This new storm was not exactly the one she heard in her head, but it was close. It was a little longer on thunder, but not quite as loud. She did not like it as well as her previous versions, and she began to wonder if she had just wasted her morning, but she let the sculpture play on. The third and fourth storms were also slightly different. But neither was up to her original creation.
The fifth, however, was something she would not have imagined. Its thunder was never quite as loud as her original—she made a mental note to try to get a louder sound from the corrugated plate—but the thunder held its peak longer than she would have dared. The room shook with the sound. When the thunder finally released and gave way to the driving rain, she realized that she had been holding her breath and tensing every muscle in her body. She relaxed as the rain came, its sound washing away her tension.
She listened for an hour as storm after storm swept through her shop. Sometimes the sculpture seemed to repeat itself, to play a storm that she had heard earlier, but every so often a new combination emerged that surprised and delighted her. The thunder of some storms seemed to linger, while with others it was the final rain washing across the desert that went on and on. It was never exactly what she had imagined, but it was always different, always powerful, the thunder and the rain first meeting the desert, then pummeling it, and finally merging with it. She listened to the last drops of a storm fade into the desert sand, and then she turned off the sculpture and stood.
She walked over to the sliding glass doors that insulated her from the desert heat and opened them. They slid haltingly on tracks that she had rarely used. A blast of heat hit her, and she stepped outside. She crossed over the lawn and climbed the short fence that separated the grass from the desert beyond. She sat down in the sand and looked slowly around.
A lizard basked in the sun on a nearby rock. She put her hand in the shadow of a clump of rabbit brush and felt the coolness. The clear sky and the stark landscape did have their own serene, spare beauty, a beauty that she had been unwilling to see. She closed her eyes and imagined the rain from her sculpture falling onto the sand around her.
* * * *
The lights surrounding the new Santa Fe Arts Center sparkled in the darkness of the rapidly cooling September evening. The low-slung adobe building seemed almost to have grown there. The tiles of the square in front of the building alternated light and dark, like sand moving in and out of shadow. In the square’s center, under a billowing satin sheet, sat Teresa’s sculpture, Desert Rain.
Teresa stood by Jeff and sipped her champagne. She looked carefully through the crowd, but if Carla was there, Teresa could not find her.
Just before the mayor was to unveil the sculpture, Teresa spotted her friend getting out of a cab. Teresa waved, and Carla came running over.
“I’m sorry I’m late, but we sat on the runway forever and then we had to wait in line to take off and—” Carla paused for breath and looked around. “Have I missed anything?” She glanced at Jeff. “Hi, Jeff.”
“How are you, Carla?” he said.
“No,” Teresa said, “you’re in time—barely.”
Speakers around the square screeched as the mayor fiddled with the microphone. When he had everyone’s attention, the mayor spoke for a few minutes. He introduced the head of the Arts Commission, several of the biggest donors, and Teresa. When he was done talking he nodded at Teresa. She walked over to the sculpture. Then the mayor took a pair of oversized scissors from an assistant and cut the ribbon that held down the satin sheet. With a flourish, two attendants pulled the sheet away to reveal the sculpture.
The metal gleamed in the glare of the recessed footlights that surrounded it. The winding steel track caught the light and reflected it in broken patterns. Curving lines of light crisscrossed the brass hands, the metal uprights, the curve of corrugated metal that produced the thunder.
The Mayor asked the crowd for silence, and then motioned to Teresa. With a key, she turned on the sculpture.
In the first storm, the thunder was not the longest she had heard, but it sustained long enough that she was ready when it finally broke. The sounds of the spreading rain lingered as the last of the balls wound through the maze.
When the silence finally came, the crowd burst into applause. The sculpture began another storm over the last of the applause. People went back to talking and drinking, with small groups periodically wandering near the sculpture for a closer look.
“That was beautiful,” Jeff said.
“Great work,” agreed Carla. “This may be your best piece yet.”
“Thanks.” Teresa felt oddly unsatisfied, incomplete. Jeff had moved closer to the sculpture, so Teresa turned to Carla.
“Do me a favor, Carla,” she whispered.
“Sure.”
“Take Jeff over to the bar and get him to buy you a drink.”
“Oh?” Carla raised one eyebrow.
“I have to make a phone call, that’s all.” She hesitated. “To a friend.”
“Whatever you say.” Carla winked, and then headed toward Jeff.
Teresa walked to a phone booth in a far corner of the square. She put her card in the machine and dialed home.
Ian’s face appeared. “Hello, Teresa.”
She fidgeted with the phone for a moment, not quite sure what to say. Finally, she spoke. “Look, Ian, I’m at the opening in Santa Fe and, well, I just wanted to say thanks, thanks for all the help you’ve given me. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“You’re welcome, Teresa. It was my pleasure.”
