Ariel Gore - Santa Fe Noir

Please turn around.

Do you have any drugs, or knives, or concealed weapons on you?

Is that everything? Your items will be returned to you after we see them.

Saint Peter explained the preliminary frisks, when challenged. Policy required it for “clients” and “residents” planning to stay overnight. Funny, when the late-night legions gathered, smelling worse than a bucket of worms, then the big iron entryway opened, and then the crowd filed inside one by one, the brightness inside the corridor making it feel like ascending into heavenly light. The bottom line remained that every night guest performed Schroeder’s instructions: Empty your pockets. Spread your arms. Hands up. Arms out. Pull up your shirt. Let’s see your waistline. Guys, let’s get this done . Saint Peter would stretch his purgatorial hands. It got done.

Leo began feeling crowded, flinching inside his clothes. He couldn’t stand Schroeder’s hands, nor the way his face appeared out of the nowhere wearing a smile so wan it self-imploded like Silly Putty. And he couldn’t sleep in the shelter bunk beds, other bums in the room. The communal bedding brought back memories of his weeks hospitalized, weeks he couldn’t stop coughing, and then nights recuperating in a motel that some medical program subsidized before he hit Pete’s Place where each evening Schroeder jangled a little metal tray. He survived. But his feelings hardened. He weathered it, bridging the gap between fear, fantasy, and the zero/void.

Don’t be a crybaby, he told himself; but he was the same Leo Malley who blanked. He was the same Leo Malley who zero/voided. The ledge creeping closer, closer. The zero/void wasn’t a place of complete unconsciousness. The zero/void was like a film watched in a stormy theater where the projector frequently jammed; sections were omitted; the final showing resembled a camera obscura viewing.

No , he told himself, less convincingly. No couldn’t stymie something from happening. The hands became snakes; tiny serpents; cinematic adversaries. He believed, maybe on a blind, tactile level, he believed on that evening that Schroeder’s fingers brushed him someplace questionable. He shoved back, shouting, “Can I get a special shower? Are you trying to pull a rabbit out of my pants or something?” He stuffed his shirttails back inside his jeans.

Personnel filed inside. “Get the cops,” somebody cried, like the way they spur dogs to sic ’em, sic ’em . In Leo’s state of mind, it looked like three-dimensional shadows and murky shapes wearing Santa Fe Interfaith Community Shelter name tags surrounded him.

He brayed, “I’m calling this bs. Where you touched me is out of line, motherfucker!” He hoped the sound waves dispersed the threatening shadows. And although he was a sad, sad, paranoid piece of work, while he zero/voided in his semiconsciousness he appreciated getting a chance to assume a chest-thumping fight stance, while he spewed “bullshit” and “faggot” right in the faces of the house cats. He spun until his energy tapped. He woke up sunken and limp, like a wrung towel; his arm hung in a blood-pressure cuff.

Schroeder insisted to the Pete’s Place personnel — “This man has to go.”

Other people argued. Vis-à-vis his medical records. A notation following the house fire. Post-traumatic stress . Stress which could lead to personal-space issues .

Schroeder shot back that he was fine with Leo applying for Social Security disability because the staff could help him with the applications; nevertheless, faggot and crude language wasn’t—

Leo lost the next few sentences. He heard a heavy, heavy sigh, a protracted pause, sensed a signature moment, and by hook, or crook, the staff let him stay. One more night. Didn’t matter anyway. His bad conscience caught up with him, Ya blew it. ’Cept if ya apologize, wrestling with his zero/void angels. He wasn’t arguing that he shouldn’t apologize. He couldn’t. He couldn’t apologize because the house fire, and the cops and the hands; the hands; the hands inside the zero/void contrived to steal his last vestiges, the vestiges of his memories. And scraps

Things got better.

Leo happened to find an abandoned trailer near the city dump. He didn’t have to worry about personal space out there, except when the cops showed up — rainbow-colored lights freaking him out because officialdom had to know who was squatting. He avoided strangers. He biked to Pete’s Place twice a week, and said, Hello, cruel, cruel world. And consumed hot snacks. And news. And newspapers. Today’s news. A premonition. Somebody was going to ask him about the headline. Lisa Marie Bennett, or Marie-Jose Jaramillo. Headline: “Killings in Santa Fe.”

Leo Malley snapped out of his reverie, back into the moment.

Pete’s Place. Big crowd. Outside: Bums shoeless, sockless. Belongings crammed in shopping carts. Inside: Alley cat heaven. Feed me. Feed us.

“No bread,” Leo sullenly told the server.

The wrinkly faced woman’s demeanor epitomized the same-old-tired-same-old. She neither had much of an individualized face nor recognized individual faces. Proof: Missus Wrinkly Face responded by staring right at him sans comprehension.

She piled his plate with extra bread.

Leo sarcastically flashed a thumbs-up.

Mrs. Wrinkly Face responded belatedly, looking peeved.

The blackboard read:

Food was memory. The good ones. The crappy ones. Hot tamales. Mashed potatoes. Vegetables assorted. Bread. Day-old bread. Chef’s salad. Lunch: a beet salad and a bologna sandwich. Funny spaghetti combinations. Spaghetti with turkey. Spaghetti with ham. Corn beef. Enchiladas. Guacamole. Chicken legs. Bisque and pork ’n’ beans. Straight out the cans. Good. Bad. Crap. A stingy church group strictly served chef’s salads. Loaves sans fishes. Bums pretended it was okay. Remember that Giggles liked to say: “Santa Fe food is mush. Santa Fe style: sweet, sour, and sordid. Try swilling it all without getting sick.” Remember the lunch when a volunteer group served filet mignon? Gotta love it. Hope springs eternal.

“Did I eat all that? Don’t remember. I suck it down,” he grumbled, when Giggles finished her recitation of past meals.

He noticed that the woman across from him at the shelter table weighed maybe three hundred pounds. Blind. Near-blind. Handicapped. Homeless. She dipped her Sloppy Joe into her chocolate ice cream, then spilled her water cup into her broccoli salad. She swallowed without hesitating.

Giggles meanwhile shuffled her bare feet in and out of her goofy slippers, her bottoms still her pink pajamas from a night spent at the shelter.

“Do I mutter? This is what I got when I said, No bread .”

“Guess she didn’t hear you,” Giggles replied, pointing at his plate. She cupped her ear. “Watcha say?” She studied his plate colors: the blues, the greens, the juices bleeding into themselves.

In Leo’s mind images flashed: blue police car lights.

“Least at the county jail they give you plates with dividers,” a particularly well-dressed man with an accent argued.

“He’s Total Texas,” Giggles shot back, pointing at his cowboy hat.

The Texan smiled, tipping it.

Leo heard an edge in her voice. Funny, sometimes. Like Giggles’s humor. Nobody knew her real name. She slept at the shelter because she somehow knew a way to keep a penknife wrapped inside her favorite blanket.