Do I look that bad?”
“No,” Jack said. “You look great.”
She smiled shyly.
“You sound like you really mean it, but then you always were a good liar.”
“I’m not lying. You just surprised me.”
“I was in the ladies’ room,” she said, indicating the little hallway that ran off to the right behind him.
“Were you waiting to see if I would come alone?”
“Yes. I suppose I was.”
“I thought we’d gotten beyond all that.”
She smiled and put her hand over his.
“I’d like to think so too, Jack, but I know you’re still a cop.”
He smiled slightly and put his other hand over hers. The Indian girl came again, and Charlotte Rae ordered tequila.
“Where have you been, Charlotte Rae?”
“Moving around. I don’t sleep that well, since I left you, Jack. I have these dreams … dreams of a girl trapped under the desert. Pushing up through the sand and the cactus … but every time she can see the stars and smell the night air, the ground caves in.”
Jack felt the hair bristle along his back. He reached across the table and wiped the tear from her cheek.
“It’s over, Charlotte Rae. Buddy’s dead.”
“I heard,” she said. “Did you kill him?”
Jack shook his head.
“He died in a fall,” Jack said. “But maybe I helped him a little.”
She smiled and let out her breath.
“I should feel relieved, I guess,” she said. “But I don’t. Morales is still out there. As long as he thinks I can testify against him, I won’t be safe.”
Jack sipped his tequila and squeezed her hand.
“I don’t think you have to worry about him. My information tells us he’s not even in the country. Split for Europe. And remember, he’s got a serious cancer. He’ll be spending most of his time dealing with that.”
She sighed.
“That’s good to hear, but I think I’ll keep a low profile anyway. What happened to your esteemed colleague in the Agency?”
“Brandau? Ahhh, he’s developed an almost operatic singing voice. Thanks to him, we’re going to be able to dismantle a lot of Morales’s empire.”
There was an uncomfortable silence between them then, until Charlotte Rae smiled, knowingly.
“Go ahead, Jack, you can say it. I know you have to.”
Walker nodded.
“Okay. I could really use your testimony, Charlotte. There’s a lot you could help us with.”
“And if I say no?”
“You could be subpoenaed.”
“Of course, they’d have to find me first.”
“That’s right, they would,” Jack said.
“But then if I stayed in touch with you, you could tell them where I was.”
“Yeah, I could,” Jack said. “But then maybe I’d forget your address. I’ve always been lousy with street names.” She reached over and held his hand. “You’d do that for me, Jack?” Jack felt the heat between them.
“Truth is we’ve got a pretty good case without your testimony.” He laughed. “What is it?” she said.
“I just have a hard time imagining you in the witness protection plan. Living somewhere like Kansas.” She shook her head.
“Shucking corn and going to the Grange meeting? It sounds exciting. Of course, you’d be there with me, Jack. In your overalls, and riding your John Deere tractor.”
Jack nodded and took a sip of tequila.
“Some days, it doesn’t sound so bad,” he said. “Where will you go, Charlotte? How will you live?”
She smiled and touched his cheek.
“Wherever I want. And on my own,” she said. “You gave me one thing, Jack. Because of you and me, I won’t be able to settle for guys like Buddy Wingate again.”
Jack nodded and dropped his money on the table. Then they walked out of the Coyote, hand in hand.
Out on the street, the wind howled and the cafe sign squeaked loudly on its hinges.
“I’ve been here for a month,” she said, as they walked down the boardwalk toward the alley next to the cafe. “It scared me at first, being alone, but then I started to hear something new.”
“What’s that?”
“Something beyond all the lights and the traffic, something that might even be like a whisper of my own voice.”
“What’s it say?” he said, pressing her to him.
“I don’t know yet,” she said. “I’ve never really listened to it before, so it’s in code.”
“Well, my money says you can crack it,” he said.
“I’ll let you know the next time I see you, Jack.”
“When will that be?” Jack said.
She smiled at him then, and there was something playful in her eyes.
“I don’t know. But soon.”
“Soon,” Jack said, smiling.
They walked together toward a blue Jaguar parked in the alley beside the bar. “Gotta go,” she said.
“I like your car,” he said. “Get it from your girlfriend in Dallas?”
“No. Buddy gave me this one. He wasn’t actually aware of it, of course.” Jack laughed.
“Let me guess. You borrowed some of his money while you were living with him?” She smiled as she opened the door.
“I was a dope to ever be with him, but I wasn’t a complete fool. Take care, Jack.”
She opened the door to the Jaguar, but Jack stopped her before she could get inside.
“One more thing,” he said. “I don’t even
know your real name.”
“Quintana,” she said. “Charlotte Rae Quintana.”
