Curt Colbert - Seattle Noir

Frank, McKean, and I followed him down the stairs, leaving Clara weeping in the living room. In the basement day room a TV blared a sequence from Dancing with the Stars. At one end of the room was a door through which a sink and toilet could be seen. Through a second we glimpsed a disheveled bed. In a corner of the day room a man appeared to be sleeping in a reclining chair facing the TV, and my pulse shot up when I realized it must be Craig Showalter. McKean went to him and pressed his fingertips to a carotid artery, then straightened and looked from Frank to Billy to me, shaking his head in the negative.

“I killed him with the poison,” said Billy, “after we got high on some red wine, so he wouldn’t feel it coming on.”

“The police are gonna wanna talk to you,” said Frank.

Billy shook his head slowly. “No, they won’t.”

I said, “I don’t see how you can stop that.”

“I do,” said Billy. “I saved enough poison for me. Gettin’ a little woozy right now.” His eyelids drooped.

McKean called for an ambulance but Billy was nearly gone when it arrived, slumped on the bed in the basement bedroom.

He was on death’s door as Kay Erwin admitted him to Seattle Public Health Hospital, and although McKean had double-checked with Janet about antiserum while we followed the ambulance, Janet only confirmed that the antiserum had been consumed completely in saving him and me. With no other source of antiserum, Billy’s death was a foregone conclusion.

Several days later, McKean and I went to find the old shaman in his lean-to. He came out to the riverbank with us and we stood listening to a bald eagle crying from a snag tree on a little island. Two more flew overhead and the first flapped off to follow them toward the mouth of the Duwamish, under the gray arch of the freeway bridge.

“That’s a fledgling,” said Henry George. “Joining Mom and Dad for his first hunt. Going fishing along Alki Beach. Maybe Billy Seaweed’s spirit is in that eagle.”

“Too bad about Billy,” lamented McKean.

“Billy’s buried now,” said George, “in the white man way. Highpoint Cemetery. Should be over there on Muddy Island, left in a canoe until the birds pick his bones clean. Then you put ’im in a cedarwood box and maybe make a totem. Billy wasn’t famous enough for a totem, I suppose.”

We stood in silent contemplation until the old man said, “Look at Muddy Island over there. White men cut it in half, shrank it, polluted it, gave it a white man’s name, Kellogg Island. Treated it just like they treated the Duwamish people. We’re a little polluted island of Indians in a white man’s world nowadays. New things like freeway bridges and Microsoft computers and Boeing airplanes and Amazon books go right over our heads.”

“I’m sorry,” said McKean.

“Oh, don’t feel sorry,” replied George. “You see, the old ways aren’t all dead yet. The river still snakes past here like A’yahos, slithering this way and that with the tide. Billy proved A’yahos’s medicine is still strong. And President Bush, he took his pen and wiped us Duwamish people off the map, but we’re still here, and now there’s a new president. A’yahos knows better than presidents. The tide will turn again.”

Wallingford

I am floating between dream and wakefulness in my cozy treehouse nestled high in the canopy of a misty rain forest when he murmurs, “You’re so beautiful with your hair over your face.”

I smile and bid him a Guten morgen . Ulrich-I like the full feel of that German name in my mouth, the melodious lilt, and I definitely appreciate the warm masculine body, its sculpted hardness visible beneath the sheets. He stretches an arm toward me, as if about to say or do something intimate, then closes his eyes and allows his arm to drop. I snuggle up against him, savoring the musky sweet skin, on a morning so different from others. Usually I rise at dawn, slip into my greenhouse, and appraise the overnight progress of the seedlings.

If my mother were to peek in at this instant, she would draw a corner of her sari over her mouth to stifle a scream.

“Sin!” she’d say. “My twenty-five-year-old unmarried girl is living in sin!”

Fortunately, she’s half a world away in India.

And I’m not in my treehouse, but rather in the bedroom of my bungalow in Wallingford, a.k.a. the Garden District of Seattle.

Next door the Labrador retriever barks. Never before have I invited a man home on the first encounter and I’m unnerved by my daring. If my friends could see me now, they’d exclaim in disbelief, A shy thing like you?

The silky, iris-patterned linen sheets are bunched up. He sleeps more messily than I, but for some reason I like the rumpled look. Last night’s coupling, with its wild tumbling and thrusting-I wouldn’t exactly call it lovemaking-has put me into deep communion with my body, and also taken me a bit out of my zone. My lips are dry and puffy from a surfeit of kissing.

The man beneath the blanket turns his blond head, nuzzles the pillow, regards me with his green eyes, then looks at the clock on the lamp stand. “Eight-thirty?” He throws the blanket aside and bolts from the bed. “ Ach , I’m supposed to be at work by 7.”

An engineer by training, he works in construction, a choice he’s made to get away from “wallowing in my head.” So, he happily hammers nails all day, fixing roofs, patios, kitchens, and basements. Siegfried, his German shepherd, always goes along.

I point out the bathroom across the hallway. He scrambles in that direction, mumbling to himself in his native tongue. A sliver of sun is visible through a crack in the window draperies. I can tell from its position that the morning has passed its infancy, the galaxy has inched on to a new position, and I’ve already missed a thing or two.

I hoist myself up from my nest. My toes curl in protest at the first touch of the cold hardwood floor. I stoop to retrieve a pair of soft-soled wool slippers from under the nightstand.

Then I look for my clothes. The long-sleeved print dress I wore last evening-a tantrum of wildflowers-lies on the floor, all tangled up with my bra and panties and Ulrich’s charcoal jeans. Crossing the room, I rummage around in the closet, grab a pewter-gray bathrobe, and wrap it around me.

As I fluff the pillows, I hear the sounds of water splashing in the sink, and snatches of a German song. A peek through the draperies reveals a quick change of weather-a bruised, swollen April sky.

The jangling of the telephone startles me. Not fair, this intrusion. If it’s Kareena on the line, I’ll whisper: Met a cool Deutsche last night… We’re just out of bed. I know, I know, but this one is… Look, I’ll call you back later, okay?

Tangles of long hair drown my vision; I reach for the receiver. This is what a plant must feel like when it’s uprooted.

“Palette of Color. Mitra Basu speaking, how can I help you?” Plants are my refuge, my salvation and, fortuitously, my vocation.

“Veen here.” The downturn in her voice doesn’t escape me. Vivacious and well-connected, architect by profession, Veenati is an important part of my social circle. “Have you heard from Kareena recently?”

“Not in a week or so. Why? Has something happened to her?”

“She didn’t show up for coffee this morning. I called her home. Adi said she’s missing.”

“Missing? Since when?”

“Since the night before last. I was just checking to see if she’d contacted you. I’m late for work. Let’s talk in about an hour.”

“Wait-”

Click. Veen has hung up. This is like a dreadful preview of a hyperkinetic action flick. How could Kareena be missing? She’s a people person, well respected in our community for her work with abused women. Although we’re not related, Kareena is my only “family” in this area, not to mention the closest confidante I’ve had since leaving home. A word from my youth, shoee , friends of the heart, hums inside me. I’m badly in need of explanation to keep my imagination from roaring out of control.