“Great, let’s go” she says. “We can have a naked race.”
“Hey, Erica,” I say.
“Hey, Mitch,” she says.
“I’m comfortable with you.”
“You’re what?”
“What I mean is, I sort of like this.”
“Dancing without music?”
“No, holding you and being close. It feels normal.”
. . .
Her apartment is one of five built into the slope of a creek embankment with a willow tree dropping over the flat roof. Holding my hand, she leads me up the flagstone steps. Inside, she has a Navajo rug on Mexican tile. The walls are smooth and whitewashed, the ceiling, adobe with log beams. A small kitchen is on the right, a brass bed on the left. On the wall above her bed, there’s a long poem titled “King of Clouds” written with brush strokes of indigo paint.
“My dad wrote it for me when I turned eighteen, and when he died last year, I got drunk and painted his poem on my wall. He was a fighter pilot.”
“That’s awesome, I mean the part about him being a fighter pilot. I’m sorry he died.”
She sits beside me on the bed and places her hand on my leg. Her arm is like mine with cuts and scratches, only her cuts are more random.”
“What happened?”
She points to a picture of three fishermen hauling in lines on the stern deck of a trawler. The one in the middle, a girl with chapped lips, has a cute face framed in a yellow parka hood. “That’s me,” she says.
“That’s YOU? . . . You must be tough.”
When her father died, Erica went to Alaska to work on a Salmon trawler off Kodiak Island.
She opens her hand to show me the scars. I hold her palm to my lips and tell her my kisses heal. She offers her other hand, “What about this one?” she asks. I kiss that one, too. She unbuttons her pants and shows me a bruise on her hip. I lean down to kiss it.
“One time, a baseball busted my mouth,” she says, so I smile and kiss her on the lips. We begin making-out, and when she takes off her khaki pants, she’s wearing white cotton panties. I pass my hand over the front to feel her soft mound of hair.
“Wait,” she says. “Bet I can beat you at arm-wrestling.”
“Not if we’re naked,” I tell her.
We take off our clothes and drop them on the floor.
Lying on her bed facing each other, our hands clenched ready for battle, “Ready, set, go!” she says. Her small arm muscles flex and strain. She squinches her face and squeezes my hand. “You had enough?” she labors to say.
“Have we started?” I ask.
Using both hands and all her weight, she bends my arm and rolls me over onto my back. “Whooped ya, huh? Boy!” she says, and sits on my stomach, straddling my waist. I tilt my head up to see her naked bush. She knows I am looking between her legs and smiles before bending forward to kiss and bite my neck. Her pink nipples are erect. I try to kiss them, craning forward, but she teases me, tilting back, her breasts slightly out of reach. I can feel her getting wet, as she presses herself against my erection, gliding back and forth. She bends forward to gently place one of her breasts in my mouth. I circle her nipple with my tongue offering delicate bites, sucking, stretching. She rises over my erection and holds it between her legs. I hold on to her hips as she slips it inside. Her hair falls around her face. Her body makes light jerking movements of pleasure, rising and lowering, rising and lowering, while her soft flesh clenches tightly around me . . . .
Erica opens her nightstand drawer and lights a cherry tip, Swisher Sweet cigar. It’s cool the way she lights it, puffing, blowing cherry smoke. We prop pillows against her brass headboard and pass the cigar between us. We get buzzed and talk about books. I tell her about Crime and Punishment. “The punishment’s internal and external—mostly self-inflicted.”
She mentions Kierkegaard.
“I’ve read him.” Actually, I don’t know anything about Kierkegaard. “He’s probably my favorite philosopher,” I tell her.
“I studied him in college,” she says, “when we lived in Germany.” She’d read him, understood him and had even been to Copenhagen, his home town.
“Well, what do you think,” I ask, “about his philosophy and all?”
She hands me the cigar and says, “Kierkegaard is all right, not my favorite, but I had an odd professor who worshiped the guy. He’d stand by the piano— Oh that’s another odd thing. My professor had a piano near his desk so he could perform for the class. Anyhow, he’d stand by his piano and hold a finger in the air to get everyone’s attention before announcing, ‘He loved Regina, but most of all, he loved the fall.’ . . . Weird, huh? Although I eventually understood what he meant.”