“We really can be friends, can’t we, Ian?”
“You bet.”
She turned to face the sculpture. She could see Carla talking to Jeff. His back was to her. The crowd blocked most of the sculpture, but its sound was still clear. “Can you hear the sculpture, Ian?”
“Yes. It sounds good.”
“Thanks. I wanted you to hear it at least once. And thanks again for helping.” She faced the screen again. “Good-bye, Ian. See you at home.”
“Good-bye, Teresa. I’ll look forward to seeing you again.”
The phone’s screen went blank and Teresa turned away from it. As the sounds of desert rain washed over the square, she walked toward Jeff.
<
* * * *
Precious Moments
KRISTINE KATHRYN RUSCH
I
WAS SHOCKED,” Sandusky said. He leaned back in the pale blue booth and pushed his half-eaten eggs away. The café smelled of coffee and burned toast. “I mean, there were these delicate little creatures pirouetting on the stage and they were gorgeous. I always thought Russian women were like East German swimmers—big breasted, dough faced and too tall.”
“That’s racist,” Martina said. She hadn’t eaten anything. Her small hands were wrapped around an oversized coffee cup.
Sandusky and I always had breakfast together after the morning show. He did the news and I engineered, and after four hours of live, crazy radio, we would be wired. That morning we invited Martina. Actually, I invited Martina. Sandusky didn’t like her much, but I had always been attracted to women who had bristly personalities. Sandusky said that was because I was out to change the world. Maybe. I thought it was because I liked a challenge.
I frowned. “What about Olga Korbut? I had a crush on her when I was in the sixth grade, and I’ve liked tiny women ever since.”
Martina didn’t catch the hint, but Sandusky did. He made a face. “Olga Korbut wasn’t fully grown, Linameyer.”
“She is now and she’s still tiny.” I took a bite of my scrambled eggs. They were greasy and undercooked. Sandusky had been right to leave his. I pushed my plate away.
“I’m talking about my impressions here,” Sandusky said. “I don’t care if they’re right. I go to the ballet with Linda, I learn something.”
“Bully, bully,” Martina said to me, her black eyes snapping. “He learned that his racist stereotypes don’t always hold up.”
“Jesus.” Martina reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out three crumpled dollar bills. “How did this guy get a job at a listener-sponsored radio station? We’re supposed to be left wing—or at least open-minded.”
“He is open-minded, for Wisconsin.” I put my hand over Martina’s. Her fingers were dry and warm. “Let me get that. I’m the one who talked you into coming after the show.”
“It’s been quite an education,” she said and then she smiled. Her entire face lit up. I loved it when Martina smiled. I had been watching her ever since she started at the station three months before. She did the morning news with Sandusky. I wondered how many arguments I missed, trapped at the board, listening to Johnson babble while I spun the tunes. The program director claimed that engineering the “Morning Show” was too difficult for an announcer, so I had to engineer. I could have announced and engineered that program in my sleep and still done a better job than Johnson.
“You haven’t finished your coffee yet,” Sandusky said. His ears were red. Martina’s comments must have hit a sore spot. Sandusky was a little ignorant and a lot naive, especially for a college graduate in his early thirties, but he did try to learn. Unfortunately at the station he had absorbed the left-wing rhetoric, but not the ideals that characterized the most interesting radicals. Of course, open-mindedness didn’t exist at the station. The feminists fought with the environmentalists who fought with the Native Americans who fought with the gays, all of whom claimed their issues were the most important issues. Sometimes I wished I was a conservative. They seemed to have only three lines of ideological bullshit instead of two hundred.
“You don’t get it, do you?” she said. She hadn’t moved her hand from beneath mine. “You think you’re open-minded. You think you’re liberal, and yet you sit here and say Russian women—and it should be Soviet women, if you want to be precise—Russian women should be tall with big tits. American women come in all sizes. Why should the Soviets be one-size-fits-all?”
The flush was traveling down Sandusky’s neck. “My father was a farmer. He had a sixth-grade education.”
“You say that every time I pin you,” Martina said. “You have a master’s degree in history. You’d think that would give you a little more perspective on the world.”
“I didn’t know you had a master’s degree.” I took a sip of my water. It tasted like soap. I didn’t know why we came here every morning. The food was always terrible.
“You’re no better, Linameyer,” Martina said. She pulled her hand away from mine. “You’re real good at helping people write copy with nonsexist language, and you never insult anyone. You always say, “Native American,” and ‘Differently Abled,” and you can spout party line with the best of them, but you don’t have an open mind either.”
“I think you’re a little out of proportion, Martina.” I was secure in my open-mindedness. I was the one, not the station manager, that everyone used to settle disputes. Linameyer sees the human side, Johnson said once, and the entire station agreed that it was true.