“Quintana,” he said. “I like it.”
He shook his head, and there was confusion and longing in his eyes.
“What is it, Jack?”
“Something,” he said. “Something we share. I’m not talking about sex. The thing is, I can’t put a name on it.”
“No?” she said. “Maybe I can. I think it’s that we’re both orphans.”
As she said it, Jack felt something break loose inside of him. He knew at once that in some strange way it was true.
He caught her wrist and pulled her to him. She put her arms around him and he felt her press against him. The kiss took a long time. Finally, they reluctantly pulled apart.
“Good-bye for now, Jack,” she said. “I’ll call you sometime.”
“I’ll be counting on it,” he said.
He let her go then, and she slipped into the Jaguar, turned on the ignition, and looked out at him. They stayed that way, their eyes locked on each other, until she released the brake and roared away.
Jack walked back toward the Mustang, already keenly aware of the lack of her.
“Charlotte Rae Quintana.”
He liked the sound of her real name.
He slid behind the wheel of his car and stared out at the dust-blown street. He knew now that he loved her. She was his match, he thought, his other half. He turned the key in the Mustang and slowly drove down the street.
He suddenly wanted to drive after her, make her come with him. He wanted to protect her. But that was no good for now. Like him, she had to do things her own way. In her own time.
They’d come together again. When they were both ready.
As he drove over the mountain road back toward Santa Fe, Jack could picture both of them walking side by side down a narrow and often blind path, through the sharp, waiting needles of the cactus garden. Walking in fear and excitement, both of them hoping, against the odds, to find a bright cool blue pond at the desert’s end.
If you liked The Cactus Garden check out:
The Sandman
1
Though he saw the light in front of him clearly blinking red, Peter Cross’s foot did not hit the brake but the accelerator. A swarm of panic, like a shot of Methedrine, zapped through him and he could hear the squeal of brakes, the screams of a cabbie’s voice.
“You fucking bum, wake up!”
Christ, Cross thought, not only do I nearly get my ass killed, but I have to put up with the cheapest sort of irony. For Cross had not been able to “wake up” for three nights. Not been able to, because he had not been asleep for three nights. More like thirty, fifty, a hundred, but he had stopped counting. Cross’s rule: If he suspected that any time during the night he had dozed off at all, then that counted as a night’s sleep. After all, studies made at the Blake Institute showed that incurable insomniacs, even the worst of them, always snatched some few hours of sleep, though they might not be aware of it. The problem was, Cross was aware of it; he couldn’t swallow that soothing analgesic balm designed to “help the patient.” For he suffered from an illness beyond the help of analysis—the Space, burning into his organs, opening him up like a great gutted fruit … He could feel it happening, his kidneys vanishing, his liver, his intestines, his heart. He had been to a shrink once, and the man had tried to pry into him, to open the lid off the top of his handsome head and dig deep into the muck beneath his scalp … prying and peeping, such a good-natured creep with all the insight of a Roto-Rooter man. The Space was eating away inside of him … churning through his flesh … but he had to calm himself, for he was headed for work … he had to calm down.
“Hey, pal, you better shit or git offa the pot.”
Cross turned and saw a pig-faced man with arms as pink and flabby as a baby’s. The man’s teeth gnawed at the air, and Peter suddenly felt nauseous and cold and very, very strange.
“You’re driving on the street, pal,” the man said, spittle flying from his mouth. “You better wake up … you unnerstan? You cut me off again, I’m gonna have ta do some damage.”
Cross said nothing, turned away, and stared at the macadam.
The Bagel Nosh, the New York Furriers, P.J. Clarke’s, they flew by him like images from a dream. I cannot wake in the morning, I cannot sleep at night. He thought of Poe, the stories he had started to read, and they seemed like imitations of his own internal state. The same images over and over, the cheap wallpaper of his parents’ house on 21st Street in Baltimore; the pink roses peeling off of the wall, the hoarse bog of his mother’s breathing, terrible pitching and heaving in the old creaked-spring bed, the medicinal odor (menthol) of the vaporizer, the beads of sweat on her forehead; the endless bottles of pills that did nothing to stop the cancer within her but worked only as a holding action against the encroaching pain, which ate away at her liver, her kidneys; she sitting in front of him with those moist deadpan eyes, sipping seltzer water, smiling and trying to tell him about Poe …
He snapped to at 58th Street, felt his flesh returning to him. It was like that with the Space—boring away at you and then suddenly gone, or there but not as noticeable. He had to slow it down, breathe normally, light a cigarette. Only two more blocks to the hospital. And a very tough day ahead of him.