I nod my head like I know all about the fall.
“He used Regina as his muse, to inspire his writing,” she says.
“Really? He used her so he could write?”
“I guess.”
“Refresh my memory, what else did he do?”
“He believed the aesthetic life is empty. He thought constantly seeking pleasure only leads to despair.”
Holding the cherry cigar to Erica’s lips, I tell her, “I do both, seek pleasure and despair.”
“Which one are you doing now?” she says smiling.
I lean over to kiss her. “Hmm, a philosopher chick who catches fish?”
“A drunk who can’t arm-wrestle,” she says. “Just kidding. What about Zen?”
“You mean the karate dude?”
“No dummy. Zen isn’t a dude! It’s a philosophy, a religion, a way of living. It’s about being nothing—however not a low nothing—not the kind of nothing where you don’t have anything. It is more of an everything nothing.”
I laugh. “An everything nothing? Do you have to get naked and meditate on mountains to figure it out?”
Erica snatches the cigar from my mouth. Damn, the girl is quick. “You don’t have to go anywhere,” she says. “It doesn’t have a thing to do with where you are physically. Like R.M. Pirsig said, ‘The only Zen you find on mountains is the Zen you bring up there.’ In fact, it doesn’t have anything to do with self. You’re supposed to journey out of self and connect.”
“Connect with what?” I ask.
“Connect with people; the universe; everything,” she says.
“Cool, maybe I’ll check it out when I’m old. What else do you to read? Wait, here’s a question for you. What is your all-time favorite book?” I can tell she really likes this question. She scoots up higher against the brass headboard, puffing the cherry cigar while deciding how to answer. I reach over and snag the cigar from her mouth. I’m quick, too.
“Jerk, don’t swipe my smoke. Now I’ll never tell you.” She lunges for the cigar, but I’m too fast for her, so she smashes a pillow over my face.
“We can make a deal,” I mumble from under her pillow, “a mutual exchange?”
She lifts the pillow. “Okay, speak. I’m listening.”
“If you’ll tell me what your favorite book is, and you think you can handle it again, I’ll let you have Mr. Cannon.”
“The Cajun who rocked my world,” she says and nabs the cigar from my hand before I can react. Dammit!
“Okay, listen up,” she says. “Here it is. My all time, hands down, favorite book.” Erica pauses like she’s announcing the winner of an academy award . . . “The Great Santini!”
“I’ve heard of it.”
“Liar.”
“No really, I have.”
“Sure you have.”
“It’s by Pat Conroy,” I say, waiting for her to acknowledge my genius.
She gives me a nudge on the leg. “Wow, I’m impressed.”
“Don’t be too impressed, it’s right there on your shelf.”
“Cheater, you don’t deserve this, but I’ll give you a kiss anyway.” She leans over, kisses my cheek then holds my hand in her lap. “It’s about a Marine fighter pilot, like my dad. They were both alcoholics, obsessed with their athletic
sons. They didn’t pay enough attention to their daughters, but you could tell the Great Santini loved his daughter. You should read it.”
“I will.”
Her blue eyes fill with tears. She gently extinguishes the cigar in a clay bowl beside her bed. She’s upset about her father’s death and tells me about him, sharing what he was like, and how in many ways, was a wonderful parent. She also explains the poem on her wall. “It’s an apology,” she says, “for not being a better father to his daughter.” She uses the bed sheet to wipe her eyes.
It’s time for me to say something, to comment on the poem or share a personal experience. She’s waiting for my reaction, propping up the pillows behind her back. She is so patient, open and honest. I am way out of my league. When I’m finally ready to tell her that my father was the same way, an alcoholic obsessed with his son, she reaches for my hand and says, “The Great Santini makes me cry.”
“Me too.”
She turns to look at me, “You never read it.”
“I will, though. You should watch the movie Midnight Cowboy. That’ll definitely make you cry. What a downer.” It was a dumb thing to say. I turn over onto my stomach, and she snuggles against me, laying her arm across my neck, kissing my shoulder.
