Gold Fame Citrus

by Claire Vaye Watkins

  She took Ray’s hand as though it were an egg. “You were right,” she said, “about Levi. About the primer. There aren’t any new animals out there. No spontaneous rivers or wandering trees. Probably no warheads pointed at us, no Operation Glassjaw. I wanted there to be—I wanted to be important. I wanted all day, every day, especially with you gone. Especially for Ig. But there isn’t. There just isn’t.”

  Ray looked at her in their old way, the trembling swell that meant all the ways and reasons he loved her were at that instant rising in him. They kissed: horse and wagon and a new wondrous not knowing which was which, another swell, a swan dive, a splash of warmth from her flush cheeks to her throat and to the filling pools of her eyes. She pulled him to her, guided him into her, present, untentative, nothing abstract about it. Luz kept her eyes open, whispered, “It’s you, is it you?” Ray said, “It is,” more certain than he had been in a long time. Neither came, nor pretended to. They simply uncoupled after a time and lay together, wet with each other’s sweat.

  Luz said, “Stay here, next to me.” He did, though he was somewhere else, too. “What is it, Ray?”

  “Nothing. I can’t say. Nothing.”

  “You can. It’s us. Only us.”

  Ray put his hand in her hair. He kissed her forehead and saw that she was right.

  “I just . . . I don’t know how to say this. I just have this feeling like she knows . . .”

  “Who knows?”

  “We shouldn’t have done it, Luz. We shouldn’t have taken her.” In his mind, beneath the shame of his approaching confession and the relief it promised, he marveled at all the ways he was still capable of letting Luz down. But he went on. He said, “I’m afraid of her, I think. Of Ig. There’s something . . . odd about her.”

  He imagined her disappointment would be an audible thing, barely, like the sound of pigeons flying low through an open empty promenade, the hiss of sea foam dying at high tide, the scrapes of Sal’s carving tools against ancient soapstone, the rasp of salty bleached sand beneath a board strapped to a healer’s feet. He closed his eyes and waited for Luz to give up on him. This newly awakened Luz, her severe eyes always threatening to cry, could retreat into herself whenever she wanted.

  But she did not retreat. “I know,” she said. “I’ve seen it. We’ll go. It will be better when we go. We’ll get her someplace stable.”

  Ray nodded. “Someplace with walls and water.”

  “Water walls.”

  “Waterfalls.”

  “Rainbows in the mist.”

  “Misty mornings.”

  “Misty mountains.”

  “Mountain streams.”

  “Marshes.”

  “Creeks and eddies.”

  “Rivers and inlets.”

  “Lagoons.”

  “New moons.”

  “No sand.”

  “No sand.”

  “Estuaries.”

  “Where, Ray?”

  “What about Wisconsin?”

  “Yes. Yes, Wisconsin.”

  “You have to tell him.”

  The ripple took the colony to a road, and that road led them to a ghostly horseshoe of crumbling whitewashed adobe. At the center of the square stood three dead salt cedars, their trunks and low-hanging limbs papered in playbills bleached to blank, except the buried layers, which read NOW PLAYING AT MARLA BENOIT’S AMARGOSA OPERA HOUSE.

  The lock on the entrance had been popped off. In the lightless lobby of the theater Luz opened a door marked MADEMOISELLES, thinking that to use a toilet might be nice, before she got on with this unpleasantness. But it seemed a bag of dry cement had exploded inside the ladies’ room. Shards of mirror rivered the floor. The far wall yawned where a sink had been. The toilet lay on its side, cracked in half. Similar scene in the men’s room, so she went back outside to squat.

  In the theater itself it was very dark, and she had to stand for some time before her sun-clenched eyes accepted the rows of red velvet seats crusted with dust, veins of wires overhead reaching for a long-gone chandelier and Levi sitting on the apron of the bare stage. The curtain crumpled behind him, fallen its final fall. A toothless organ waited in the wing at stage left. Luz did not feel afraid, as she’d thought she might.

  Levi said, “I remember this place. I saw a documentary about it in school. Marla Benoit moved here from Paris, married a miner. They were on their way to Goldfield and got a flat tire here. He got a job in the talc mines. She convinced the Borax Works to build her an opera house. People came to see her, later, but for a long time she danced alone every night. She painted herself an audience so she’d always sell out.”

