She doesn’t get to answer because right then all hell breaks loose.
Twenty-three
“What the…?” Bulldog shouts as the trailer door bangs open with a thud.
Before I can grab for her, Amelia’s up and running. We race away from the trailer, doing our best to avoid prairie dog holes and cactus. Bulldog’s somewhere behind us, shouting about trespassing and guns and the right to protect his property. I have no idea if he actually has a gun, but I’m glad we have a head start. I don’t want to stick around to find out. We’re running up the driveway, barely maintaining our lead, when my toe catches in a hole. I stumble and come down hard on a rock. Blood pours from my knee. I try to stand, knowing every second lost means a gain for Bulldog.
“Come on!” hisses Amelia, who’s turned into some kind of Olympic sprinter. She grabs my arm and yanks me to my feet, but the best I can do is hobble. “For fuck’s sake, Guera,” she cries and pulls me against her hip. I lean my weight on her body, and we do an awkward three-legged stumble to the truck.
Amelia starts the engine before I even close my door. A second later she’s making the world’s most pathetic getaway. She attempts to gun it down the road, but the truck will have nothing to do with speed. I glance over my shoulder. No headlights from other cars. No streetlights or well-lit homes interrupting the dark. Just earth and sky and an ocean of tumbleweed, chamisa, and rock formations changed into monsters by the dark.
“He’s not following,” I say, as I catch my breath and blot at my knee with one of the dirty tissues.
She nervously eyes the rearview mirror, accelerating at exactly the wrong time, and as we speed around a corner there’s a spray of dirt and stones as the tires glance off the embankment. I’m thinking we survived Bulldog’s wrath, but we might not survive Amelia’s driving.
My stomach roils with nausea. I roll down the window and squeeze my eyes shut, hoping not to blow chunks all over Amelia’s truck. When the tires find purchase, Amelia slows to a non-lethal speed, and I’m certain I can speak without turning into Mt. Saint Vomitus. I open my eyes, take a breath, and think back to the trailer.
“You’re a chef,” I say slowly, going over the scene in Bulldog’s kitchen. “Have you ever seen someone cook chiles like that? It didn’t look like Bulldog was making stew for his grannie.”
“For once you’re right,” she says. “So what are you thinking?”
“I don’t know, but there was something weird about those chiles.”
“Weird chiles, huh?” Amelia says. Maybe it’s exhaustion or stress, but she giggles, a vocalization I wouldn’t have thought her capable of. It’s like hearing a cat bark or a dog meow. “Sounds serious.” She widens her eyes and makes the universal oooohhh creepy-ghost sound. “What’s next, evil corn?”
Whatever symptoms are making her loopy I have them, too. “I don’t know,” I say, with a snort of laughter. “Wanker watermelon?”
“Asshole apples.”
We go off on a fruit and veggie alliteration trip, killing ourselves with delirious hysterics as we try to coin a nefarious adjective to match a fruit or vegetable for every letter of the alphabet.
When we exhaust our imaginations and creativity at H (hickey honeydews), Amelia sighs and says, “I’m starving. We never got to eat before.”
Without waiting to see if I’m hungry too, she jerks the truck into the left lane and makes a hard turn into a massive stucco compound. Neon lights of an enormous sign glare against the desert dark, telling us where we are: Camel Rock Casino.
Amelia, catching my confused expression, says, “Don’t worry, Guera, we’re not here to gamble. It’s Santa Fe, home of nothing open past nine. The casino has a snack bar that stays open late.”
We cross the parking lot, enter a side door far away from the valet-guarded front entrance, and descend the escalator into the bowels of the building where the gambling takes place—a subterranean gaming hell. Disney-gone-bad on uppers. The strangling stink of cigarettes assaults my nose and mixes with the overly lit, flashing colors, ping of machines, and piped-in music. I’m wondering if anyone ever died of sensory overload as we skirt the edge of the room and go into the snack bar. Amelia buys a sandwich, chips, and a large, slushy, pink drink that looks like Smurf puke. I tell her my stomach is off and don’t feel like eating, and we take a seat at one of the three plastic tables in the back of the room.
“Here,” she says, pushing the Smurf puke toward me. “Try some. It’ll help your stomach.”