“How long will you be in Santa Fe?” she asks. “If you want, you can stay here.”
“I should get back on the road in the morning. My friends are expecting me.”
“Do you have a job?”
“Not yet.”
“It would be easy for you to find a job here. Do you like this?” She’s gliding her fingertips across my back. It’s making me uncomfortable.
“Yeah, it feels good,” I say, trying to sound positive and not cringe away from her.
“We lived in San Diego when I was in eighth grade,” she says. “I loved it there and wouldn’t mind going back.”
“I heard it’s not so great.”
“My brother lives there. He likes it.” She drapes her leg over mine, wrapping herself around me.
“Do you like to snuggle?”
“Yeah, it’s relaxing.” I tell her, but wish she would stop touching me.
“Are you getting turned on?”
“Not too much.”
Erica stops caressing me and places her open hand on my back. She keeps it there, her hand, on my back, like she’s concentrating on something. “What’s wrong with you?”
“What do you mean?” I ask. “Nothing’s wrong.”
“Your muscles, they’re twitching. They’re all tensed up.”
“It’s this position I’m in. It’s uncomfortable.”
“I know what I’ll do, I’ll give you a massage.”
“Thanks, Erica, but I’d rather you didn’t do that.”
She straddles my lower back and pushes down on my shoulders. “You’ll enjoy this, I have strong hands.” She leans her weight on me. The oxygen rushes out of my body then rushes out of the room.
“Just relax and let go,” she says.
I don’t feel right. This is becoming a problem, generating anxiety, a situation of non-reality. It’s only Erica, a friend, massaging my shoulders, but she’s on top of me, holding me down, and I can’t see who it is. I try to relax, focus my attention on a small scratch in the adobe wall behind her bed.
“Relax, Mitch,” she tells me again.
I grip the headboard and tug myself out from under her.
“What are you doing?” she says.
Standing beside her bed, I’m not sure where I am or where the voices are coming from. I can’t answer because I’ve forgotten to breathe and now have to take several large gulps of air as I look for my pants.
Erica crosses her legs and stuffs a pillow in her lap. “I don’t understand this,” she says. “What just happened?”
Sitting on a cowhide footstool, my hands are shaking. Picking up a sock, this whole process is new for me, complicated, a delicate task that requires effort. I have to concentrate on how to hold the sock, how to open it, how to get it around my foot, past my heel and above my ankle.
Erica wants to know what happened. She wants to know why I’m leaving. She’s patiently sitting on her bed waiting for me to explain. I don’t know what to tell her.
On the way back to La Fonda, the streets of downtown are dark and empty, the air cold and dry without taste. I walk past art gallery windows with brightly colored paintings of warm desert landscapes, but the paintings don’t seem right. A cold front has settled over Santa Fe and it’s snowing.
. . . . .
Tough, Like John Wayne
Jack McAllister is thirty-two: He’s sitting in his lounge chair with his son beside him straddling the armrest. Mitch stiffens his body, plummets sideways and lands on the carpet. He pretends to have a seizure, flopping on the floor. Jack tickles his son’s ribs and stretches out to give him a mule bite on his thigh. Mitch squirms to get away and brags that he’s too quick for the old man.
Mrs. McAllister enters the den, kneels beside the rosewood coffee table and uses her sleeve to wipe off a wet ring. “Hey, fella,” she tells him, “stop placing your drinks on the rosewood.” She sits on the couch, and Tracy comes in to sit beside her.
Jack reaches under his shirt, cups his hand under his arm and makes a fart sound. “Son, you need to excuse yourself.”
Mitch starts laughing and pulling at his father’s arm. “That was you,” he says.
A television commercial shows an astronaut eating a Space Food Stick through a hole in his helmet. Mitch tells his father he’ll be right back and not to go anywhere.
“Promise not to leave?”
“I promise,” Jack says.
Mitch runs into the kitchen and stirs a spoonful of Tang in a glass of water.
Tracy taps on her mother’s knee, crosses her fingers and whispers, “Cross your fingers too, Mom.” Mrs. McAllister nudges Tracy. “Go ahead,” she says, “Ask your father.”
