Ariel Gore: Santa Fe Noir

Anyways, I knocked on her door and walked into her office. She’s a little younger than me, with long black hair. She was dressed nice, in a gray suit jacket and sensible pants and shoes. She looked up and gasped; I guess the bandage on the head shocked her a little bit. “Holy shit, Andy!” she let out, which made me smile. It was pretty funny to catch her off guard this time.

It took a bit of explaining to finish the whole story for her. I guess it must have been pretty interesting, because she made me wait while she ran out and brought back two Styrofoam cups of coffee. At the end of it, I pulled out the plastic baggie with the arrowhead in it and gave it to her. She huffed a little at it being handled this way, but put on her own gloves and took it out, giving it a thorough examination. She even used a magnifying glass. I didn’t know those were a real thing.

At the end, though, she grimaced. “Andy, I hate to say it, but this is a fake,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s a pretty good one, but the chipping is a little too regular along this edge, and it’s worn with patterns reminiscent of a small buffing tool... We’d have to do some radiometric dating to be positive, but yeah, I don’t think it’s legitimate. Sorry.” She frowned slightly.

I knew the feeling. I thought about Charles Redmond, dying in the cold out at the campground. Did he know? Was he the forger, or was he just some guy stuck with something he and everyone else thought was going to make him rich? Did he think he’d stumbled on the stuff dreams are made of?

“So what now?” she asked, after I’d apparently let the silence sit too long.

“FBI takes over. Probably nothing happens to O’Shaughnessy. She’s got a lot of money for lawyers. Katzenberg’s sure to sell a lot more books.”

“No, Andy,” she said, still frowning. “What about you now?”

I thought about my answer long and hard. “I think,” I said, curious about how things would turn out, and especially when the meth heads would show up, “that I’m gonna take a nap.”

Santa Fe Railyard

She stood behind her table at the farmers market holding a rose-colored heirloom tomato in her clean hands like a beloved.

I licked my lips, savored the cold breeze on my cheeks.

“You must be Juliet,” she said softly.

And I gotta say, this was a fantasy so wholesome I’d never allowed myself anything like it: I mean, she grew tomatoes with those clean hands.

“I am,” I whispered, trying to match her cadence. “I’m Juliet.”

Her cheeks dimpled, just a little, when she smiled. “Try a slice?”

I wanted to see her fingernails pierce the skin of that tomato, but I knew she was too careful for that. “I’d love to try a slice.”

She lowered her gaze to my tits. “I’m Molly,” she said.

Have I only been out of prison forty-eight hours?

Molly set the whole tomato on a live-edged cutting board and she knifed through it, letting the juice and seeds gush onto her hand. “I noticed from your paperwork that you don’t have any gardening experience,” she said, “but I appreciated where you said you’d make up for it with passion.”

My chest felt tingly.

Molly tilted her cutting board toward me and I took a slice between my thumb and index fingers, brought it to my lips.

I can make up for it with passion, all right.

Molly didn’t ask me why I’d skipped the prison gardening program. It would have been a valid question. I knew girls who dreaded parole they were so into that goddamn organic program.

Honestly, I’m not sure what I’d have said if she’d asked.

Truth is, dirt reminded me of burial. Reminded me of San Lorenzo Park and the Willamette River. I needed to put all that behind me now.

Molly didn’t ask me what I did with my time inside instead of the gardening, either. I liked that she didn’t need to pry, but I wanted to tell Molly things about my life. Is that weird? You ever want to tell somebody all about yourself? Give them some reason to think you’re special?

I read a lot of Murakami in prison, that’s what I would have told her if she’d asked. The truth. I had this idea to start telling the truth more often. Murakami. And I went to the pagan women’s circle on Friday afternoons. Maybe nothing you’d ever get invited to give a TED Talk about, but it was a life.

I liked the way anything could happen in a Murakami novel: fish fall from the sky, a psychic hooker starts calling you out of the blue, you find your lost cat. All this crazy shit could happen and in the end it was like nothing happened. You go on with your life. You look up at the sky.

I liked the way the witch lady who ran the pagan group made you feel that way too — only different. Her name was Star. When she first introduced herself, I thought she said Scar . I said, “Scar? That’s kind of tough.”

“No,” she laughed. “ Star . But you can call me Scar if you want to.”

We were both sitting on plastic chairs with steel legs bolted to the floor. It’s like you’re always in an airport but you can’t go anywhere.

“And you are?” She hesitated for my answer.

I said the first thing that popped into my head: “Juliet.” Then I worried that sounded stupid.

Scar had to know what name I was in there under, I realized that. But I like a girl who understands that not everybody wants to be called by the name they’re in under. She had a hole in her nostril where a nose ring should go, but no nose ring. She said she was a witch, had a PhD in witchcraft or something because I guess you can get those now? Like, it’s late-stage feminism or something since I’ve been inside. Anyway, on Fridays we sat on those plastic chairs with steel legs bolted and sometimes I was the only one there besides Scar and sometimes a few other girls, and either way, Scar would lead us in these meditations, instructing us to visualize roots coming out of our feet. Like actual plant roots, right? She said, “Visualization is the most powerful tool I’ve ever found to reclaim my own agency.”

And I liked the sound of that. I had some agency I wanted to reclaim. Yes, I did. So I showed up in that fluorescent-lit room every Friday afternoon and I imagined roots coming out of my feet.

Sometimes I asked myself, Where does magical thinking end and schizophrenia begin? But I never did have an answer for that, so I put the question out of my mind.

Scar said, “Do you have a mantra, Juliet?”

And I didn’t want to not have a mantra so I made one up right then and there. I said, “Yeah, I got a mantra. It goes, Outta here outta here outta here .”

Scar’s teeth stuck out when she grinned. “I like that,” she said, “and I want to invite you to take it further. What if you imagined the life you desire, not just the escape?”

And that right there was pretty much a revelation. I’d never imagined anything but escape. Still, I didn’t exactly know where or how to start. Imagine the life you desire , I told myself, but I didn’t listen. I visualized roots and I chanted silently, Outta here outta here outta here .

Mostly I did that on Friday afternoons with Scar, but this one night, it’s Thursday, right? And I’m as alone as I ever got in there and I’m reading Murakami and fish are falling from the sky and psychic hookers start calling out of the blue and you just know he’s about to find his lost cat and I’m thinking, I could write a book as good as this, easy , and I get this idea to start visualizing roots, just like Scar taught us. So, the roots are growing out of my feet like bunions. They’re clawing out through the skin of my soles and then through my mattress and down through the bottom of my bunk and into the cement and my roots penetrate the ground and that’s when I realized I can tunnel down with my roots, right? I’m getting crazy into this visualization and I’m sure I’m gonna open my eyes and I’ll have tunneled right out and into Our Table Co-op to buy myself a bag of squash, and I’m picturing everything — vivid, like outta here — but when I open my eyes I’m still in my cell. And that’s when I think, Well, shit. Scar’s bullshit doesn’t work.