I did see the human side. I saw all sides, and I could explain them clearly. Maybe that’s why I was doing talk radio: I could understand everything and never had to take a side, never had to make an action on my own.
“I’m very clear-sighted.” She straightened out her money and set it under her full water glass. “You do real good at spouting party line and picking which party line is appropriate under what circumstances. But if you ever were confronted with something really odd, you would deny it because it doesn’t fit into your neat, tidy little world.”
“Give me an example,” I said, leaning forward.
“I’ll do better than that.” She grabbed her coat from the side of the booth and shoved her arms in the sleeves. “I’ll let you prove yourself. You’re hosting ‘A Public Affair’ next week, right? Interview my roommate.”
“Who is your roommate?”
Martina glanced at Sandusky. He was clutching his empty coffee cup and staring at her. “She’s an Argentinian ballerina. She was famous once.”
“How did you get a famous ballerina for a roommate?”
Martina shrugged. “Twist of fate, maybe. Interview her.”
I took a deep breath. Most of my “Public Affairs” were scheduled. I hosted the talk show one week a month and I planned for it for weeks in advance. This time, though, Thursday was open. “Give me some background on her and I’ll see.”
“Is that open-minded?” Martina asked.
“It’s protecting my show. I like doing that program. I want to host it daily, not monthly.”
“Okay.” Martina slurped the coffee off the bottom of her cup, then set the cup aside. “I’ll bring her in for a prelim interview, how’s that? I’m sure she doesn’t have any background papers.”
“Sounds good,” I said. I grabbed the check, took Martina’s money from under the water glass, and threw the bills at her. “I said I was buying.”
“I’m not your date, Linameyer.”
I slid out of the booth. “I’m feeling guilty for bringing you here. Let me be a good American and clear my soul by throwing money at the problem.”
She laughed and stood beside me. Sandusky grunted as he climbed out of the booth.
“So, you never said. Was the ballet good?” I asked.
“Linda said their lines were off.” He took his coat off the back of the booth. “But I thought their lines were just fine.” There was enough of a leer in his statement to make Martina glare at him. He shrugged, the picture of innocence. “Then, what do I know about ballet?”
* * * *
I had the large reel-to-reel on edit and held both reels with the tips of my fingers, my gaze on the tape brushing up against the playback head. Senator Kasten slurred his words. I couldn’t find the beginning of the sentence. Somehow the senator managed to make the phrase, “Such a stupid bag of wind. He had no right to win a primary let alone an election,” sound like “Suchastupid baga windy dino right to winaprim ary letalone anlection.” I’d been struggling with that foot of tape for nearly fifteen minutes, trying to find a place to cut it. A truncated version of the Kasten interview was supposed to air at six. I would be lucky if I had it done for the next morning.
Sandusky had tried to talk with me for three days about Martina. I didn’t want to hear him. I wanted to make my own decision about her— and Sandusky seemed to want me to think like he did.
The studio door clicked shut. I turned, prepared to defend my studio time—I had had the four hours blocked off for nearly a week—when I saw Martina. She leaned against the door and smiled at me, almost hidden by the rack for the cassette player and the Dolby equalizer.
“My roommate’s outside,” she said. “You want to do that prelim interview now?”
I wound the tape back, then played it forward. “Can you hear where this breaks?” I said.
“Kasten has a southern Wisconsin mush-mouth. It could take you all day.” She advanced to the console and leaned against its side like a kid on his first station tour. “I had to work real hard to get her here.”
I sighed. I still hadn’t scheduled anyone for the Thursday show. And no one but that night’s producer would care if the Kasten piece was fifteen seconds shorter than planned. “All right,” I said. “But it has to be quick. And let’s do it in here. I don’t want to lose my studio time.”
“Gotcha.” Martina gave me a thumbs-up and let herself out the door. I bent over the reel-to-reel, rewound it, then moved very slowly. Finally I heard something that could pass for a pause. I marked the tape with a grease pencil, slid the tape forward and placed it on the cutter. The door creaked open as I ran a razor blade through the white grease mark. Then I press
ed “Play” and listened to Kasten finish that stupid sentence. I made another grease mark and pushed away from the machine.
Martina stood next to a small, willowy woman who looked tall because she was so thin. “Ben Linameyer, this is Rosaura Correga.”
I held out my hand. After a moment, Rosaura took it. Her fingers felt as brittle as sticks. “It’s a pleasure,” I said.
“Gracias,” she murmured.
“Have a seat,” I said, indicating the plastic chair on her side of the console. After a quick glance at Martina, Rosaura sat down. “You do speak English, don’t you?”
“Si, señor.” Then she smiled a little. “Yes. Yes, I do.”
Her English was not heavily accented, something important if I were going to do an hour-long call-in program with her. “Did Martina tell you what we’re thinking of doing?”
Full Spectrum 3 - [Anthology] Page 14