  He nodded to the close, filthy walls. It was true, an audience had been painted there and remained beneath the grime, crowded into boxes and balconies, aficionados in their finery, pearly opera glasses resting on the breasts of the ladies, some teeth still relatively bright. A bishop, captured in midwhisper, leaning in to another clergyman who would never hear the secret opinion of his holiness, his snide disapproval or breathless admiration. A madame with a starched ruff and a cat on her lap, both cat and mistress ever alert to the production at hand, the cat’s tail ever curled in contentment. In the rear balcony sat a king and queen, eternal patrons, never to age or philander or remove their pale hands from the arms of their chairs. A swarthy gentleman in emerald bloomers, leading a lace-shrouded señora by the hand. Running late perhaps, as they always were, but now forever stranded in the entryway without any usher to soothe their embarrassment. (“Forgive our Luz,” her agent said into her earpiece, “she was on island time.”) The Spanish couple’s late arrival surely disturbed two milk-skinned women, their paper fans paused. Behind them a man with a sly thin mustache, a playbill in his hand, eternally considering whether to adjust the gold chain of one maid’s necklace, never to determine whether she would be scandalized by the flirtation or welcome it. A juggler from the Orient, pins aloft, his bare chest gleaming with effort. A lone lord in a cobalt vest, his hand to his beard, ignoring the elderly noblewomen murmuring at his elbow. His eyes closed, he listens—only listens—to the sighs of the stage below, made of pine hauled from Illinois by twenty-mule team, to the creaks of the chairs upholstered in devoré velvet sailed from New York to San Francisco around the finger of Patagonia, then sewed by Marla Benoit, by lamplight, she herself listening for the return of her whiskey-sick husband or word of a mine collapse, never uncertain which she might prefer. Eyes closed, the listening lord hears the tinny kiss of the prima ballerina assoluta’s needle to its primitive thimble, both procured by trade from a Shoshone weaving woman. He hears Marla Benoit load mesquite into the woodstove in winter, the antelope-leather soles of her pointe shoes whispering across the stage in rehearsal, her ravenous moaning from beneath the petite president of the Borax Works. Then, he hears nothing for a very long time, save for a family of kangaroo rats nesting in the walls, Mojav looters disemboweling the building of its copper pipes and chandelier, an overheated Bureau of Conservation survey team and then, finally, the boyhood memories of a cuckolded dowser.

  “She was mad, probably,” said Levi. “The documentary had one recording of her performance and in it she played a doll—a jewelry box ballerina, and I thought she was one come to life. Freaky makeup and these jerky movements. It scared the hell out of me. I wonder what happened to her.”

  How sad he was, all of a sudden, how hunched and timid, how he leaned on his own idea of himself. The theatergoers all saw it, through their pearl-embellished binoculars or with their own unaided eyes. The gossiping priest and the decorous king and queen, the busty ladies and their randy suitor, the tardy couple from far away, even the Oriental juggler saw it, distracted as he was—even the listening lord with his eyes closed. How could Luz have missed it?

  “I need to tell you something,” she said. Luz approached the apron and sat beside a coffee can footlight. “It’s Ray and me. I
wanted you to know that. It’s not that I don’t care about you . . .”

  “I get it,” said Levi, his hand waving languid in the musty air. “You love me but you love him more. It’s all so damn adult.”

  “Yes,” she allowed. “I do care about you, deeply—”

  A beaky scrape came from the rear of the theater as its doors were pried wide open. Some colony scavengers wandered in, seeking shade. Luz watched them and they her. She would have liked Ray to be there with her, but he was unwelcome just about everywhere now.

  “You care about me,” Levi prompted. “Deeply.”

  Luz dropped her voice. “Yes. And there’s—there’s something else.”

  More people filed into the unlit theater. Luz looked to Levi to dismiss them, but he waved them down the aisle. Dallas and Cass were among them. Nico, too. “Have a seat,” Levi said. “Welcome to dress rehearsals at the Lovelorn Theater. Luz was just practicing her heartbreaker monologue. You were right,” he told her. “You’re not very good at this. Very wooden, if I may offer a note.”

  Luz looked at her lap. “Should we talk later?” she whispered.

  “Why? We have no secrets here. Come,” he called to the people in the back. “Plenty of room up front. Up,” he said to Luz. He popped up, some mystic vim animating him all of a sudden. “Stand up! You’re collapsing your diaphragm. Up, up!”

  Luz stood. There were more people in the audience than she thought.

  Levi waited until their velvet-covered chairs stopped creaking. “Now, again, with the whole body. Take it from, ‘There’s something else.’”

  “There’s something else,” Luz said, a reflex. “I—I can’t go through with it. The plan. I can’t make her into a symbol. I thought I could—I wanted to be able to—but I can’t.”

  “She can’t!” he called to the back wall.

  “I have to think about what’s best for Ig,” she whispered.

  “What’s that? You must project.”

  “Levi,” she said, reaching for him.

