Leslie Silko - The Almanac of the Dead

She got out of the tub and sat on the toilet to pee. Out the smoky glass she could see the blaze of the sun on the sand. She checked the thermostat and found at some point she — or someone — had reprogrammed the thermostat for all the rooms. “Refrigerate, sixty degrees.” Seese found a half joint in the ashtray by the sink. She took a glass of orange juice out to the roof garden. The warm ocean air folded around her on the chaise lounge. She closed her eyes, but she wasn’t sleepy. She had been thinking that turning down the thermostat to sixty and lying on the cold porcelain nude could kill you. She and Cherie had known a girl from Phoenix who’d died like that. Not an OD, just asleep in the cold so long her body could never get warm enough again, not even in the hospital. Sometimes coke made her feel feverish. She had been alone in the apartment, so only she could have turned down the thermostat. Maybe her unconscious had remembered the girl from Phoenix, dead from the cold tub, because something inside Seese did not want to live anymore.

Beaufrey had gone days, and sometimes weeks, without speaking or in any way acknowledging Seese’s existence. Eric could see when she was beginning to crack, and they would make a game of her invisibility around Beaufrey. Seese would dip into the silver sugar bowl with a teaspoon, taking Beaufrey’s cocaine right under his nose, they’d laugh later, and still Beaufrey had never glanced down or made eye contact with Seese. Beaufrey’s only comment had been about Eric’s being a coke whore. Cocaine was a matter of indifference to Beaufrey. He kept cocaine because the young boys always liked it.

The group Beaufrey worked with had stockpiles of cocaine in warehouses packed floor to ceiling, in sealed drums. Eric said Beaufrey never stopped anyone from pigging out on the cocaine in the silver sugar bowl because Beaufrey got aroused when someone overdosed on the drug. “Beaufrey would love to watch you and me both OD,” Eric had said, laughing. “He gets it for nothing. An OD was a lot less expensive than a bullet.” Eric had been right on that point. When Beaufrey got rid of Seese, he had paid her off with a kilo of coke, assuming she would dispose of herself automatically. And Seese might have done that except she had never forgotten how Beaufrey had talked relentlessly about suicide. Most assholes in this world would obligingly kill themselves for you. No need for hired assassins. You might have to supply a woman, drugs, or a fast car and a gun. Beaufrey was watching Eric’s face as he spoke. Eric had smiled: “Oh, yes, the power of suggestion. Let’s all have a cup of poison Kool-Aid. Someone push the launch button of the big bomb.”

Eric had driven Seese to the doctor’s office, but waited in the car where he could smoke dope and play loud music. Eric had guessed it the minute he saw her face. “Test positive. And you want to keep it.” Seese felt a sinking in her chest because Eric had said “it.” Her throat was tight, but she tried to sound bouncy. “Him or her — it’s him or her, not it.”

Eric threw the car into reverse, then burnt rubber leaving the parking lot. Seese had not expected Eric’s reaction to be so negative or powerful. They had discussed babies and children many times. She and Eric had even discussed how they might collaborate to conceive two children — one for him and one for her. This had been their scheme to tap into all the family trusts available to Eric the minute he married and had children.

Eric had taken the long way home, driving slowly and methodically down the winding coastal highway. They were near the apartment complex when Eric reached over and held her hand in his. Traffic was light but he didn’t look away from the road. Staring straight ahead, he said, “I can’t believe I’m behaving this way — faggot, sissy, queer, I never imagined or dreamed—” Eric had burst out laughing, but Seese could see tears. He did not turn into the entrance to the parking garage but drove to the beach. They sat in the car and watched the tide come in. Eric was still gripping the steering wheel, staring straight ahead at the blazing wake of light from the setting sun.

Seese slid down in the seat and hunched against the wind off the ocean. Eric was motionless, frozen to the wheel. The wind flattened his thin, fine hair tight against his skull, and for an instant Seese saw how Eric would look when he was an old man.

They did not talk until they had parked in the basement garage. “I don’t even know where to begin,” Eric said, pulling Seese across the seat to hug her. As his lips brushed her cheek, Seese could hear his heart pounding. His hands were wet and cold on hers. “We have always talked and talked, you and I. And now when there is so much, I can’t say anything. So many things, so much all mixed up together.” Eric fumbled under the front seat for his brandy flask. “I want this baby to be mine and not his.” Eric passed the flask to Seese and fished around in his pocket for the vial of cocaine. Seese took a big swallow of brandy, but shook her head at the cocaine. “Here’s a change already,” Eric said, smiling brightly. “I’ve lost my comrade-in-dope.” The brandy burned all the way down. Seese reached for the flask and emptied it. The burning and coughing brought tears to her eyes.

“So now we know gay men are just men after all,” Eric said. “Irrational and piggish like all the rest. I thought I had already whipped that demon back to the underworld.” Eric paused and glanced around the basement garage for security people, then spooned more coke to his nose. “What I have to tell you now is even uglier.” Seese knew by his expression Eric meant Beaufrey. “He’ll go crazy when he finds out you’re pregnant again.”

Seese looked at Eric, shaking her head slowly. “How do you know? I’m keeping this one,” she said softly. “David—” Seese began, but Eric interrupted her. Suddenly he was angry. “David? David? Jesus fucking Christ! Seese! Don’t you understand about David?”

Again and again Seese had thought about that night in the basement garage. She and Eric had always been able to tease one another when one or both of them got on their “high horse.” But that night, neither of them had been able to call the other back down where they could talk. Eric had been gloomy and depressed for six weeks. He had even cautioned Seese not to take the really black moods too seriously. Eric had once been David’s lover. David had wanted a child, a son. Eric had watched her eyes and lips and knew Seese would not believe him. Eric suddenly felt exhausted, almost too weak to push open the huge Cadillac door. He wasn’t sure of anything anymore. Maybe he had the whole story wrong the way most of the rest of his life was all wrong. He was the odd man out. How could his feelings or judgment be trusted?

“I throw up,” she had told him. “Morning sickness,” Beaufrey said, building a case against the pregnancy. “No, not that. The morphine does it.” Seese had stood her ground. No abortion this time. The pregnancy had put her on a different footing with Beaufrey. Pregnancy worked to her advantage. Beaufrey was uncomfortable. He kept looking at David. He was trying to determine how much David really wanted the child. But David was intent on photographing Serlo, who posed sullenly next to a large pot of orchids trailing long sprays of yellow blossoms like a peacock tail. David wanted the blue of the ocean and the sky through the glass wall. Serlo pulled some of the long yellow spikes of flowers over his shoulders like a cape. At home, Serlo either went bare chested or did not button his shirt.

Seese has other dreams that haunt her. Dreams in which she is in the hospital again, only Beaufrey himself stands near the bed holding a white porcelain basin. A surgical procedure has been completed. There is a sanitary napkin between her legs. A nurse helps her swallow more pain pills. As she drifts, Seese can feel nothing below her neck. Beaufrey had paid doctors to reach up inside her belly while she was knocked out, and they had cut the little tendril. In her nightmare, dozens of yellow rosebuds have been scattered over a hospital bed with white sheets. The rosebuds have wilted, and the edges of the petals have dried up. She dreams she is awake, but numb below the waist—“As usual,” she thinks she hears one of the doctors say, but then realizes it must be the effects of the injection the nurse has given her.