“Dad, if I had a phone in my room I wouldn’t have to keep using yours. All my friends have phones.”
Jack places his drink on a coaster and tells his daughter. “Not yet, Tracy, you’re too young. If I put a phone in your room we’d never see you again.”
Tracy turns to her mother. “See, Mom, I told you he would say no.” She huffs out of the den and into the hallway. Before returning to her bedroom, she says, “You only spend time with Mitch, so why should you care if I stay in my room for the rest of my life?”
. . .
I had signed up with a volunteer group started by a rich doctor from Los Angeles. He sold me on it, too. Said it would be the next Peace Corps. Said we would feed and shelter thousands. “It will be tough,” he said, “not what you’re used to, but it will change your life.” Then he gave me a fancy “Amigos de Mexico” business card and wished me good luck.
Two hours south from San Diego, I drive into a dusty village east of Ensenada and find a field of scraggly avocado trees, one small trailer and a large hacienda falling apart. The adobe walls are crumbling; the red roof tiles are scattered in the dirt. Behind the hacienda, a lady steps out of her trailer, and I call out to her “I’m Mitch McAllister. Is the doctor here?”
She walks over and introduces herself. “Hi, Mitch. I’m Kianna, the doctor’s wife. And no, he’s not here.” Ms. Kianna is friendly enough and tells me to place my things in the hacienda with Pablo. I find Pablo in one of the bedrooms lying on a mattress on the floor. He seems like an okay guy, a quiet Mexican seven or eight years older than me. But damn, this place is a dump. No electricity, no hot water, no nothing. Six bedrooms, an empty kitchen and a bathroom with plywood walls. Pablo’s room has a mattress, a radio, and an Evinrude motor on its side with engine parts spread out on the wood floor.
“I used to have a boat motor in my room too. It was mounted on the footboard of my bed.”
“You have it still?” Pablo asks.
“No, my dad was rich for a while then had to sell everything.”
Pablo nods his head.
/> “What about you,” I ask, “your father?”
“He passed,” Pablo says.
“Oh, sorry, mine too. Was he into baseball?”
“No, not so much,” he says.
He shows me my room, the broken windows, caved-in ceiling. It stinks like dry dust and mouse turds. It’s like nobody has lived here for twenty years: torn furniture and yellowed newspaper clippings about some famous bullfighter I’ve never heard of. “Hey, Pablo, whose room was this? Be honest with me, man, because whoever it was must have croaked a hundred years ago?”
“It is a room,” he says, “a place to sleep.”
I move stuff out of the way and drop a sheet of plywood on a rusted bed frame. I spread my sleeping bag on top, and since there isn’t anything else to do, I lie down. Pablo is in his room listening to the radio. I call out to him, “Pablo, has anyone died in here? Are we trapped in the house of a dead man?”
In the morning Pablo and I walk behind the hacienda to Ms. Kianna’s trailer for breakfast. She has lavender curtains in the windows and yellow cabinets in the kitchen. She’s a nice looking woman with long black hair, probably in her early forties. I watch her add fresh eggs to an iron skillet of sliced potatoes, salt and onions. We eat as much as we want. Not a bad start for my first day in Mexico.
After breakfast Pablo and I grab two shovels from the shed and work in the orchard. The orchard is about the size of a football field and slopes down to the Ensenada highway. Our job is to begin digging a six-inch water trench between the avocado trees, so that one source of water will spread out to each tree. We work hard all day shoveling dirt and talking about peyote. Pablo knows about the cactus. He thinks I should stay away from it.
Sweaty and dirty, we strip to our underwear and shower outside with a garden hose and bar of soap. His old Plymouth is parked in the sun behind the hacienda. We sit on the trunk to dry off. I ask him how he learned to speak English so well. He tells me about going to elementary school in California and how his father had a lot of money back then.
“Pablo, I wonder who used to live in the hacienda? My guess is, and I wanna know what you think about it too, but my guess is an old rich bullfighter who lost his nerve. Maybe all those ancient newspapers are about him. He could have been great for a while then fell apart― I’ve seen it happen.”
Leaving Allison Page 7