The house was low and sprawling, white stucco with a red tile roof. It didn’t belong to anyone I knew. Cottonwoods, which had probably been planted with the house, had grown up to shade and protect it. The house showed a blank face to the world: small windows, heavy carved doors, walls that were probably a foot thick. A Spanish house. You’d have to get inside to see if its soul, the courtyard, was blazing, flower bright. It was tended with love by someone. This was a lawn where water sprinklers ticked through the night even when there was a water shortage—especially when there was a water shortage. Already daffodils and tulips were in bloom, and the lawn was tender green shoots, too tender for the feet that were stomping them.
It was a balmy day, a summer day before it had even become spring. Carl and Celina’s day, and there they were, the golden couple, standing at the head of a receiving line to greet Albuquerque’s finest. Celina wore a white dress and high-heeled sandals; long lean muscles flexed in her calves. Her jewelry was golden and delicate, and her fine blond hair swung as she turned her head, smiled, and smiled again. At a distance, with the sun behind her, she looked almost transparent, like a glass of fine white wine. She was one of those blond women with a taste for pale colors, and she always made me feel like I was too much; too businesslike at work, too gaudy dressed up. I wished I had worn my white suit—anything but a bright yellow dress with a ruffle that kept slipping down my shoulder. I pulled it up and took a glass of champagne from one of the Hispanic waiters who wandered among the lawyers offering drinks that were invariably accepted. If there’s anyone who drinks more than a lawyer, it is a doctor, and they were there, too, Carl’s tennis-playing buddies from the club. I said my hellos as I made my way down the line, anticipating my reunion with the golden girl. There was a time when a meeting with Celina made me feel like a molded salad quivering on a plate. Today I felt like the bruised lettuce that’s left there when the party’s over.
Carl, smiling just like a man who is running for public office and not looking nearly surprised enough to see me, took my hand. “Neil,” he said, “I’m so glad you could come.”
“De nada,” I replied.
He turned to the little woman standing beside him. “You remember Neil Hamel, don’t you?”
“Neil. Of course I do. How have you been?” She took my hand and I could feel her bones moving, thin as a bird’s.
“Fine, Celina. And you?”
“Very well, thank you.”
At a distance she was perfect; up close one could see fine fissures in the facade, wrinkles around the eyes, worry lines along the upper lip. Maybe things hadn’t always gone well for Celina, but the hairline cracks were part of her appeal. They didn’t make her seem older, just more vulnerable. Celina was not a modern woman.
“That’s a nice dress,” she said, “so, um, comfortable-looking.”
“Hike yours, too.”
“This?” She looked for a minute as if she had forgotten which pale creation she was wearing. “Oh, this. Thank you. Carl told me you started your own firm?”
“Yes, with a partner, Brink Harrison. Hamel and Harrison. We’re out on Lead.”
“I think that’s wonderful, Neil, but weren’t you scared?”
“Scared? Of what?”
“Well, you know; going out on your own. I think that’s very brave.” She gave my hand a little squeeze. “Don’t you, dear?” She looked at Carl.
“Of course, but we would have liked her to stay at Lovell Cruse.”
“I’m sure you would.” Celina smiled sweetly and relinquished my hand. “Have you met the children?” Edward and Emma were playing together nearby. “Children, come say hello to Neil. She used to work for your daddy.” If this were a litmus test, would the paper be turning bright red now, or blue? Far be it from me to judge Celina’s motives. Her eyes never gave a clue. They were pretty at a distance, up close a flat, pale blue. You could look right into them but you couldn’t meet them. You could look right into them and not be struck by anything, not even embarrassment or your own reflection. I’d looked once; I didn’t do it again.
Emma was a bland little thing with pale curls. She ignored me, absorbed in a cabbage-faced doll, but Eduardo stood up. “Hi, Neil,” he said in a small, serious voice, as if he remembered we’d already met. He was as remarkable a child as he had been a baby, a little boy now, but still beautiful, dark, with black shiny hair cut into bangs and large eyes with thick lashes. One of those children who seem to come into the world knowing and sweet and clear. It never lasts, that quality of infant clarity, but it’s lovely while it’s there. If he were mine, I wondered, could I ever have given him up? If I had, would I want him back?
