Ariel Gore - Santa Fe Noir

Other voices swarmed the tables: President knows what he’s doing. He’s gonna screw Korea. It’s like when two mad dogs face off. There won’t be any World War III. Tall tales. Rumors. Lost-my-car-title blues. All I regret about my last stint is that my daughter died. A stroke. I dunno. I think they might have took her out just to hurt me again. Seems they’ll do anything to hurt prisoners

Hey. My lease is up this month. The real reason I’m splitting is it’s past time to join up with cousin. My cousin? Remember. He’s in a militia in Oregon—

It’s a crock.

Listen. Not to Giggles. Giggles snarling. Is he hot shit in Texas?

Listen. He didn’t escape from prison. He escaped while he was on work detail.

Right under their noses. Part of what this manhunt is about is they’re embarrassed.

Next. Helicopters. Manhunts.

Leo remembered he still had the latest Santa Fe New Mexican . Stained: foodstuff all over the front-page photo. Greens, blues, ketchup. Colors of police sirens and, yeech , blood. He waited to hear the victims’ names. Lisa Marie Bennett. Or Marie-Jose Jaramillo. When he stood, he got up to stuff the Santa Fe New Mexican in the trash.

Red alert.

Schroeder approached. Since Leo didn’t want to engage, he split toward the exit. Bums bowed and blanketed in tableau along the walkways resembled a refugee camp. He heard rain. Storm rumblings. Nobody who changed shirts, shoes, and socks sparingly appreciated rain. The murkiness oozed lava lamp — like into the shadowless horizon. He backtracked. He spoke inexpressively to the lunch-line server: “Can I have a second plate?”

“Pardon me. Everybody gets two plates. You’ve already had your two.”

In the background he heard Giggles snapping that she wasn’t a cigarette bank. Bums and winos should scalp smokes at the Santa Fe Cigar Shop.

“This is my second plate.”

“I’ve seen you in line twice. I’ll have to ask Schroeder if we can let someone have three plates.”

“Don’t ask Schroeder nothing. Okay. Okay?”

The lunch-line lady signaled Schroeder.

Leo began walking toward the exit. Shadows filled the distance. And he knew what all the bums were thinking: How hard, how bad . Then he realized the soiled newspaper was still in his hands. He folded the paper at a point that cut the suspect’s eyes, while he lifted the garbage top.

Giggles at that precise moment asked him to see his New Mexican. “Crazy shit,” she said. “I knew her,” she added, less ambiguously, since the other headline threatened nuclear war.

“Lisa Marie Bennett?”

“No.”

Names stuck in his head. “Marie-Jose Jaramillo?”

“How’s everything going? How are we feeling?” Schroeder asked.

“No trouble here.” Giggles intuited that Leo didn’t want to answer.

Schroeder recorded infractions.

“Wait a sec. Should you be here? Didn’t I say you were on suspension?”

“That was way, way back,” Leo mumbled.

“Oh. It’s you. Leo. You’re not on suspension.”

Leo drawled his words out: “Good. Everybody talks. Nobody listens.”

“Who did you think he was?” Giggles piped in.

Schroeder was conciliatory. “I’m listening. Seriously. Where do you stay? How have you been?”

Giggles pointed at the photo in the Santa Fe New Mexican . “That guy who broke loose?”

“The killer. He’ll do it again. Sometime.” Schroeder smiled, shrugged. Befuddled.

Leo thought: Gimme . And snatched the newspaper away. “I gotta use it for toilet paper.” He tossed his hand like a salt pinch over his shoulder. He reread the section that stated the cops had reasons to believe —

Faces: while reading he saw prematurely wrinkled faces — faces regardless of chronological ages withered inside balls of flesh to the point that physical ailments and psychological tics appeared interchangeably sourceless. The bad skin. The cracked stare. Stringy, scraggly, silvery hair camouflaging a profile. Looks like me, sure . Photo looked like every white homeless guy who badly needed a shave.

He thought: Me. Him. Just like the lady got me confused with somebody else. He finger-drummed the newspaper photo. Wondered about it. Wouldn’t I be a wonder boy with a mirror and a comb?

Been too long. Been too long.

Think happy thoughts. Flowers. Pastels. Big blooms. Day that me and Giggles panhandled. Giggles had the idea that selling some trinkets would be sweetest; when she returned thirty minutes later she pushed a shopping cart full of floral arrangements.

Q: How in the hell did she get them? The blooms?

A: Giggles — she of course giggled her rejoinder — rummaged the bins where they dumped the flowers after burying the stiffs.

That’s bs.

Nope. Cute, right? Or irony. Or irony?

He had to pee. And shit. Port-o-lets outside. He wrested the handle. Oh, there she was, Giggles sat on the Port-o-let toilet hole, shooting up.

Before leaving, he remembered images, sounds, sensations from his hours at Pete’s Place: Giggles shooting up on the toilet; heat, heat on his tongue; the storm raising up New Mexico dust; a woman crying, crying that she’d lost everything. Crying until he couldn’t take it anymore. Crying until her sobs blurred with the rain: a perfect musical accompaniment. Rain, after all, was the sound of disappointment.

He waited too long before he started biking back to the trailer. His mistake was uncapping the Smirnoff. That vodka burned a hole in his shoes, worse than the holes in his memory. He finally began pedaling, pedaling harder, like he believed his velocity could retrieve the hours lost. A big downpour whistled his way. It surreptitiously caught him — he couldn’t say by surprise given that he had taken a measured risk. Say: It hit. Like a feint. Like a fist. It sang its refrain of—

Disappointment. Disappointment. Disappointment .

His disappointment with himself, his bottle, or Giggles, her needle. He veered into the parking lot at Santa Fe Place mall, hung around beneath the walkway awnings, watching the storm transforming Southside Santa Fe into a vacant window. Picturing his “home” leaking. New leaks every big storm. Picturing Giggles’s habit. He preferred not having to see it. He still imagined he could “get with” her. He suffered stupid dreams like that involving the few women (scratch, last human beings) he regularly communicated with.

Hey Leo. Paupers. Addicts. Lost souls. Ain’t they your people?

Yeah. Alley cats were his people. The problem remained. The answers lay wrapped inside nuances as subtle as the rain — and hushed voices — because Leo rarely heard simple answers without hearing the contrariness wrapped inside them. The problem remained that his people stank. They couldn’t help it. They stank perennially. It was bearable by himself, or maybe with two or three tired, woozy, and drunken others. But when they were crowded together in shelter spaces like at Pete’s Place, the stink escalated beyond nausea. Rain, sludge, and rot worsened it.

They stank. They raged.

They raged because they’d been kicked out of homes; kicked out of apartments; kicked out of overpriced Motel 6s. They raged because they’d gone too long feeling threatened, solitary, going hungry, and then when they collected nickels and dimes they were still obstinately criticized; still hassled by business owners who controlled where they could and couldn’t sit or sleep, and if they stuck around they got cuffed by the cops. They raged because at the shelter — in lieu of housing assistance, or small sums — they were given clothes, lots of hand-me-down coats, shawls, slacks; hey, somebody found a silk shirt inside the Pete’s Place clothes donation closet. Then without other assistance they were told to do something — get a life — get a job — but the miscellany was invariably soiled; the personnel had forgotten how little good a new shirt had done them pursuing their own dreams.