Ariel Gore - Santa Fe Noir

Signs of Dry were everywhere up in that high desert; the air was swimming with sunlight and juniper pollen and dust and microscopic things too small to see and name, too dense to ignore. The world of Dry had been getting into Bella’s insides and her outsides and making her thirstier than going three days without booze already had. It was in the space between her eyeballs and her eyelids, wedging its way between layers of skin inside her chalky hands, getting into the long follicles of black hair, making them crackle like tiny, quiet wildfires; it was even creeping into the places in her body that were supposed to be wet: her lips, her tongue, down her dark pink throat, and then all the way up the other end of her, between her legs where pleasure, the very bud of her, still waited. Even her nipples were still tucked completely inside her chest, tiny and shelled, and so it made sense to Bella after three months of living in Santa Fe that she had once and for all found an earthscape where life was waiting beneath the surface of things, because it still waited inside of her.

What could that inside wetness feel like? How would it feel to be so wet you could finally orgasm? She had heard so many stories of what orgasms felt like from the women in her life. She wanted to know what it was like to feel those waves of hot move her toward that kind of bliss. Because that would feel entirely different to the burning feel of splintering rope moving in and outside of her every time she did have sex, like she was part of some stupid herd of cattle, taking turns, trudging forward and backward under a dark-gray sky.

She restarted the engine and sped through all the yellow lights down St. Francis Drive.

Carrie’s house was a two-story gray adobe located in the north part of town, just off West Alameda and close to the small co-op and a coffee shop where hipsters hung out and wrote poetry and screenplays. As soon as Bella got out of her car, half a dozen black cats swarmed around her feet. “Oh, pardon me, excuse me!” she said, and laughed as they purred and rubbed against her calves.

“Well, hello there, stranger!” Carrie ignored Bella’s hand and came in for a hard hug instead. It took Bella’s breath away. “Nice hair. You look good.” Carrie had makeup on and her hair was swept up in a tight bun, but her large brown eyes were the same. Large and full of gold and black specks.

“Oh, thank you. It needs a cut.” Bella ran her fingers through it. It had never felt so dry.

“Well, I can see you’ve met the posse. Turns out the black cat superstition is especially strong in a town like Santa Fe. But it’s not their fault how they look, is it?”

Bella looked down at a cat with different-colored eyes and decided he was the cutest of the bunch.

Carrie picked him up. “Well hello, Oscar!” she said into his face, before motioning Bella to follow her. “So,” she called over her shoulder, “I guess you haven’t lived here long enough to know you’ll have to put gobs of coconut oil into your hair. It’ll help with the dryness, I promise!”

Bella followed Carrie down the cool hallway and into a large kitchen with terra-cotta tile floors and a kiva fireplace in the corner of the room. The whole space was flooded with color. It was beautiful.

“Wow,” Bella said, amazed. “I’ve never seen a fireplace inside a kitchen.”

“Yeah, it’s an old Santa Fe thing. You can have a fire while you’re making a snack.”

“My gosh, how nice.”

“Yeah, it’s a shame — most other houses around this area are like cinder-block dungeons. Made fast and cheap. Not with real wood ceilings or in the real adobe way. Come with me for a sec. I was just finishing up with something.”

Outside the kitchen, three large black pots stood three feet from one another. Each had a different design of turquoise inlay. “I’m just getting ready to ship these to a gallery in Texas.”

“Oh, are these yours? Amazing, Carrie! I had no idea.” Bella came in for a closer look.

“Yeah, they’re mine. Let me just finish this.” Carrie began cutting large swaths of bubble wrap before wrapping each vessel.

The last time they’d seen each other they were fourteen and probably friends because they’d been the token ethnic kids at their Catholic boarding school in New Hampshire. They’d always been shocked by how much their classmates owned. Their rooms were full of down duvets, feather mattresses, velvet hair accessories, plush rugs, Beverly Hills creams, and French perfumes. Even Bella’s and Carrie’s mothers, who both worked in restaurants, wouldn’t have been able to afford such fancy items. Bella did her homework in Carrie’s room because of all the rooms at the dorm, she felt most comfortable there. It smelled like fast food and chips and the linoleum floor was bare like in her own room.

“So, what have you been up to?” Bella managed to smile, knowing how flat and stupid her question must have sounded.

Carrie cut a piece of packing tape and wound it around and around the bubble-wrapped vase. She draped a faded quilt over it and sat down with a sigh. “Geez, I don’t know. It’s been, what, twenty years?”

Bella nodded. She wanted some good news. Anything to get out of herself. The cold sweat covering her chest and back was giving her the chills.

“Well, I got married and divorced. Lost my parents. Worked as a waitress. Work as an aesthetician up at Ten Thousand Waves now.” She winked. “I’m excited for us to be coworkers up there. Sort of like the old days.”

“Oh. I’m sorry to hear about your parents.”

“No, it’s okay.”

“Well, I see that you still don’t go by Caroline.”

“That’s right, it’s still Carrie.” Her eyes brightened. “But now I introduce myself as, I’m Carrie, like Stephen King’s Carrie , so there’s that.”

Bella smiled. “Yeah, true. That tells me something.”

“Then I’ll tell people something like, But I don’t seek revenge on young white girls I knew in high school , because people around here might want to know that kind of thing. You know — with all the liberal white guilt and all.” She laughed, and grabbed an orange from a bowl on the ground. “No, you and I both know those little bitches didn’t know any better.”

“And what about the Korean girls?”

Carrie snickered. “Of course not, I love you. I’ve always loved you.”

Bella fidgeted with her hands. Such declarations made her uncomfortable.

Carrie elbowed her leg. “But you do remember them, don’t you, Bella? Those arrogant princesses with their black Mastercards and their feather beds. Meanwhile — meanwhile — we had magazine ads decorating our walls and our late-night stashes were the cheapy instant ramens and Doritos.”

“Yeah. It sucked.” Bella pushed a few pebbles around with her sneaker and shivered. The sun had dipped behind the mountains while they were talking.

They had constantly complained about their classmates, but Bella knew, and she knew Carrie knew, that they would have traded in their “real” for the other girls’ “fancy” in a second, and probably still would.

“You used to introduce yourself a little differently back in the day.”

“Ha! Right. Something like, Hi! I’m Carrie, like a fairy! I know.” She shook her head. “So stupid.” She finished peeling her orange and offered Bella a section.

“No, it made me laugh!” She glanced at the orange. “No thank you.”

“Well, you were the only one, I think. Sort of innocent, both of us.”

“Yeah.”

Carrie bit her lip. She watched Bella move pebbles around with her sneaker. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I hate that word, innocent . It’s a stupid, stupid word.”