Ariel Gore: Santa Fe Noir

I didn’t feel so anxious.

The smell of tomatoes and compost held me.

Are Juliets really her favorite?

Outside my trailer window, it had started to snow. I opened my flimsy metal door and stepped out into the cold and upgraded night.

I looked to the darkened windows of Molly’s house.

A cat leaped down from a low roof, ran ahead, and then turned back to me in the moonlight. I wanted fish to fall from the sky, but the snow felt like a fair substitute.

At the back of Molly’s yard, I pressed my hands into her compost, and I swear I had the worst Holy shit, I am hallucinating with all of my senses moment right then, because it was a goddamn fucking human arm.

I know what cold skin feels like.

I know what a goddamn human arm feels like. A decomposing fucking arm.

I buried it deeper, rushed to the next compost heap like a crazy person, and I started digging.

I uncovered a whole body — unrecognizable, but all of it.

Then just a skull.

I kept tunneling down and it was historical trauma and bones, flesh becoming roots.

And I gotta get outta here.

When I finally tunnel up, I’m at the bar at Tomasita’s waiting for my carne adovada and I’m nursing a Negro Modelo and this old man with a gray beard and a Panama hat offers to buy me a drink. I’m writing. He interrupts my writing to offer me the drink, right? And he says, “Do you know this used to be the old Santa Fe train station? Built in 1904. Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad. Called it the Chili Line.” And that’s pretty fucking obvious with the brick walls and brick arches. And normally I’d say, Listen, pal, you can take your drink and shove it up your ass , but I’m still trying to be a better person — or a person who does right even if she’s thinking wrong. The old man wants to know what I’m writing — like poetry or fiction or memoir or what? He says, “I want to write. I could write a book someday. But everybody’s got to die first.” And he laughs at that.

And right then the bartender puts the beer in front of me and right then, too, it occurs to me that maybe that’s why I kill people. Or why I killed people — past tense.

So I could write.

I mean, is that fucked up?

Maybe everybody’s gotta be dead, like the old man says.

You ever strangle somebody just to get them to shut the fuck up?

And it occurs to me that I miss the hell out of Scar.

I wonder what she’d say if I told her that — that I realized maybe I killed people so I could make art. So I could write.

And it occurs to me maybe that’s what Molly’s doing. Is she gonna kill me and compost me? Like maybe she doesn’t see it as immoral any more than I do. She does it for the tomatoes. Like she’s got a higher calling.

I bet Scar would get that, even if she thought it was fucked up.

Should I kill Molly first?

My order comes, garnished with shredded iceberg lettuce and pale pink diced tomatoes.

Maybe she would be right to compost me. Turn me into an heirloom she can hold in her clean hands.

You know, I once said to her, “Scar, I’ve gotten to a place in my life where I’m pretty sure the bad thing inside me isn’t gonna get any better.”

And I swear she didn’t even blink at that. I think she got that.

And she didn’t even seem to think it was that big of a deal.

She said, “Juliet?” She said, “You don’t have to be right in your heart to act right — any more than you had to be wrong in your heart to act wrong.”

And that kind of blew my mind.

She said, “I want you to entertain the possibility that good and bad are a false binary.”

And that right there seriously blew my mind.

Like everything is crime and everything is punishment.

And suddenly it hits me like a call from a psychic hooker that maybe Scar is in on this whole prisoner-to-compost thing.

And that right there completed the blowing of my mind.

Visualize roots , my ass.

Maybe I just need a little bit of goddamn peace.

As I leave the bar, a train is pulling out of the depot. I stand in the gravel parking lot a long time, just looking up at the stars. I never been to a place with so many goddamn stars.

Southside

Ramona is a dreamer. She has recurrent dreams that often foretell the future. As a child she foresaw the death of her father when he wrapped his pickup around a tall pine tree on his way back from a fishing trip to Pecos. She asked to go with him but her father liked to fish alone in Holy Ghost Canyon. As much as Ramona and her brother Tony had begged to go, he insisted, “No, this one’s for me.” Another fisherman came upon the wreck but it was too late. Her father was dead.

Now sideways snow with 50 mph winds. Ramona knows better than to take the treacherous road to town but, stubborn as she is, she heads out anyway. It’s the third day of the blizzard and she’s been housebound too long. Cabin fever has her pacing and, anyway, she has laundry to do. She pulls a woolen peacoat on over her red flannel shirt and jeans, covers her head with a black beret, and walks out into the storm. Her ’88 Chevy coughs and sputters but miraculously starts. Once Ramona hits the road, she drives slowly to town.

At the intersection of Cerrillos and Airport Road, she turns left and passes behind the “tortilla curtain” and into the Mexican part of town. Everything you could ever want or need waits at the Chamisa Center, a one-block stretch of stores: Lil’ Dragon Pizza, Subway, La Cocina de Doña Clara, Dollar Mart, the Bridal Boutique, Nail Time, Boost Mobile, a Mexican grocery store, and several places to get checks cashed. Ramona is in heaven. At the end of the block: a Laundromat.

Ramona’s got a bag of dirty laundry in the backseat, so she hits the Laundromat first.

Hot air blasts her face when she opens the door; it feels good against the cold. She needs change so she drops her laundry near a washer and walks to the back and approaches a round, middle-aged Mexican lady who is glued to a small color TV set on the counter. It’s telenovela time: Abrázame Muy Fuerte has the woman totally absorbed.

“Excuse me,” Ramona says politely, “could I get some change?”

“Un minuto,” the fat lady whispers, not taking her eyes off the TV screen.

Ramona waits, wondering how long until a commercial might break the woman’s trance. She thinks maybe she should just go next door to the pizzeria, order something to go, and get her own change. Pizza is her favorite comfort food and she’s hungry.

Tension mounts on the television screen. A very handsome but irate young man — naked to the waist — points a pistol at a beautiful young woman (presumably his girlfriend). She begs him to “cálmate” but he shouts what sounds like obscenities at her. Ramona is not fluent in Spanish but she does understand “puta.”

The fat lady changemaker refuses to make change.

Ramona puts her clothes in a washer and is about to walk over to the pizzeria when she notices a young man with a long braid two washers down from hers.

The man removes layers of clothing. He takes off a filthy jean jacket with a skull and crossbones appliqued on the back and shoves it into the machine. Then he takes off a black Harley Davidson T-shirt and throws that in. Next he peels off his black turtleneck jersey and in it goes.

Ramona is transfixed. She can’t take her eyes off the guy.

On his very white chest, he’s got a tattoo of the Virgen of Guadalupe, roses included. The Virgen vibrates in all her splendor as the young man strips. Now he unzips his worn and dirty blue jeans and in they go. This guy is down to his boxers and white socks. He looks like he’s considering removing his socks, but decides against it.