I handle the drink like it’s toxic waste, which judging from the color, it might well be. “What is it?”
“It won’t kill you, if that’s what you’re asking,” she says. “Drink.”
I take a tentative sip, and she’s right. Crushed ice laced with some kind of artificial flavor relieves the bile taste in my mouth. She looks at me with a sigh as I drink and says, “Well, operation Cruz was a total bust. We didn’t even get to talk to him.”
“Yeah, and unless we get his number, we’re not going to.”
“What’s next? Any ideas?”
“Not really,” I say. “But give me time and I’ll think of something.”
She’s about to respond when her phone rings with the same mérengue ring tone as before. I see the face on the screen as she goes to answer: Mari.
“Don’t tell her where we were,” I mouth, not wanting to add to Mari’s worries.
“Sorry I didn’t answer before,” I hear Amelia say, then—“I was just out with Faith.” Then— “Getting something to eat. You can say hi to her yourself.” Amelia puts the phone on speaker.
“Hey,” comes Mari’s voice a second later. “You guys bonding?”
“Yep, total bondage,” Amelia answers dryly for me.
“I think you mean bonding,” I say, but she ignores me.
“We’re best friends now,” Amelia goes on in a voice I can’t interpret.
“Well, that’s good because I come home tomorrow and I want you both to be there. You’ll come over, Faith?”
“Of course,” I say, glancing at Amelia whose expression reveals nothing. “You staying out of trouble?”
“All I do is lie around and watch TV. Today on “The Price is Right” this lady won a washing machine and a new car. That was the highlight of my day. Or maybe it was “General Hospital” when the hot bisexual doctor found out the secretary from the insurance company is pregnant with his son.” She sighs. “I know, pathetic, right?
“No,” Amelia answers. “Not pathetic. Normal. See you tomorrow.”
“’Kay,” she says. “Just don’t kill each other, ‘best friends.’”
As Mari hangs up, a woman plunks down into a chair at the next table and slumps over a drink, muttering to herself about the slots. With the reminder of slot machines and gambling I recall the fact that we’re in a casino. Not just any casino, a casino in the middle of the New Mexico desert. Six months ago if someone told me I’d be sitting in a snack bar in a casino in New Mexico with my half sister, talking on the phone to my other half sister, I’d have asked them what they were on.
“You never know,” I sigh, more to myself than to Amelia, but she responds.
“Never know what?”
“How things are going to go.”
It’s a random comment, and I expect her to roll her eyes. Instead she gives a knowing nod, bringing her own meaning to the statement. “I guess you don’t,” she says. “Expect the worse. That’s my philosophy.” With that bit of anti-wisdom, she grabs the food she hasn’t finished and we leave, no plan about our next step in finding Rudy and no idea what Bulldog was doing in the trailer.
***
Clem, Dahlia, Rejina, Brian, Bro Boy, and a few other interns are hanging out in the common room when I get back to the dorm. Clem wears earbuds. Dahlia’s lounging on her stomach on the couch, reading, and Rejina and Bro Boy are curled up
together on another couch, an entanglement of arms and hips and shoulders like they’ve morphed into some new GMO—Brejina or Roboy. I pause for a second, deciding if I should go in and say hi, but the whole exhaustion thing makes my decision for me. I’m heading for the stairs when Dahlia looks up, waves, and mouths the words “come over here.”
“Yikes,” she says when I go in and reach her side. “You look horrible. What happened?”
“Thanks, and long story.”
She puts down her novel and flips onto her side. “I have all night.”
Before I can answer, Clem takes out his earbuds and looks up at me from his seat across from Dahlia. “Hey,” he says, “you look terrible.”
“Thanks a lot, guys,” I tease, knowing full well how awful I must look. “You’re great for a girl’s ego.”
Dahlia starts apologizing and Clem turns red and starts explaining what he meant by terrible. He touches my wrist as he stutters out his apology. His fingers on my flesh make me forget how I look. Make me forget Bulldog. Make me forget my name. Those fingers, they should be in a museum, have their own song, their own country, their own…
“What happened to your knee?” Dahlia asks, intruding on my finger lust.