The old woman, Lorraine Bell. Admitted yesterday, he had checked her stats, tried to get out of the room before her smell got to him. They had cleaned her, of course, but there was no hiding her smell. The rotting flesh. A gomer for sure. That was Harry Gardner’s word, just another old piece of meat shipped from the nursing home, Windy Hills. Such a nice, pleasant name, and all the walls painted pastel to rest the old eyes, keep the old pulse level. But there was no slowing any of it down. Always going straight ahead, through the cutting edges of the morning. Always going straight ahead.
Except for her mouth, the way the lips curled up, as though she were in command of something—as though she were about to make a joke. There was a residue of beauty in her mouth. It had shocked him (and he recalled seeing the mouth last night, as he was pacing his apartment, walking slowly like a caged lion).
He turned into the 72nd Street entrance, went down the ramp, and felt as though he were riding along the surface of a tongue. A darting tongue which would flip him into the space marked in red, “Peter Cross Anesthesiologist.” He stopped the Mercedes with a jerk, stepped out on the asphalt, saw the white shadow of a nurse walking toward the far elevator. Inside his chest he could hear something taking place. Stop that. You must stop. He crushed out the cigarette, adjusted his glasses, stooped down and looked at his thin, scholarly face in the window mirror. He noticed the slight blue bags under his tense slit-eyes. Like a serpent, he thought. Patient’s name Lorraine Bell. Moldy, wrapped in gauze. With a joke about the mouth.
He walked from the elevator to the scheduling room. Check and see if the patient survived the night. She had. They were tough, very tough. Tougher than Harry Gardner supposed.
“Hey, Cross, you got the gomer this morning?”
Harry Gardner stood in front of him holding his nose. Peter stared at his huge, hairy forearms, the short, powerful torso and the stubs of legs. Harry looked like Popeye, or an ape.
“Her name is Lorraine Bell, Harry,” Peter said.
He could feel the beehive churning in him. Whirling ghostholes through his body.
“The old bag is going to soil herself, Peter. Look out when she lets the big load rip.”
“Christ, Harry,” Peter said. He started to turn away, but Harry grabbed his arm. Peter felt as though there were a branding iron on his flesh.
Then Harry cracked up and let Cross loose.
“Don’t do that again,” Peter said.
“What’s this?” Harry said, taking a step back toward Peter. “You getting tough?”
Peter stared at him, through him, and heard the sound of stones being rolled.
“Good morning, Harry,” he said.
�
�Space Cadet,” Harry said. “You are the original Space Cadet.”
Peter heard his voice. It sounded small and far away. He turned, went into the changing room, walked down the rows of lockers, which suddenly looked as menacing as the buildings on Third Avenue. He removed his pants, neatly folded them over a hanger. Took off his shirt and stared down at his well-muscled torso. He kept himself slender, in shape, and yet he did not see that. He saw sagging flesh, the muscles being ground down by the years. He changed into greens, got his keys, slammed his locker shut, went into the hall, and stopped by A Room. Opening it, he stared at the shelves of briefcases, the other armamentaria of his colleagues. Here they kept their drugs, all of them—Rizzoli, Lampur the little Indian, Hernandez the Puerto Rican, Chung the Chinese, and Harry Gardner. He stared at their names taped on the bags. None of them was as good as he. Most were like Gardner, who only got into anesthesiology because he couldn’t cut it at med school. Easy hours, good mobility, get stoned and laid on the weekends. He picked up his bag. Get ready for Miss Lorraine Bell.
She was eighty-one, blood pressure 160 over 60, with a joke around the mouth. Do your job, do it well … she is in pain and needs you. The doctors will find out where the bowel is obstructed. Though Peter thought he already knew. Her bowel would be obstructed from adhesions. Adhesions caused by other needless operations. He walked into the Ready Room, opened his armamentarium, and stared down at his drugs—plenty of neostigmine, succinylcholine, curare. He looked down at the long needle and thought of his mother, the injection heading into her arm…. Then he packed it all up and headed into the OR.
He was the first one in the room, and he busied himself checking over the anesthesia machine, making certain that the tanks of oxygen and nitrous oxide were set to the correct proportions. The oxygen content was all right—between 18 and 24 pounds per inch, but the nitrous oxide was a little low, so he raised it to 575 pounds per square inch. Then he turned as the two scrub nurses wheeled in Lorraine Bell.
“Hello, Peter.”
Peter smiled at Debby Hunter, a tall, beautiful blonde, new to Eastern Medical. She smiled back at him, and he felt shy and looked away from her. He stared down but became aware of her legs, long and slender, and he thought of her standing there naked, no one else in the room … and the thought made the Space inside of him howl again, shift, hurting him.