The Other Side of Death

by Judith Van GIeson

  “That’s a little misleading, don’t you think?” He pointed to a notice for a “freeing up” weekend workshop that cost $250.

  “I guess you’ve got to find some way to make a living in Santa Fe,” I replied. “I understand who gives these things, but who pays to go to them?”

  “There are a lot of rich people here.”

  “A number of poor ones, too.”

  “There’s a big difference between them. Here’s one where you might get something for your money, anyway, a raffle with a chance to win a Mustang. One out of fifty—that’s not too terrible. A new car or enlightenment, what’ll it be?”

  “I could use a new car myself.”

  “Maybe you need a car before you can become enlightened.”

  “Maybe my car needs to be enlightened.”

  The woman stepped out of the phone booth. “The phone has just been freed up,” I said.

  “That’ll be $250,” he replied.

  I laughed. “Go ahead, you first,” he told me.

  “If you insist,” I said.

  I called the Kid and was happy to find him at home and awake. In the background Mexican music played loudly, the way he liked it.

  “Kid,” I said. “I’m in Santa Fe. My car broke down last night so I came into town with my friend Lonnie and spent the night at her place. I think it’s the carburetor.”

  “Don’t worry, Chiquita, I fix it. It take two, three days maybe to get the parts.”

  “I’ll have it towed to your shop tomorrow, but in the meantime I’m going to need a car.”

  “I pick you up if you want, take you to work in the morning.”

  “Thanks, Kid. Maybe I should just rent one up here. I’m going to need one to get around during the day anyway.”

  “Okay. See you later?”

  “Yup.”

  Before I freed up the phone booth for the cowboy sculptor, I tried Lonnie’s number. If anyone heard it ringing, they didn’t let me know.

  The Inn at Loreto has a rental-car booth in the lobby, and in their parking lot, which they charge to get into in the tourist season, are a number of Fords from the Rich Ford Agency, the rental car of choice in northern New Mexico. The one they gave me had an automatic transmission, air conditioning and a working radio. I didn’t need the air conditioning yet, but you always need a radio. It was tuned to the golden oldie station, and “Bony Moronie” was the first song to come out of the speakers. I wouldn’t want to get any older than that. I fastened my seat belt and adjusted the rearview mirror and the one on the side that said OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR.

  I crossed town on Alameda, went by Lonnie’s and took a look down her long, empty driveway. If she’d returned, she’d gone out again. The old part of Santa Fe, east and west, has the kind of closed, turned-inward feeling of a desert city, walled to keep the infidel out, and I felt like one here: a cynic, a nonbeliever, uninterested in raising consciousness or money. I was glad to get out of the narrow streets and onto Cerrillos, the fast-food strip that could be Anywhere, U.S.A. Here I felt at home. I watched for the ARRIBA TACOS sign with flames licking at the red letters; they have the best drive-in sopapillas in America. I pulled up at the window and bought two with meat to save for dinner.

  I continued on Cerrillos till I reached the interstate, then turned south into the wide open spaces, home of the big thoughts, but the thoughts I had today were not major. I worried about my car, wondered where Lonnie had gone, watched the clouds as they formed in the sky. There were some lenticulars—the falcons of the cloud world—hanging on over Ortiz Mountain. Lenticular means lens shaped, but these clouds, formed by air breaking over mountains, have a sinuous elegance that looks more like wings than lenses to me. Higher up, a jet had left a squiggly trail in the sky of deep-water blue, so blue that when I got to the top of La Bajada, I wanted to dive in. Climbing that hill, I got stuck behind a truck spewing a trail of black exhaust from its diesels. Exhaust is at its ugliest where the air is the clearest.