  “Never turn your back to the audience,” he said, pointing her shoulders forward. “Very basic.”

  Luz hesitated.

  “Go on,” he said. “The show must go on.”

  She said nothing.

  Levi said, “This affects all of them. They have a right to hear you say it. Just as I do.”

  “I have to think about what’s best for Ig,” she said.

  “What’s best for her.” He smiled. “The plan is what’s best for her.” The others nodded. “What’s best for us is best for her.”

  “It’s just—all the exposure, Levi. It scares me.”

  Levi took her face and held it. “Of course it does, Luz. Everything worth doing is done in the shadow of death.”

  Someone moaned in assent.

  “But I’ll be right beside you,” he said, squeezing. “‘Do not fear, for I am with you.’ ‘I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.’”

  Luz had heard these lines before. “‘What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.’”

  He flung her free. “Exactly! Think about what brought you here, about all that was sacrificed so you would come to this place at this moment!”

  Luz did. She saw Ray’s flat feet carrying him down the road, his prophet eyes watering above the cobalt scarf, the bloated bighorn floating in that golden pool of poison. She saw her mother submerged beneath gray waves at Point Dume, her pretty dress aswirl in the current. Perhaps it had all been arranged with a purpose in mind. Perhaps the prairie dog had marched through the starlet’s front door intending to be their chaperone and spirit guide. She wanted to believe in these things still. To believe in cause and purpose.

  “Levi,” Luz said, “she’s my daughter.” She had never called Ig this, and hoped it did not sound so false as it felt.

  “Your daughter?” Levi wheeled away, bewildered. “She belongs to all of us.”

  The crowd agreed.

  “She is a child of the dune sea!”

  Luz stood still while the crowd erupted. This seemed somehow her stage direction. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I won’t allow it.”

  The two were silent for a moment, then Levi stepped downstage. “Here is where I ask what happened to you. When did you become so possessive? Were you always this way? Was I blind to it? Have I led us down a wayward path?”

  No, said the crowd. No.

  “You used to be so . . .” He sighed. “Open.”

  “No I didn’t,” she said. “I never was.”

  She wanted him to be right, even still. She wanted to be the person he once mistook her for: open and purposeful all at once. But she was meager, shut. That was, after all this supposed transformation, all this movement and light, her rotten way.

  “Levi, even if we did it, it wouldn’t work.” The crowd mumbled its disagreement. “It won’t,” Luz said to them. “The range will be on us any day now. You all know that. No video will stop that. No campaign. No one will care about me—a Mojav—a kidnapper. It won’t stop anything.” She turned back to Levi. “You found me and Ig. You know that no one else was coming for us. No one cares about Baby Dunn.”

  “Did I ever tell you how we found you?” he said.

  “Yes,” she said, “the bighorn.”

  “You were all but dead. Dehydrated, hyperthermic, full-blown sunstroke. Completely unresponsive. But Ig? Ig was wide awake. Conscious. Alert. Calm. She was taking everything in. Watching you go. She was at home there, witnessing.”

  Luz shook her head.

  “You see?” he asked his audience. “You see how clarity can melt into suspicion? Without mindfulness? Without vigilance? You used to be among us, Luz. You were once with us, of us.” He was using her name but no longer addressing her. “But something has contaminated you. Some vexation, some poisonous, nihilistic seed. I’ve seen all this, in the sweat lodge and beyond. So clearly. The range, your withdrawal into the self, allowing harm to befall our Ig. They’re all connected.”

  The crowd sat rapt.

  “My loves, there are contaminants among us. We have allowed negativity to propagate, a toxic yeast rising in our midst, and we have done nothing. I count myself among the complacent. But no more! The time has come to purge ourselves of these toxicities, cleanse our community of doubt, hesitation, misgiving, skepticism. Reinvigorate our cause from within and without!”

  Yes! many said.

  “We all want to know, ‘What next?’ First let us purify our intent. Reinvigorate our purpose. Each of us must rid our spirits of their innermost burdens and transgressions. We must expel the poison from our singular body. Do this and the path will be made plain. Do this and we will endure. We will thrive. Forever and ever. We will meet this range and meet our fate there!”

  Luz tried to flee, but there were only walls at the wings. She turned around and tried to find an opening in the curtain behind her. Feeling their eyes on her, hearing their snickers and jeers, she clawed at the velvet. She could not find the opening. Finally she turned, faced them, stepped off the apron and pushed herself up the aisle and out the open door.