Clem withdraws his fingers (bye, oh beautiful digits) and glances down at my knee. I have no interest in discussing my bloodstained limb, but with the fresh feel of Clem’s fingers on my flesh, I think I should at least tell him about the trailer, especially since he knows everything so far. When I look at him, though, I see his tired eyes and remember his ass-wipe father who bailed on coming here, the concert in three days, the Paganini piece. I don’t want to add to his stress, so I lie.
“I fell down. I’m a klutz. What can I say?” I can’t tell if they believe me, but I tell them I’m exhausted, promise we’ll talk in the morning, and say good night.
My phone buzzes with a text as I’m heading upstairs. I check the screen: Jesse asking for a Skype. We haven’t talked in a few days. I’m hit with a fresh wave of dread. I still haven’t told Jesse anything about Clem. A big fat nada on the communication front. If I try to play it cool and act like nothing’s up, he’ll know I’m bullshitting. Jesse has a serious bullshit detector. I think of texting back and telling him I’m too tired to Skype, but even that he won’t buy, so I do the only thing I can think of: ignore the message and promise myself to respond in the morning.
Twenty-four
I wake up early Wednesday and bound out of bed like a kid on Christmas morning. At first I have no idea what’s causing such a manic response to sunrise. Usually I’m late to bed, late to rise, but as I smile into the new day, I remember. Mari. She gets out of the hospital today. Screw Amelia and whether or not she wants me to show up for homecoming festivities with Mari and Alma. Screw it if I’m just a fifty percent member of the Flores clan. I’m going over to celebrate.
As I get dressed I notice my phone on the dresser staring at me despondently, reminding me that I owe Jesse a call. I contemplate calling now, a quick what’s up/I’m fine/you? But I still have to get dressed and eat breakfast and there’s no such thing as quick in Jesse-speak. Even though it’s only six-thirty, I decide I don’t have time. I’ll call him after work, before I go see Mari.
In the cafeteria, Clem is thankfully too distracted to ask me more about my previous night’s escapades and Dahlia isn’t there. I attempt to engage him in conversation, check in on how he’s doing, but he’s in a pensive mood, and doesn’t say much. We pound coffee and gorge on carbs, able to be silent in each other’s company. With Jesse, it’s a full-throttle kind of thing—always something to talk about, to debate, to get into, a song to hear, a movie to watch. There’s an exciting on-the-go vibe with him that definitely fuels a part of me. Silence, though, I’m starting to understand, is its own kind of pleasure, and the wisdom of not speaking fuels me, too.
I sigh and stuff down more jam on toast. Having two boys fuel two very different aspects of myself should be something to celebrate, but I’m not throwing any parties. They’ll both be here in three days, and I can’t be lighting my fire with two guys. I’ll have to choose. Again, the two-boy-love-triangle dilemma—and my love life has become a cliché—a cliché I’m not interested in thinking about right now. I get up, say good-bye to Clem, and head out to work where I can lose myself in data.
***
“SCPG will stand behind the genetically modified chile!” I hear Dr. Richmond say, okay, more like yell, when I get to work and pass by her office. “Your threats won’t work.”
“We won’t stand for it!” the now familiar voice of Holly Redding replies in the same heated tone. “We’ll do whatever it takes to stop you.”
I pause by the water cooler outside Dr. Richmond’s door and take my time pulling the cup from the dispenser…dropped that one…have to get a new one…oops…that one looks dirty. Can never be too careful with germs.
“Don’t be silly,” Dr. Richmond fires back. “We’re already in the field stage. We’re growing the chiles, Holly. Those chiles are the future of the industry, whether you like it or not. We’ve passed EPA and USDA requirements. FDA is the last testing to pass. The regulations are stringent. We wouldn’t have gotten this far if there was a problem.”
“If there was a problem?” Holly barks. “There is a problem. It’s called seed contamination. It’s called heirloom varieties. It’s called Mother Nature knows best. It’s called we won’t stand for this!”
“And what are you going to do? Sabotage our fields? Like you did at the ski resort? Holly, be reasonable.”
