Further Out Than You Thought

by Michaela Carter

  She was frozen and then she wasn’t; she ducked in, toward the men, and grabbed Fifi’s leash and yanked her off the man’s leg. She saw the knife, within her grasp. Did she dare? She took it and ran, ran as if she wouldn’t stop. Back toward the bars, where it was safe. Behind her, through the thin night air, she heard someone cry out, as if in pain, but she was running full tilt. She was saving herself and she wasn’t going to stop, not even for Leo.

  The street was silent and deserted, like a street in a dream, and there were alleys she didn’t remember having passed, dark hungry tunnels. Something in her wanted to turn down one, to hide behind a garbage can. She wanted Leo to try to find her, to go back to the hotel where she wouldn’t be and worry. She wanted him to pace, to curse himself for his stupidity. She knew the desire was childish, maybe even petty, but she wanted him to think about what he’d done.

  Gwen found herself in an alley—she’d turned without realizing. She was walking fast, forcing herself to slow down, to breathe. Looking straight ahead, her eyes were like the eyes of an owl, taking the world in—on both sides of her—all at once: the plastic bins with garbage pressing open their lids, the metal cans vomiting garbage onto the dirt, and the sewer roaches, long and brown, flickering on the splintered back walls of the buildings. One spread its carapace and flew toward her. She screamed. It landed at her feet and Fifi dashed for it as it scuttled away.

  Gwen quickened her pace.

  She remembered the switchblade in her fist and tightened her grip on the handle. The metal was warm. She turned the knife in the moonlight. It was shiny and clean, no blood. The handle was black metal. She tried the safety, closed and opened the knife. It was an ordinary pocketknife, not a switchblade at all. But the blade when she pressed it to her thumb was sharper than she’d imagined. She could carve a mean jack-o’-lantern with this knife. She walked, holding the knife by her side, holding it down. Should a shadow shift, she’d be ready—ready in her combat boots, with Fifi, her vicious Lhasa Apso, who would attack anyone who meant her harm, even the roaches.

  Leo was all right, she told herself, but the feeling gnawed.

  What if he wasn’t? What if he were lying on the sidewalk dying?

  There had been the cry, just as she was leaving, but it hadn’t been long or loud. And besides, she’d taken the knife, or else one of the knives. She wasn’t certain how many she’d seen.

  Maybe she had been wrong to leave him there—to abandon him. But he’d been the one to leave her first, she told herself, and he was a grown man, a fact she often forgot.

  And she had a child to think about now.

  She stopped walking forward. She had to go back, had to know he was okay. She turned, retraced her steps, past the garbage cans and the flying roaches, out of the alley and onto the road. She looked both ways, up and down it. Had she turned right, or left? Her heart pounded.

  What the hell was she doing here? Nothing was familiar. She looked to the moon, trying to remember where it had been, in which section of the sky, as she and Fifi were running from the fight.

  She could kill Leo, she thought. How could he just leave her there?

  She turned left and walked. A man passed her, and another, slowing to look at her, staring. Behind her, she heard whistles. “Hey, baby,” someone growled. She clutched the knife, imagining how she’d use it, in swift jabs. She wanted to run back to the hotel, but now she had no idea where it was. Still, she walked with purpose, in order not to appear as prey. And then she was there, she recognized the storefront, the tattered awning.

  She looked around. The sidewalk was empty, as if nothing had happened.

  This meant he was okay—he had to be. He must have gone back to the room, unless he was running down the streets, looking for her.

  She’d head back to the Hotel Suiza, she thought. After all, she was the one with the key.

  Twenty-five

  SHE WALKED DOWN the street, through one intersection and another, and realized she was turned around again. Why hadn’t she paid better attention? She’d been lost in her thoughts, depending on Leo to remember the way, and now she was lost. She looked back, but that didn’t seem like the right direction, either. She walked further, to where the street opened onto a small side street. Maybe they’d come down this one?

  Up ahead a door, half-open, spilled red light onto the cobblestones. She would have remembered this. Clearly, she’d once again chosen the wrong street to turn down. But if she kept following it, she just might find a new way back.

  She passed the door, heard the pulse of dance music, smelled the smoke and stale beer and felt the familiar pull. Drawn, as always, to the red light—the kind light by which astronomers read their maps, so their pupils, still dilated, can return to the stars—Gwen didn’t need any map. Her course was charted by feel. But she could at least ask for directions.