  Patient had always wondered what it felt like—says all men wonder. Considers occasional homicidal impulses “fundamental component of masculine socialization.” Says his companion [alias “Nico”] had done it—in the war—and Nico knew patient had not—says “I knew what he thought of me.” Predominant motivation for initial attack was curiosity, he says—specifically regarding the physical sensation—“new sensory data interested me.” Ask what kind of data: “in this case crushing a skull, I suppose.” Patient didn’t know potential victim at time—saw “only a Mojav”—“an empty bladder I had no interest in filling.” Attributes outburst partly to environment—notes that “the desert at night has no restraints.” Patient admits wanting to kill there—thought he in fact had, for a time. Ask what he remembers
from attack itself: “the give of the spade”—borrowed from another community member—says his immediate thought was “must remember to return this to him.” Patient describes lack of profound metamorphosis—disappointed by this, initially—but says soon realized that disappointment in itself was surprising—asks when was the last time I had been truly surprised by my life. Patient also recalls hand tingling—says he was relieved—“one less thing I had to worry about.” Ask what else he worried about: other group members—“they wanted all I had.” Patient says person in his position must never underestimate anyone—says other men “thought they could do what I did.” Ask what: patient ignores—says he was “holding them off” but efforts had a “cost”—says everything does. Ask what cost: patient ignores. Ask if he means former lover, “Dallas”—was she motivation for arson incident, later? Patient denies this—says he didn’t do it for her—not initial attack and not arson incident. Admits he told Dallas fire was part of larger plan—but plan did not occur to him until after fire—when she inquired about his motives. Says dune sea “offered the solution” at that time—patient “only had to listen.” Ask why “solution” resonated with him: it would “solve everything” and “give [Dallas] something the old man couldn’t”—admits to arson but maintains he had no larger plan—“I was hurting”—says women at camp were “losing their goddamn minds.” Ask if he means Dallas or “Luz”: both—“also Ray.” Says “everything I hated most in the world was in there”—“all my troubles inside, copulating”—patient says he hated bus itself—the vehicle—from before, when he and Dallas had resided there—“before I was called away.” Ask what called him away—stillborn? Patient denies—says he understood Dallas’s need for space—compares to Luz’s termination of affair—considers Luz cruel, selfish—“piecemeal and secretive”—“vindictive back and forth.” Says she “took more” from him. Ask what she took, his plan, the child “Ig”? Patient says question is too literal. Says we’ve been over this—expresses frustration—says he was lost—“completely alone”—“rejected by two women I loved deeply”—forced to watch them with other men—“my own people”—says he began to fear for his status in community—describes other men in group as “power-thirsty”—was around this time he began to fear dune sea. Ask what he feared: expressed frustration—“I’ve told you all this”—wondered if dune had “betrayed” him—says others said it had. Ask if this motivated arson, subsequent violence? Patient denies—reiterates he had no plan at time of arson—“except taking a two-by-four from the bonfire and holding it beneath the snout of the bus until the fire took in the chassis”—says he had had visions of “the monster box of the bus wrapped in fire”—“a burp of flame when [the fire] found a sludge of fuel in the bottom of the old gas tank.” Patient says he is tired of repeating himself—says he has always been open with me—says he is “not one of those men who pretends he never learned to express his inner world [ . . . ] because he’s too lazy to deal with his shit”—“I do the work”—says he is “not a cowboy”—says he is sensitive now “and was sensitive then.” Asks why I find bus incident significant—why do I keep coming back to it?—says he knows what I am trying to do—insists arson “had nothing to do with” subsequent incidents—“Nothing to do with what happened to them, later”—says he has been honest with me—says it is my turn to be honest with him—“Why do you keep asking after plans and patterns?”—wants to know why am I convinced acts were premeditated. Ask patient what he thinks: expresses frustration—“classic psycho-bullshit smoke and mirrors”—“the emperor wears no clothes!” Eventually, patient asks if I really want to know what he thinks—says first “they told you to watch out for me”—“I’m brilliant”—“a manipulator.” Then says I have a deeper motivation—says arson was “a crime of passion”—says I need him “incapable of the intensity and nakedness that phrase suggests.” Patient says I am afraid he feels more than I do. Ask like what: “more sensations”—“more deeply”—“more often.” Says I am starting to realize that I am “the one who is incapable of a crime of passion”—says I have never felt true passion—speculates that I “have doubted the very concept of passion” until meeting him—says I am beginning to realize that there are “subterranean emotional spheres” to which I will “never tunnel”—patient says I have “lived grayly”—“rounding out the fat belly of the bell curve”—says I am starting to realize—“truly grasp”—that “in the not too distant future [my] heart will stop its plugging”—it will be “dead inside [me]” and I “have not once used it.” Repeatedly denies premeditation—says he had “no plan but pain”—says he “just wanted them to burn.”