“There are many environmental groups in town who do reasonable. If you want to talk to them, fine. But you’re talking to me. Upside Down! is about action. We’ll do whatever it takes to stop you. You can count on that. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
Holly steps out of the office and brushes past me. I can’t tell if she sees me, and if she does, if she connects me with the teen journalist visiting her office yesterday. I quickly turn to the water cooler and put my cup under the spout as Dr. Richmond steps into the hall.
“Need some help with that?” she asks, turning over my cup, which I realize is upside down, water spilling all over the floor.
“Uh, yeah. I have a drinking problem,” I say, laughing at my lame joke.
She doesn’t smile. Right then. I chug the water to keep myself from saying anything else stupid.
“I assume you heard that discussion just now in my office, and I apologize,” Dr. Richmond says, her eyes directed down the hall where Holly disappeared. “Ms. Redding barged in here and insisted on talking to me, if talking is what you call what we were doing. She said we had a meeting scheduled. That I’d asked her to come.” From the look on Dr. Richmond’s face I’m thinking there was no meeting. “She’s on the fringe of reason, and we need to be very careful with our product around her.”
“How so?” I ask, though I suspect she’s referring to the newspaper article: “Jail Time for Radical Activist.”
“She’s used radical tactics before. I prefer not to think about what she could do to our chiles given the chance. But that’s why we have a guard at the production site. We have to be especially careful with the board dinner coming up next week.” She smiles and composes herself, as if a twist of the lips and a smoothing of her shirt can reverse the effects of what just happened. “I hope you’re looking forward to that event. I know it will be grand.” With that parting bit of inspiration, she returns to her office.
***
“I know it will be grand,” Esha repeats five minutes later when I’m in the lab recounting my conversation with Dr. Richmond. “How can it be grand when the caterer just backed out? Now it’s just going to be nothing. I’m a scientist, not an event coordinator. She wants grand she should hire Martha Stewart.” Esha collapses into her desk chair and drops her face into her hands, repeating the words: “I know it will be grand,” sounding more and
more unhinged with each repetition. “One week to go, and we’re without a caterer. All the boardmembers coming. But no food! What am I supposed to do? Make mac and cheese for thirty because that’s about the best I got.”
“That’s not true. You make excellent Ramen,” Jonah teases. “And your peanut butter and jelly.” He makes his fingers and thumb into a tripod and kisses them into the air. “The best.”
“I have an idea,” I say to Esha who doesn’t seem amused by Jonah’s joking. “You and Dr. Richmond are growing chiles, right?”
“Faith, please. I can’t discuss the chiles right now.”
“I don’t want to discuss them. I want to eat them.” This statement catches her attention, and she looks up at me. “What if we wow the guests at the board meeting with the best chile everything…chile rellenos and mole?” I say, the only two chile dishes I know. “We’ll have a whole meal featuring chiles. Since Dr. Richmond’s chiles aren’t on the market yet, we can use yours.”
Jonah nods, his eyes on Esha, our fearless leader, to see what she’ll think.
“Mine?” she repeats.
“Yeah. Red-hot chiles. The best and the spiciest. The boardmembers will love it.”
She nods and twists her necklace, looking skeptical about the idea. “I guess I could find time to go up to the farm and get a few for you. And who are we going to hire to cater this ‘grand’ chile meal on such short notice?”
“I know a great chef,” I say, the idea forming as it leaves my lips. “She’s not very well known, and she’s kind of young, but she’s good.”
Esha sighs and slumps back down. “Is she expensive? We don’t have a big budget. We need hors d’oeuvres and a three-course meal for fifteen. The people at Sophia’s Catering were giving us a deal and—”
“I have a connection,” I interrupt, sickened by the idea even as I’m proposing it. “Let me see what I can do.
Esha agrees, but I can tell she’s nervous. I think about what Jonah told me, how she feels responsible for what happened with Brugmansia, and how much she wants to impress the board. That means I have to make this happen. I can’t let her down. While she and Jonah go back to work, I sit at my desk, computer on, and pretend to work, but instead of getting into data, I Google chile recipes. As I scroll through a mountain of recipes, my stomach twists. What was I thinking? How will I ever get Amelia to agree to do this? If she says no I’m screwed. What am I going to do? Order Taco Bell? I’m lost in worrying mode when I feel a shadow looming over me. I look up and see Esha.
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