  She pushed the door open and walked through a curtain of red plastic beads, like the beads that hung in Valiant’s apartment, and beyond them she could see other beads, beads of light, lilac and blue. She walked through the curtain, Fifi on the leash beside her. The room was dimmer than the moonlit street, and as she stood at the entrance, waiting for the room to materialize from the shadows, she felt that she was invisible, like a ghost just discovering she was a ghost.

  Leaning against a wall to her right was a man she was sure was a bouncer, and even he didn’t seem to notice her. A big man in cowboy boots, his shirtsleeves rolled above his elbows, he smoked his cigarette and stared at the stage.

  There was no posted cover charge, no waitresses.

  Just the woman on the runway, nude, on her knees in front of two college boys, one sniggering behind the other’s shoulder. There was a man on the other side of the runway, just one man, and the woman walked to him. Sauntered. The music was too fast. It made her look large and slow. It made her look weary. Her breasts hung. As she walked, they swung like big cowbells, inaudible.

  Gwen saw, in the bruise-colored light, the dancer’s stretch marks, shining rivulets above her breasts and over her stomach and her hips. The woman knelt before the lone man, an older Mexican in a worn, dark suit. Gwen watched him lay his pesos on the runway, watched her lean over, close. Her long hair, dyed blond, brought a curtain down around them. But she could see the man hold her dark breasts in his hands, his palms open—as though he were offering her something of value. A gift. He was taking the weight of her breasts, assuming for her the burden of gravity, and lifting them toward his lips. She watched as he took the woman’s nipples into his mouth. Her left and then her right. The woman closed her eyes. To be a body, Gwen thought. Only a body.

  The bouncer was looking at Gwen now. “You can’t have that in here,” he said in perfect English, and she realized she was still carrying the knife.

  “No dogs allowed,” he said.

  Gwen smiled and nodded. “Por favor,” she said, “dónde está—” But Fifi, as though she’d understood the man, faced him and bared her teeth, growling. Gwen scooped her up. “Sorry,” she said to him. “Comprendo. Gracias.”

  He hadn’t thrown her out for the knife but for the dog.

  She walked through the plastic bead curtain back onto the narrow street. It was deserted and she kept the open knife in her hand. She set Fifi down. The moon seemed brighter, almost blinding as she looked at it, like staring into a spotlight. The deserted street was a set and she was center stage, standing on her mark. A girl and her white dog lost in a border town. Only she wasn’t in a polka-dotted dress, and she wasn’t wearing tap shoes. No music would swell from any orchestra pit. And no one seemed to be watching, except, perhaps, the roaches.

  She still didn’t know where the hotel was, but she saw another red glow at the end of the small street. The light at the end of the tunnel . . . one never thought it’d be red. At the beginning of the tunnel, maybe, but at the end, one presumed, the light would be white, bluish white, if it had any hue at all. Red wasn’t transcendence, but return. Red was home. It was a stove and a f
ireplace, a cup of something warm to wrap one’s hands around.

  She headed toward what she now saw was red neon that read PSYCHIC. There was a shop, a window with lace curtains sheer enough to see through. Her nose to the window, she looked inside. A woman slept on a sofa. And another woman with all white hair sat at a table, eating what looked to Gwen like soup. READINGS TEN DOLLARS, the white paint on the window said. Fifi barked at the door.

  “Shhhh,” Gwen said, pulling her on. You couldn’t go to a psychic for just directions. You had to get your fortune read, and that was silly. What sort of person goes to a stranger for answers? Ten dollars to be told she’d die at fifty in a car crash. To be told she’d have three children, or none. To be told she’d be a poet, or not. To be told she’d be with Leo for another year, or twenty, or else for just one more day. Could anyone know these things? Wasn’t there free will? And chance, she couldn’t forget chance. She passed more storefronts, a Laundromat and a car garage. Who was she kidding? These were things she’d pay to know. And Fifi was pulling at the leash, insisting they go back.

  Well, what did she have to lose? Ten bucks was one private dance. And there was more where that came from—at least for a while.

  She knocked on the door and Fifi started barking. It didn’t matter which side of the door they were on, a knock was a knock.