“Hello, Eduardo,” I said. I wanted to take him away somewhere, somewhere he would be safe, but he wasn’t mine to protect. He was Carl and Celina’s. I hoped they’d be up to it. As he turned back to Emma and their game, I heard myself saying stupidly, “He’s gotten so big. The last time I saw him he was just a baby.”
“They do grow fast,” said Celina. “Before you know it, they’re up and gone. But it will be a while yet before Edward leaves us. Nice to see you, Neil. Now, if you will excuse me… ” She turned to greet the next person in line.
“Thanks for coming,” Carl said.
“It’s nothing,” I replied.
Leaving Carl and Celina to their long line of guests, I made my way to the buffet table, which was piled with fresh vegetables and dips, stuffed mushrooms, empanadas, chips and salsa, red chile, green chile, chile con queso, chile con carne. I helped myself to a mushroom stuffed with spinach and cheese. A nice mix of flavors, earthy and bland. But anybody can stuff a mushroom; parties in New Mexico are judged by their chile.
I selected a chip—homemade from blue corn tortillas, a nice touch—dipped it into the red chile, slipped it into my mouth. All quiet at first; the best chile is slow to light. But then my tongue ignited, flames licked my throat. There was the burn, the flare, the sudden clarity of vision. Delicious. I tried the green; even hotter, even better. Somebody knew their chile and they had a nice touch with flowers, too. The table was decorated with vases of daffodils from the garden and irises from somewhere else.
A man with his face buried in an armload of pink tulips walked up and placed them in a vase. The gardener, I assumed. He was dressed like the waiters in an embroidered white shirt, but there was a difference: he was white, too, the only Anglo I’d seen tending this party, about six feet tall and blond, with a bovine, soft-around-the-edges quality. There may have been muscle there once, but it was turning to flab. The shirt seemed too juvenile and too small for him; it belonged on someone younger, darker, firmer. His hair was in a long straggly ponytail that had been a mark of youthful rebellion once but was now a sign of middle age. He looked like a man who would prefer to live with his nose in the flowers, although he might fight for his right to keep it there.
“It’s too early for irises, isn’t it?” I asked him.
“Hothouse,” he replied disdainfully. “The man wanted irises and he got ’em, but I told him the only real irises are the wild ones that bloom in the mountains in late May and early June.”
“Hamilton Mesa?”
“You been there? Unforgettable ain’t it? God’s country.” He rearranged the tulips and went back for more.
The music was nice, too. No seedy, leering mariachi band with white shirts opening over fat bellies. The band was a group of slender high-cheekboned boys who played music from the Andes with a sweet, reedy flute and percussion. Rather being a sparrow than a snail, I plucked a tulip from a vase and held it against my dress. A little gaudy, but that was okay; all the other professionals were decked out as cowboys and Indians. Concha belts, tooled boots, cowboy hats, turquoise and silver—it would be a costume elsewhere, it’s a uniform here. But among the ruffles and fringe there’s usually someone who stands out. Carl and Celina did, of course, in white. I expected them to. But someone else attracted my attention, an older man, tall, thin, prosperous, the kind of m
an who lived in the Heights, not the barrio, who drove a car, not a pickup. The kind of man I should learn to appreciate.
He was wearing a Guayabera shirt; nothing particularly unusual about that. What was unusual was his elegant bearing, the way he moved through the crowd with a slight stoop, as if he was accustomed to looking down. He was balding, but his head was so well shaped, it didn’t make him less attractive. There was a snowy fringe of hair left, and a white mustache.