  I stepped on the gas, pulled into the passing lane. There was a pause and I had to wait for the automatic passing gear to click in. In high school we called a car like this a legger, poky as a dog that stops, lifts its leg and pees at every tree. The hesitation was annoying, but there were lots of junkers on the road and I was able to do my share of passing between La Bajada and Bernalillo. A lot of the cars I overtook had orange polyester Garfields hanging on the window by their suction paws, grinning stupidly at me. After Santo Domingo Pueblo I came upon Budaghers, an exit leading nowhere that the highway department authorized because someday somebody’s rich developer relative might want to build there. By the time I got to Bernalillo I had entered billboard country. There was a new one advertising North America’s biggest Indian powwow and an old one with a drive-in-movie-size picture of Ron Bell, Attorney. “I sue drunk drivers,” Ron says, next to a glass with a red line through it. In another week you start seeing pilgrims alongside the highway as they hike to the Santuario de Chimayo eighty miles north, where, on Good Friday, people from all over northern New Mexico give thanks for their blessings and apologize for their sins. They call them pilgrims here, but I prefer the Spanish word, peregrinos.

  At Montgomery I got off I-25 and went home to La Vista to face a refrigerator that was even emptier than Lonnie’s. There were two six-packs of Tecate and a couple of limes on the shelves. I added the sopapillas. The Kid wasn’t expected till dinnertime and I hadn’t had any sleep that I could remember so I lay down on the bed. Fran Lebowitz said that sleep is death without the responsibility, and naps are sleep without the responsibility. I was just about to leave responsibility behind when the phone rang.

  “Yeah,” I answered.

  It was a guy with a pleading, pathetic voice who wanted to lick somebody’s pussy. “Please,” he begged.

  “Fuck you,” I said.

  I hung up, then reconsidered, took the phone off the hook and left it that way. It went through a sixty-second buzz to tell me it was off the hook, but I already knew that. When the buzzing stopped, I slept the deep sleep of the irresponsible until the Kid pounded on the door.

  It didn’t feel like the beginning of spring anymore, but it’s always good to see the Kid. We don’t see each other enough for things to get stale—that’s the way we like it. I served him a cold Tecate with lime and salt and heated the sopapillas in the oven; I don’t have a microwave. My sopapilla was all I had expected: a light crust, chunks of potato and meat, shreds of tomato and lettuce, sauce that was almost hot enough to cry for. The Kid took a bite and made a face.

  “Chiquita, where did you get these?”

  “Santa Fe. Why?”

  “There’s something wrong with mine, the meat feels funny like a caracol or something.”

  “Let me see.” I took a bite. It had the hot taste of the sauce, but the texture was, just like he said, slimy as a snail. It was something that has the taste of whatever you put it in, but a texture all its own. “Tofu,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Something they eat in Santa Fe. They make it from soybeans; it’s supposed to be good for you.”

  “Why they do that to beans?”

  “Who knows? Arriba Tacos is serving vegetarian food now. They must have put this one in by mistake. I’ll trade with you, Kid, I can eat tofu if it’s disguised well enough.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  The Kid slept over and we made cautious love. In the morning he went to the shop and I drove the rental car to my office on Lead in a frame and stucco building that not too long ago was somebody’s house, HAMEL AND HARRISON, LAW OFFICES, the sign says, me and my partner Brinkley Harrison. Brink and my secretary, Anna, eating their breakfast at Anna’s desk, had noticed me pull into the driveway in the white Rich Ford.

  “New car?” asked Brink, blinking his eyes and raising his eyebrows, gestures he makes so often it’s obvious he isn’t worried about getting lines in his face. What’s one more wrinkle in an unmade bed? Brink w
as dressed for failure in a baggy-around-the-knees gray suit, a shirt that could be white again if someone threw a little bleach at it and a tie with last night’s dinner on it. As part of a role change taking place right now men are learning to cook, tidy up after themselves and keep their clothes clean. There was a time when it would have been said that Brink needed a woman to take care of him. I’d say he needed himself, but what I thought wasn’t news to Brink.

  Anna had dressed for spring in a black leather miniskirt, black pantyhose with arrows pointing to her ankles, high-heeled black shoes, blood red fingernails. They were eating Egg McMuffins from McDonald’s with green chile on the side.

  “Brink, if I were buying a new car would I buy a white Ford with an automatic transmission?” I asked.

  “I’d buy a red Trans Am if it was me,” said Anna.

  “Whose car is that and where is yours?” asked Brink, who liked to consider my life his.