  “Uno momento,” a voice said. Through the lace, she could see the woman take her soup into another room before she shuffled to the door in her slippers. Baby-blue velour.

  Gwen realized she still had the knife in her hand, the man’s knife. She didn’t want the energy the knife had to hold—that man’s energy—to mix with her own, didn’t want the psychic picking up on what wasn’t hers. She dropped it on the sidewalk just in time.

  The woman opened the door. Her eyes were a piercing blue and they met and held Gwen’s with an intensity that, though fitting of a psychic, was disconcerting nonetheless. Gwen resisted the urge to look away. She felt her face flush.

  “Hola,” the psychic said at last, as if breaking character, her face softening. Seeing Fifi she smiled, showing a gold tooth. “Come in.”

  Fifi stopped barking. Her tail was wagging and the woman reached her hand down to pet her. Gwen winced, but Fifi only licked her hand. Gwen had never seen her like this. Not with anyone new.

  Gwen stood stiffly in the doorway. “Am I too late?” She had meant to say is it too late, but it had come out wrong.

  “No, hija,” the woman said, closing the door behind her. “Sit.”

  Gwen settled into a soft, cushioned chair and the woman sat across the table from her. The chair was low, and she could just see over the table, where a worn tarot deck lay on a red silk cloth. She felt like she was all of four years old in a world of grown-ups, determined to hold her own.

  The woman laughed, her voice husky, inviting, and Gwen felt herself relax a little. Her face was dark and kind. Crow’s-feet spread from the sides of her bright eyes like the rays of the sun in a child’s crayon drawing. Bifocals clung to the end of her nose. And when she smiled, that gold front tooth gleamed. Her thick hair hung past her shoulders and shone like polished silver. It reminded Gwen of her grandmother’s hair, when she was at home and wore it down, like a good witch. The woman smelled of spices. Or was it the house? Cloves and cinnamon and cocoa—it was the smell of her grandmother’s kitchen when her grandfather was away on his business trips and Gwen would spend whole afternoons with her, evenings and weekends, baking and dancing, drinking hot chocolate and eating just-made tortillas. It was when her grandmother had seemed most free to be herself.

  The woman on the sofa let out a snore and turned onto her side.

  The psychic shuffled and cut the cards and spread them out. “Pick three.”

  Without hesitating, Gwen pulled three cards from the deck and the psychic turned them over. The Fool dressed like a jester at the edge of a cliff; the Empress with her long blond hair, her flowing dress adorned with pomegranates; and Death, a skeleton on a white horse. The psychic pursed her lips. “Hmmm.” She wore a sweater the blue of shallow seas, and it matched the eyes that peered into Gwen’s again with such quick accuracy Gwen felt pinned by them. Mesmerized. She was afraid to blink. Afraid if she did she’d miss something. The psychic turned over the Fool and Death, leaving just the Empress faceup. She smiled at Gwen, her eyes twinkling as though she saw something new in her, and she rolled her chair around the table. “Give me your hands,” she said, and took Gwen’s hands in hers. Her hands, too, reminded Gwen of Lotta; they were like hers, strong and warm.

  “Cierra los ojos,” the woman said, and closed her eyes. Gwen closed hers and waited. She could hear the ticking of a clock.

  “You’re not happy,” the psychic said. “Too long you’re not happy. You stay like this you make yourself sick. Time you—como se dice—forgive her, let her go. Comprende? Tu mamá.” Gwen could only nod.

  “There’s someone new. Someone coming into your life. Tu hija. Qué linda. La veo—en el mar, en la arena. How do you say—skipping? You’re so happy. You’re laughing.”

  Gwen could see it. The two of them running on the beach, splashing through the shallows. Indian summer, low tide and the yellow light of late afternoon. As if in a photo from the seventies. Just a glimpse and then it was gone.

  Had Leo been there, too? Sitting on the beach, in the background? She’d forgotten to look for him.

  “Who do you see?” Gwen asked. “Just me and her, or is there someone else?”

  As if she hadn’t heard her, the psychic went on. “Your daughter. She change everything, you let her come. She’s here for a reason.”

