Ariel Gore - Santa Fe Noir

Identify the strains: multiple, or simultaneous, voices of sympathy, cynicism and irony. Like listening to the counselors at Pete’s Place proposing plans, services, options . They spoke with voices within voices — like suspiciously multivoiced instruments — and as you listened you repeatedly heard the words forms, applications, time lines , like sticks and stones battering within the windiness of storm and possibility. Chance, really. Listen, listen to contrapuntal rain voices: lullaby and lament told you what you should expect. Personal embarrassment. Failure. Grief.

Before he hit the road, he remembered. He unzipped his backpack. He pulled out a plastic throw-over. Remember where you got that parka? From the clothes closet at Pete’s Place? That ain’t helped you none, Mr. Prick? The point remained that the counselors at Pete’s couldn’t acknowledge the futility of goddamn everything. Homeless cats already with nothin’ should expect no less than...

Disappointment. Disappointment. Disappointment.

Traffic began looking scary, so he set his teeth to the wind, and he couldn’t stop when the Santa Fe New Mexican in his pocket billowed; the pages separated hitting the ground. He briefly tendered the thought of retrieving them as they tumbled windily away. He didn’t need them to prove his point. The social workers dealt with facsimiles. Pitying the homeless. The mental illnesses. The addictions. The self-destructive behaviors. Nobody hoped to name the fuel to the fire. Rage. Homeless killer. Big deal. The real deal was homelessness, helplessness, and rage. He skidded.

He stymied the worst that could happen by flinging his foot down like an anchor. Thinking hurt. Thoughts like these exhausted him. Damn. If the homeless rage ever cut loose, could be a bloodbath. He muckily regrouped. But before he wobbled less than a mile — like a pilot in the mountains regaining his perspective above the view — he slipped again. The difficulty was partially the darkness, partially the rage that consumed him, past exhaustion. He lay watching his bike wheel spin, water filling his socks. He didn’t recognize the first street sign: the second: the area: the neighborhood. Details missed the mark. He had no idea how long he had been oblivious, or biking the wrong way.

Damn residential neighborhoods.

Never been a problem in the past. He had the knack; he could fall asleep anywhere.

He huddled inside a stark alley facing a wall mural; winged angels; horny devils; a knight hoisting a sword; he couldn’t tell for the life of him whether the mural was religious, facetious, or pornographic. So, the psycho had been homeless, huh, Leo’s last thought, before blankness. He startled awake. He reconsidered: never lie down beneath angels and demons.

Spanish music wafted in the dark. Realized he was in the barrio somewhere. What happened? Rage wouldn’t answer. He wasn’t sure how he had ended up lost in the city where he used to hustle rides. He dreamed he was a taxi man again. The car radio kept playing the same song, “Fire and Rain,” over and over. And wasn’t this an irony? He’d been trapped in a house fire — how long ago now? — and since then he lived mostly in a leaky trailer. Get it? Oh, I’ve seen fire / And I’ve seen rain. And fire. And rain.

Bugs. Creepy crawlers sidled his clothes; his skin pores had begun itching like a virus spread over him. He shuffled, slow as Sisyphus. His rock was homelessness, drunkenness, rage; they dissipated; they left behind lethargy. He walked his bike across the street to the less residential area. Fast food palaces, convenience stores, and garbage dumpsters promised safety. He stumbled on a metal post. Past nights, he might have tied a string between the drive-in sign and his bike, so that somebody approaching with bad intentions carelessly tripped up. He was too tired, so he curled up. Worming, so to speak, becoming wormier, wormier, until he reached a place colder in his bones than his wet clothes. Then Giggles appeared, her apparition. An avatar. She pulled up her sleeve. He expected to see her needle marks; but instead she kept haranguing, Something is wrong, Leo. Wake up, Leo. Something is really, really wrong; and, at first, he wasn’t sure whether he was hallucinating when a Honda pulled directly across from him; headlights illuminating the interior faces; a woman in the passenger seat screamed.

Bright lights. An open mouth. A flash of tongue. A smear of red lipstick. A scream.

Leo’s mind rehearsed the elements before he rearranged them into patterns. From this point on, he could barely distinguish what he saw or heard. In the place where he went sounds became pictures; pictures screamed and choked.

Screams became unfathomable distances.

Followed by a tall, trampish man distinguished by a hairy mane who vaguely resembled Leo — ten years past — a woman scrambled from the beige car.

The objects described in the headlines. Did he see them? Or hear them? The blunt instruments. The knife. A broken shoe skittered across the sidewalk. Did he see it? Did the sounds create the pictures? Or the images redouble the sounds?

The woman lay strewn; the man had begun kicking her. The darkness leavened nearest the dead, dying, or damaged body.

Leo must have looked once. Or twice. Long enough to see the killer pull a set of cable wires. Darted a glance long enough to know not to look in that direction again.

Like a nightmare. Seventy-five percent of Americans have nightmares in bed. This guy Leo Malley can have ’em anywhere.

Terror. Moans. Silence. He had heard Spanish music all night. Then suddenly silence descended like a knife, and the aftermath was a dissipated revel. A beat party scene. Dreams were fragmented. His worst bad dreams invariably repeated. He relived them twice over, so he waited for the violence he had witnessed to replay. Distance, perspective, and contingent reality kept going. The forward-moving clock hands kept going. Like the Honda, riding on the brakes, rolling slowly, slowly away.

He climbed on his bike. He followed, pretending to be someplace else. Anyplace else. Pretending he was panhandling roses. And he made seventy-five cents. And Giggles made eight bucks. And he made three bucks. And Giggles made $23.68. And he scored forty-one dollars. Get real. He never scored forty-one dollars. He washed out. Giggles maxed out at sixty-five bucks. Leo Malley sold two roses. Net earnings. Net economic worth: $3.85. Wake up, Leo, he thought. The neighborhood was like a great big room that he could close his eyes inside, believing, with ease, all his problems, his helplessness, his homelessness, was stuff he could straighten out in the morning. The Honda rumbled, paused, swerved.

It swerved into the dead-end alley, wriggled, like a snake entering a hole. Leo paused at the very tip of the turning place, remembering the alley was blind. “I ain’t gonna look,” he muttered, like the moment in a dream when you promise yourself you won’t look. You won’t descend the staircase. You won’t enter the cellar. You won’t risk turning the corner. Nobody keeps the promise.

Nobody.

He saw the killer in tableau beneath the mural phantasmagoria.

He’s bigger than me , Leo thought, studying him from the back. He’s got a decade on me. Stands straighter than me. He’s a big mossy tree . There was a mantra Leo used in past times when he needed to steel his nerves. There were times on the streets when the fear maximized: fear of strangers and gangs, fear of cops and business owners. His mantra was, Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. And occasionally varying Fuck with self-deprecations. Leo Malley, white trash, $3.85 man. Then varying those with raw epithets. Bitch. Wets. Cunts. Niggers. Fuck. Fuck. Bitch. Wets. Cunts. Niggers. Bitch. Wets. Cunts. Niggers. It wasn’t a particularly noble mantra. Shameless. He couldn’t mean the killer. Or why couldn’t he? The fact that they were both white guys sharpened the edge. The repetition over and over in his head convinced him he was colder, less human, less vulnerable — since he was a crestfallen white guy, maybe he liked that type of language. He wasn’t even sure whether he directed the disgusting epithets at himself. A distinct zip added insult to injury. A fly unzippering. He heard a sharp zip and a plunky trickle. The instant he heard the killer pissing, Leo picked up his bike. He charged.