Ariel Gore - Santa Fe Noir

A handsome man in his forties was sitting by the fireplace, sipping from a white paper cup.

The spa hostess introduced the two of them to each other before bowing to the guest and then bowing to Bella.

Bella smiled as she always did during the ritual, thinking the whole affair of white people bowing to each other was sort of ridiculous.

“I’m Chris,” he said, extending his hand. He had a friendly smile but his eyes were wet and unfocused and he stank of alcohol.

As soon as they touched, Bella saw bright red. She felt a stinging in her right temple.

“I’m also drunk,” he said, kicking one of his blue slippers off his foot.

Mary, the spa hostess, immediately picked it up with both hands, bowed, and placed it before the man’s bare foot.

“Your restaurant has the best sakes outside of Japan. It’s true! I tried them all.”

Bella motioned him to the double doors. “We’re upstairs in Sakura. Follow me.”

It was an unusually warm night outside. The two climbed the wood staircase, then headed past the communal tub and down a long hallway. When they reached the blue tapestry with the image of a moon and two red-eyed cranes on it, Bella was still wondering where she had seen this man before. Something familiar was circling around her. Something evil.

“Don’t I know you? You look so familiar.” She closed the door behind them and locked it. She pointed to the black hook on the wall, then raised the edge of the sheet and towel off the massage table, and looked away. “Go ahead and hang your kimono up on that hook and then lie facedown. We can adjust the face cradle if it’s uncomfortable.”

The man got on the table and Bella immediately covered him.

“Did you go to college out east?” Chris asked.

“No, west. UCLA.”

“I see. Class of ’99?”

“Yeah that’s right. ’99.”

Bella dropped the towel and sheet over the naked man’s body and folded the sheet back up around his back and legs. She walked around the perimeter of the table and smoothed out all the wrinkles. She undraped the man’s back, squirted some lotion and warm oil into her hands, and worked her forearm and elbow over a dozen points along his spine.

“Oh, that’s amazing. Like you know exactly where to go.”

Bella kept working, trying to concentrate on just the skin and the muscles and the tendons of the man, not on the man himself. Not the red she was seeing or the stinging in her head that was getting stronger by the minute. She closed her eyes and said her usual prayer: Help me give this person what he needs. But the man’s energy felt dark, like oil and thick poison beneath her hands; she could feel it trying to move up into her insides and she trembled, then stepped away.

Chris raised his head suddenly. “Wait a second, I remember! You were one of the bad girls at St. John’s Academy, weren’t you? You and that funny friend of yours, Carrie. You guys used to steal the wine for Sunday Mass and get drunk in your dorm rooms!”

Her back stiffened. “Ooh, that’s right. That was me”

“Like the boys, that’s right. Man! We were all such bad seeds back then, weren’t we?”

“I think we were just being kids.” Things were getting blurry and a few tears rolled down her cheeks. The pain at her temple was getting unbearable. She would do anything for a drink.

“God, it was a crazy time, wasn’t it? All that pressure for Harvard, the all-nighters with Jolt and Ritalin — but I do! I remember your face! Didn’t we party together or something?”

Bella quietly wept into the back of her hand and leaned back onto the wood table holding the scented sprays. She wiped the wet snot from her mouth and chin. Do you also remember taking turns with all the other boys and being so fucking polite to each other while you were being so hard to me and to my insides that now I can’t even grow a baby even if I want to? Do you remember your parents paying off my parents to take me out of school nice and quiet like nothing had even happened? Her lips were curling and uncurling and her mouth was starting to ache from gritting her teeth so hard. It felt like her skull might explode from all that pressure.

He chuckled. “That’s right, you were better than the other girls? More sincere. Less makeup.” His voice was much higher back then and his hands were different, not soft and conditioned by the tub and rich hand creams from the spa. They were cold and sticky fourteen-year-old hands that he had put all over her after he yanked off her tights and underwear at the railroad tracks. She had fought them off, hadn’t she? Kicked mud into his face, into all four boys’ faces, put up a fight before they pushed her so hard into the mud that she thought she heard something go crack in her back, but then her face went smack into the mud too, cold and nasty and full of shit smells. And then someone flipped up her skirt and Chris was the first to get his cold little hands all over her before he was shouting, I’m inside! I’m inside! And then after the burning from him, there was another burning, another, and then another. Bella had been touched all over by four boys’ grimy hands and their sweaty hips and thighs and blood-thick genitals, but all Bella could think about with each turn was how different each boy’s hands felt as he used her body to push and pull up against. And then after the high fives and the zipping up of pants and a pat on her bare butt, there was nothing. She was alone. The sun had gone down, leaving her freezing cold with just her tunnels of air in the mud.

“So — are we getting a massage here or what?”

“Oh, I was just going to say it’s time to scoot down a few inches and turn over.”

Bella removed the face cradle and went to place the foam bolster under his knees. She placed her hands on both of his shoulders and tried to ignore his erection.

“You have the most amazing touch, you know that?”

Don’t do it, don’t. Please don’t. Bella wanted with all her might to disappear herself or the man. Either would be fine.

“Say, would you, you know... touch me?”

Bella glanced over at the crockpot set on high heat, and could see herself pouring the hot water onto the man’s disgusting face. His shit-talking face. It would melt his face like crayon.

“You know — I remember you too. I remember the last time I saw you; we were at the railyard tracks and there was a lot of rain and mud. Remember that?”

Chris’s lips twitched.

“I remember wearing a new green skirt but it was cold and none of you offered your varsity coats.” She suspended her hands over Chris’s chest and up around his neck and face. Energy work, she was telling herself. It might help move all that darkness and poison out of his system, regenerate him into something better than his past.

Chris smiled. “I do remember us having some fun at the railyard once.” He began rubbing his palms against his chest in slow circles and curling and relaxing his toes. His hands stopped. “What the—”

He batted away the rice bag from his eyes and blinked. But the blood had already started. The whites of his eyes were filling with dark red and blood streaked down the sides of his face. It dribbled out of the nostrils, the ears. The sheet bloomed deep crimson beneath his head.

“What’s happening? What’s happening?”

Bella stood up and screamed. Bright red veins covered both her feet, and she pulled up the hem of her pants to see tiny red lines going up over her ankle bones and branching up over her calf muscles. In shock, she looked down at her arms and her hands and they were covered as well. In the mirror across the room, her veiny face was almost unrecognizable.

Red was ballooning onto the white linens and Chris shook his head and cried. The blood ran in all directions down his face. “Why can’t I move? What’s going on? Help me! Jesus, help me, will you?”