  “The car belongs to Dollar Rental. Mine is in Dolendo waiting to be towed back here. I think it needs a new carburetor.”

  “Uh-oh.” Brink looked worried.

  “When did you get home?” asked Anna.

  “Yesterday.”

  “What have you been up to since then?”

  “Sleeping. Why?” This was a lot of curiosity for Anna, who took no interest in my life at all.

  “Your phone’s off the hook.”

  “Oh, God, I forgot. No wonder I slept so well.”

  “Tim Malone’s been trying to get in touch with you. It’s important, he says.” She handed me a pink slip that said, “Call Tim M. ASAP.”

  “Who’s that?” Brink’s eyebrows went up again. “A client?”

  “A friend of mine from San Miguel, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Brink. “Him.”

  “I heard a new lawyer joke this weekend,” said Anna, who collected them. “What’s brown and tan and looks good on a lawyer?”

  “An attaché case?” asked Brink, who should have known better.

  “A pit bull,” she said.

  “Ha, ha,” I replied, going into my office and shutting the door. I called Tim and got a recorded message that said, “This is the Malone answering machine, you know what to do.”

  “This is Neil. I’m at the office. You’ve got the number.”

  It was a morning, like most mornings at Hamel and Harrison, filled with events that neither alter nor illuminate the times: real estate closings, divorces. There are lawyers in large “prestigious” firms who specialize in these areas, but why anybody would do that beats me. At noon I had a lunch date with a client and drove across town to André’s. I guess they served nouvelle cuisine because the cilantro chicken with tomatillos was delicious and twenty minutes later I was hungry again. I was nibbling on M&Ms at my desk when Tim called back at two. “Brace yourself, Neil,” he said, “I’ve got some bad news.”

  “Let’s see, the Rabbit was being towed and fell off the hitch on the way to Albuquerque, somebody hit it and they’re going to sue.”

  He didn’t laugh. “It’s bad, Neil. You’d better sit down to hear this.”

  “I’m sitting.”

  “Lonnie’s dead,” he said.

  “What?”

  “She’s dead.”

  “She can’t be dead. I just saw her. She was all right.”

  “Her body was found Sunday morning by a man walking his dog at the ruins.”

  “The ruins? She went there?”

  “We were hoping you might know why.”

  “She said she wanted to go out there and meditate, but I didn’t take her seriously; it was snowing, it was the middle of the night. She’s really dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh God. I don’t believe it.”

  “Shit happens, Neil.”

  “If it happened Sunday morning, then why didn’t somebody call me sooner?”

  “Believe me we tried. Your phone was off the hook.”

  “I had an obscene call and forgot to put it back. How did she die?”

  “A lethal combination of drugs and alcohol, the police think. They’re leaning toward suicide.”

  “Suicide? That’s ridiculous. She wasn’t suicidal.”

  “Tell them that. Since you were probably the last person to see her alive, they want to talk to you. Detective Railback is going to call. The body will be cremated, but we’re going to have a wake at her house at noon tomorrow, can you come?”

  “Of course. Is there anything I can do?”

  “Just be here tomorrow.”

  “I will,” I said.

  I buzzed Anna on the intercom. “Something came up and I have to go to Santa Fe tomorrow. If a Detective Railback calls, make an appointment for me in the morning. Tell anybody else I’ll call them back.”

  “You got it,” she said. Sometimes Anna’s lack of curiosity is a blessing. Lonnie’s death wasn’t news I wanted to share with anyone—not even the Kid—just yet. Like a mantling bird protecting its prey, I wanted to wrap my wings around this disaster, stare at it and keep it to myself. I put my head down on the desk for a while and when I looked up I began drawing lines of Vs like flying birds across a yellow legal pad. I waited for Anna and Brink to leave at five and a little while later I left, too. Among the messages on Anna’s desk was one that said my appointment with Detective Michael Railback was at ten tomorrow. I drove to Roosevelt Park, sat on the grass and watched the bare-limbed cottonwoods shadow the ground like lines on a map, rivers seen from the air, or veins. A voice on a loudspeaker drifted over from the stadium. “Down on the infield,” it said, and then “Will everybody please help set up the hurdles.” I sat on the grass until dark and then I went to Souper Salad on Central. Ignoring the salad bar, I went directly to the baked potatoes, took one from the warming tray, put it in a Styrofoam box, poured cheese sauce all over it. It was the kind of food mothers make, comfort food.