  Her words took Gwen by surprise, like a hug she hadn’t seen coming. Tears ran down her cheeks. Fat tears. They dripped from her chin. She would have wiped her face but the woman held her hands tighter now. She felt herself choking down sobs, swallowing them like fish that would iridesce in the light, but inside her swam round and round her saltwater, fishbowl belly. Dark sea snakes among the kelp, eels with underbites.

  “How,” she said. It was all she could get out.

  “You have all you need.” The woman let go of one of her hands. She lifted Gwen’s pendant from her chest. Gwen opened her eyes and dried her face. In the woman’s fingers, the Virgin of Guadalupe caught the red light from the window and glowed.

  “She is here. Tu abuela. Behind you.” Gwen turned to look. All she could see was the closed door, painted shiny turquoise. “She used to kiss you, sí? Your eyes and cheeks, lots of kisses, your whole face wet, red with her lipstick.”

  “Sí.”

  “She loved you like that because she couldn’t love your mother. Tú sabes? After she was born, she was afraid she’d kill her. By accident.” The psychic was quiet a minute, as if listening to something she decided to keep to herself.

  “There was no medicine then, nothing to help her.”

  Gwen wasn’t sure what she was talking about. She knew her grandmother had been phobic, afraid to leave the house, that she’d spend the morning and sometimes the entire afternoon in her king-sized bed with her German shepherds on the floor around her. But that was after her mom and her sisters had been in school. That was later.

  “She was scared,” the psychic said. “That she’d crush or drop her.”

  The thought of her grandmother being anything less than warm troubled her—it was the opposite of the woman she remembered.

  “You knew this?” the psychic asked.

  Gwen shook her head. No. She hadn’t known about the lack of physical love Carlotta had shown her mother. She wondered what that would do to a person, that absence of mother love.

  “She say she’s sorry. She want you’re not afraid. Blithe spirit, she say. What means, blithe spirit?”

  “She’d call me that. I was her blithe spirit. Free.”

  The woman on the sofa snored again and jerked herself awake. She sat up and squinted at Gwen. “Lo siento,” she said. She had long dark hair and wore a flowered dress. S
he brushed her hair from her damp forehead and straightened her crumpled dress and walked past Gwen into the back of the house.

  “Mi hija,” the psychic said with a sly smile. She let go of Gwen’s hand, wrapped her sweater tighter over her chest. She stood. “Anything else, anything you want to know?”

  She thought of the cards, the Fool and Death, and why she’d turned them over so quickly. She thought of Leo, and how the psychic hadn’t mentioned him, nor any other man in her life, but he didn’t seem so important now. Whether he was with her or not, she had all she needed.

  “Which way is the Bar Del Prado?” she said.

  “The bar?” She peered at Gwen over her spectacles.

  “The Hotel Suiza. Where I’m staying.”

  “Sí, sí,” the psychic said. She laughed and took her by the arm and walked her outside. They stood in the moonlight, in the balmy wind. “Down this street,” she said, pointing. “Two blocks. Right. One block, is there.”

  Gwen pulled from her pocket the wad of cash. Why was she walking around with all that cash? She’d have left most of it in the hotel room had she been thinking. She took out a twenty and handed it to her.

  “Gracias por todo,” she said, and the psychic took her face in her hands and tilted her forehead toward her and kissed it. She held her face, peered into her eyes, and Gwen felt her heart lurch—they were her grandmother’s hands on her face.

  “Let them go, hija. They worry. You tell them—you okay. You strong. Tell them move on. Is time.” She dropped her hands to her sides and smiled, her gold tooth shining in the moonlight. “Vaya con Dios, hija.”

  Led by Fifi up the road, Gwen turned to see the psychic one more time. She was stooped over on the sidewalk, picking up the knife. She turned it in the red light, closed it, and slid it into her pocket. If anyone could cleanse the aura of that knife, it would be her. She waved at Gwen, and Gwen waved back and smiled.

  She felt like Dorothy leaving the Good Witch and had the sudden urge to skip up the yellow brick road. In spite of the weight of her boots, she felt light as the tapping of Fifi’s toenails, as the moonlight on the pavement. As if she might fill with helium and float into the night sky, tethered to earth by just the leash, by Fifi, her anchor. She wanted to take off all her clothes and dance. To drive to the ocean this second and cartwheel on the sand. However ridiculous this desire was, it belonged to her body, and what could her mind do but laugh? Yes, the very thought made her giddy.