I watched him make his way around the party, looking on with amused curiosity, moving slowly, never letting anyone break his pace, a sleek greyhound surrounded by mutts. He must have been devastating when he was younger, I thought, but on the other hand, maybe he had grown into his appeal. Everyone has an age at which they excel. He looked as if he were peaking now at fifty-five or sixty, but that could have been happening for one year or twenty. Whatever, he had the aura of a man well pleased with himself, and if he felt that way, shouldn’t I? I followed him as he circled the party, twirling the tulip in my hand. I think I peaked at twenty-eight, but there are moments when I can recapture the feeling.
He stopped beside a waiter and I walked up and placed my empty glass on the tray. The waiter grinned and motioned for me to take another.
“No.” I laughed. “Bastante.”
The older man turned and looked at me then, perhaps for the first time, perhaps not. I had the feeling he had already observed and evaluated everyone at the party and had taken no particular notice of me. Nevertheless, I was a woman in a yellow dress standing less than three feet away. His eyes were large and green, and he appraised me coolly. He had an interesting face, a fine bone structure, lights that flickered behind his eyes.
“Nice party,” I said.
“Yes.”
“If you like parties, that is.”
“I don’t, particularly.”
“Then why are you here?”
He smiled slowly, showing perfect white teeth. “Because I am the host. Carl Roberts is married to my daughter.”
I should have known it. He was as sleek and elegant as Celina was, but they moved differently. He was a greyhound who chose not to run; she was a filly who wanted to but was afraid, and the repressed speed came out as nerves.
“Peter Esterbrook,” I said, speaking more to myself than to him.
“Yes.” The unspoken question was, and who are you? But he didn’t raise it, so I did.
“I’m Neil Hamel,” I offered.
“Neil Hamel. Always a pleasure to meet an attractive woman.” His eyes got greener as they focused on me. “Didn’t you work for my son-in-law?”
“I used to work with Carl but I have my own office now. Hamel and Harrison, out on Lead.”
“It’s better to be on your own if one can manage it.”
“I can. And what do you do?”
“I have various interests here and in Mexico.”
“Mexico. Do you spend much time there?”
“A fair amount. I travel a great deal. I was in Mexico the week before last, then at the beginning of this week I was in Dallas for the Western Art Auction. I bought a small oil. I had some business in Houston on Wednesday and Thursday and I got back here Friday, which didn’t leave me a great deal of time to organize this party.”
Time enough for his secretary to call the caterer, the florist, the band. “I lived in Mexico once. I loved it.”
“Once? You talk as if your life is behind you. Surely you’re much too young for your life to be in the past.”
“Not that young,” I said.
“But so much younger than I, Miss Hamel and I feel that I have barely tapped the richness of life. Every moment is a golden opportunity. There is no ‘once’ for me, only the here and now as it becomes the future. I have no longing for the past. Do you?”
“Sometimes,” I admitted.
“Have you been to Mexico recently?” he asked, crossing his arms and tapping his elbows with restless fingers. His hands were as elegant as the rest of him, but less in control; they moved to their own erratic beat.
“I was there this week.”
“And you still love it?”
“Yes.”
“Why, may I ask?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I like the street life, the colors, the flowers, the intensity. The old people, and of course the children. The children are what make Mexico.”
“They are all children in Mexico, Miss Hamel. You must never forget that. They are charming, but they are children. Treat them as adults and you will be sadly disappointed.”
So he had an arrogance to equal his looks. Some people might have ignored it in deference to the looks. “That’s an elitist gringo attitude,” I snapped. “If you made an effort to meet them on their own terms, you might be pleasantly surprised.”
“Are you saying I should become childlike?” His expression of amused superiority was beginning to look too perfect, as though he practiced it mornings in the bathroom mirror.
“What’s wrong with that? Children have fun. They enjoy life.”
“Maybe, but they have accidents.” He was staring at a nasty scrape on my elbow that the makeup didn’t conceal so well here under New Mexico’s X-ray sun.
“So?” I said with a cavalier shrug that sent the ruffle slipping down my shoulder again.