  When I got home I took my old friend Cuervo Gold out, put some ice in a glass, poured the Gold over the ice. I have a box of black cherry jello that I keep in the cupboard for bad days. I mixed the jello, added another ice cube for quick setting and put it in the refrigerator. I turned the oven to warm, put the baked potato in. Then I took my boom box and a tape into the bathroom, ran a hot bath, poured in some foaming oil. I sat in the tub, smoked Marlboros and listened to Marianne Faithfull’s broken English voice singing about heroes who smiled as they killed and “Why D’Ya Do It.” By the time I got out of the bath, the tape had run through and dinner was ready. I ate—soggy potato, sticky jello. It was food, but there wasn’t much comfort in it. I had a cup of Sleepytime tea, went to bed and lay there staring at the strip of light that comes in where the drapes don’t meet and tracks across the ceiling.

  I watched the light and when it met a faraway point I dreamed about cats. They’re a powerful symbol, even to those of us who avoid them. I was in a high-rise building somewhere in my dream and a cat was clinging to the window screen. Something kept me from moving; I knew I should get up, had to get up, but I couldn’t do it, couldn’t let the cat in. It went on clawing and clawing until it fell.

  4

  DRIVING UP I-25 in the morning I watched gray clouds and virga over the Jemez Mountains. Virga is a phenomenon of dry climates, precipitation that evaporates before it reaches the ground. It hangs over the thirsty mountains like a dream that will never come true.

  The police station is at the limits of Santa Fe, conveniently near the interstate. It’s got a trailer park on one side of it and a shopping mall on the other, and the flags of New Mexico and the U.S. wave over the door. Although I represent clients in Santa Fe from time to time I had never had the pleasure of meeting Detective Michael Railback. While I waited for him, I read yesterday’s New Mexican, which someone had left lying around the lobby. Lonnie was on the front page smiling like the prom queen she’d never been. A La Luz man named Pete Vigil found the body in a cave around eight on Sunday morning while walking at the ruins, I read. Lonnie’s car had been pa
rked off the road and was concealed by piñons. Had it been left in a visible spot, someone might have noticed and found her sooner. The victim had been seen at a party earlier in the evening drinking heavily, the newspaper said. The apparent cause of death was a combination of drugs and alcohol. When no one was looking, I ripped the article out and took it.

  Then I watched the police walk through the grim and depressing lobby; there wasn’t anything else to look at. They moved stiffly in their law enforcement suits, holsters slapping, pant legs rustling together. There was no way you could sneak up behind someone in an outfit like that. Railback was ready eventually and I was directed to his office down the hall.

  The detective sat at his desk in civilian clothes. He never got up, so I could only estimate how tall he was—not very, I’d say; he had the overdeveloped upper body of a short man in a macho job. His hair was trim, his smile was bright, his brown eyes lit up when they saw my Ray-Ban sunglasses.

  “Ray-Bans. How long have you had those?”

  I thought a moment. “Ten years maybe. They were too expensive to lose.”

  “Ray-Bans never wear out and people keep them forever. Those metal frames get bent a lot, though, don’t they?”

  “Yeah, they do.” He hadn’t offered me a seat, so I helped myself.

  “I like to straighten ’em. It’s a hobby. You want me to fix yours?”

  What could I say? My eyes had become a road map and I didn’t want anybody looking for a destination in them? “Go ahead,” I replied, handing over the Ray-Bans.

  He took tweezers from his drawer, played around with the frames, held them up to my face, adjusted the nose pads, held them up again. I know detectives like to act goofy to make people feel at ease and let their guard down, but Railback was taking it too far. Eventually, he was either satisfied by the way the Ray-Bans fit or had seen enough of the red in my eyes. “They’re okay now,” he said, handing the glasses back to me. “You have pretty eyes. Why do you cover them up?”