“You should be more careful,” he replied. His fingers, cold as ice, brushed my shoulder as he reached over and lifted the ruffle back up.
“There,” he said, “that’s better. It was a pleasure meeting you, Miss Hamel.”
“El gusto es mío,” I replied.
Feeling every bruise, like an apple that has fallen from the tree and rolled and bumped across the ground, I watched him make his way through the crowd. When he was out of sight, I made my way into his house. I could always say I wanted to see the Western painting if anybody asked. The carved double door, about a foot thick, opened reluctantly onto a dark hallway, at the end of which was the central courtyard. I couldn’t tell from here if it was blazing, flower bright. There was a table in the hallway and, above it, a small, very small, spotlighted painting: a couple of dusty cowboys, a lot of blue sky, a large gilt frame. I lay my tulip on the table—poor thing, already thirsting for water—and went into the living room.
Perhaps the interior decorator had done time in the Prado. The style was Spanish gloom. Windows and furniture were shrouded in red velvet and the ceiling was fifteen feet high, barred by dark beams. The fireplace was so big you could walk into it—if you wanted to—and a pair of crossed spears hung over the mantel. Don Quixote himself was standing in the corner, his shield at his side, and when I touched him, his metal bones rattled. I could understand why Celina always wore white and pink. In a room like this you didn’t feel comfortable in bright yellow.
Heavy drapes kept the party sounds out but magnified sounds within the house. I heard a fountain tinkling in the patio, and then approaching footsteps. I stepped behind the doorway and waited.
The footsteps belonged to Carl. Peering around the corner, I found myself whispering theatrically, “Psst. Carl, I need to talk to you.”
It’s a mistake to interrupt a candidate who has just been to the bathroom and hasn’t put his public face back on. I startled him; his guard was down, his look was worried. “Neil,” he said softly, not even faking a smile, just looking at me with surprise and a kind of sad longing. It was upsetting to see Carl like that, like coming across someone with their clothes off but their shoes still on. Not naked exactly—exposed.
“It can wait,” I said.
“No, it’s all right,” he replied, looking at his watch, mentally buttoning up again, a candidate in a candidate’s suit. “What is it?”
“Come in here.” I motioned him into the living room, an appropriately gloomy setting for what I had to say.
We stood behind one of the sofas, upholstered in red velvet but hard as a pew to sit on. I told him first that someone had been in my apartment. He didn’t believe it and he didn’t even pretend
that he did.
“Are you sure, Neil? I mean was anything taken?” Ho hum, was his attitude.
“I don’t have much at home to steal, but something was taken from my office—my copy of your precious file. When I went in in the morning, it was gone.” That got his attention.
“Are you positive?”
“I know where I put things.”
“Thank God I kept a copy.” Did I hear a “I’m sorry your office was broken into” or “I hope nothing was damaged”?
“That’s not all. Some goon in a souped-up truck tried to run me down in Bailey’s parking lot that night and came very close to succeeding.” I showed him the scrapes and bruises. That got a reaction from him. Physical evidence usually did.
“That’s terrible, Nellie, and it’s all my fault.”
I didn’t deny it. “My name is Neil.”
“I’m sorry. Neil.”
“You’re not the only person out there who calls me Nellie. Did you know that?”
He was absentmindedly running his hand along the back of the sofa, against the nap, as if he were ruffling a cat’s fur. “I didn’t, but it doesn’t surprise me that men are interested in you. I mean, you are an attractive woman. I’ve always thought so. And you look great in that dress, by the way. Yellow’s a good color on you.” Familiar he was in the uses of praise.
“I don’t think whoever is interested in me is interested in my looks. It’s something else, something somebody thinks I know.”
“What could that be?”
“You tell me.”
Carl was struggling in the watery depths; the signs washed quickly and subtly across his face. What I saw there was doubt, mistrust, and then the healthy sun-dappled sparkle of opportunism.
“I don’t know, but there’s a way you could find out… I hesitate to even suggest this.” His hand paused on the back of the red sofa.
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