Alix Ohlin - The Missing Person

I woke up to see Angus returning to the room from somewhere. He stood beside the bed jiggling keys, his white coveralls gleaming in the shadows.

“Where did you go?” I said. “How long have you been gone?”

“I have to work today,” he said. “Want to come with me?”

“You really work?”

This seemed to offend him, and he stood up straighter, fussily adjusting the fit of his coveralls. “I told you, I’m a plumber. Today I’ve got an out-of-town job. We can go for a drive. It’ll be fun.”

“I don’t have the Caprice, remember? We walked here.”

“I went and got the van,” he said.

“The what ?”

He opened the curtains, unleashing massive sunlight through which, squinting, I could make out what looked like an enormous eggplant parked in front of the room. When my eyes adjusted I saw it was a dull purple van with PLUMBARAMA written in white letters on its side. Small drips of white paint burst around the letters, symbolizing either the excitement of plumbing or the reality of bursting pipes, I wasn’t sure which. I got dressed, and short minutes later we were cruising on the highway with Angus singing along to “My Way” from the Sinatra tape he must’ve recovered, along with his hat, from Wylie’s car. He had a surprisingly pleasant voice, trained and lilting, and could hit the high notes without any apparent strain. The city spread into the desert, miles of development, chain restaurants and movie complexes and subdivisions, before petering out. On either side the land lay brown and skeletal, starved of grass or trees, under the enormous sky and the relentless sun.

Fifteen minutes later we passed a billboard with a background of lush, verdant lawns and the profile of a man in white clothes swinging a golf club: FUTURE SITE OF SHANGRI–LA. I laughed out loud.

“What?” Angus said, interrupting his performance of “Night and Day.”

“They’re building Shangri-la out here,” I said. “Did you know?”

“Oh, I know all about it,” he said, flushing red down to his neck. “Developing this land into a golf course is insane. It’s a profanation.”

“It definitely seems like an odd choice of location.”

“Albuquerque’s going to run out of water within twenty years. No water. None. The whole city shouldn’t even be here, but what are they going to do about it? Build another golf course. And do you have any idea how much water a golf course uses? Do you think they’re going to forgo the grass and use native plants?”

I guessed these weren’t rhetorical questions. “I doubt it,” I said.

“They’re leasing the land from a pueblo, and you can’t blame them. Of course they need to make money — but do they have to make it from this?”

“I don’t know.”

“It burns me up,” he said, his face so red that it might well have burst into flame.

Five minutes later he took an exit that led past a gas station and then turned into a parking lot full of cars in front of a windowless gray building, flat and square as a storage compartment. The small neon sign outside read SUNRISE CASINO, with spikes of sunrays poking up from the o, but the sign was turned off and didn’t glow in the late-morning glare. Inside, it still looked like a storage compartment, without decorations or pictures or even a carpet, a place stripped down to the barest of uses. Country music was playing, dim and static, on a bad sound system. Against the walls stood slot machines where people of diverse race and age sat smoking and pulling levers, the smoke hanging thick as cobwebs in the air over the blackjack and roulette tables in the center of the room. With his white overalls and healthy glow Angus looked alien here, and I expected we’d draw some unfriendly stares. But as he strode by purposefully, nodding to people here and there, they nodded casually back. He’d been here before.

I followed him down a green hallway with linoleum floors to a closed door whose black sign said MANAGER. Angus turned, sudden and intent, and kissed me, then knocked and opened the door.

“Gerald Lobachevski, man of many hats,” he said, stepping inside. “This is Lynn Fleming, woman of my life.”

Reclining in a chair behind the plywood desk was the middle-aged Native American man I’d seen at Wylie’s place that first night — the same thick glasses and braided hair and turquoise jewelry. He gave the distinct impression, looking at me, of being unimpressed. I found myself reaching up to tuck my hair behind my ears.

“Wylie’s sister,” he finally said.

I sighed. “Yes,” I admitted.

“You look like him.”

I had nothing to say to this. Angus sat down on the corner of the desk, next to a stapler and a beige rotary telephone. The office had gray cement walls and no windows.

“Scrawny. Same color hair. How’d you get involved with this guy?” Gerald cocked his head in Angus’s direction.

“Gerald,” Angus said.

“I was looking for Wylie,” I said.

“Did you find him?”

“Yeah, I found him.”

“But now you’re hanging around with this guy here.”

“I guess so.”

“Well,” Angus said, “show me what you need done.”

“Do you gamble?” Gerald said to me, ignoring him.

“Excuse me?”

“Blackjack, slots, craps, roulette.”

“Not really,” I said.

Gerald reached into a desk drawer, pulled out several rolls of quarters, and held them out to me. “Give it a whirl,” he said, “while I put this fellow to work.”

I felt dismissed. “Thanks,” I said.

Back in the gaming room, I watched people playing the slots. A woman in a red sweatsuit got up from her seat and wagged her chin in my direction. “I’m going to the ladies’,” she told me. “You can have it.”

I played for a while, and there was a rhythm to the clicking of the machine and the movements of the levers, a consonance and ringing, that I imagined was as addictive as the thought of winning or losing. Apples, oranges, cherries, apples, oranges, cherries. The wild card slot. I couldn’t ever get a match, and lost all of Gerald’s money in a matter of minutes. Since it was going back to him anyway, I wasn’t too concerned. The people around me worked on their games as if in a trance, hunched over machines or tables, hardly speaking, every so often sipping from vat-sized cups of Coke. A wailing country song halted mid-lament, and “Night and Day” came on.

It was noon, and I hadn’t eaten, but there was no food at the casino. Outside, the heat was malicious and extreme, and the wind blew a blinding dust into my face as I trudged up the road to the gas station. The girl behind the register looked no older than thirteen, and she handled each transaction with superb speed, her fingers flying as she counted back the change for lottery tickets and cigarettes. There were wizened burritos baking under the light of a heating element, and some crusty yellow popcorn that didn’t look much better. I settled for a bag of pretzels and a soda, then sat down on the shaded curb outside.

It occurred to me that Angus could easily drive off and leave me here, that in fact I knew very little about him, that I didn’t have enough money to call a cab, that there weren’t any cabs around here anyway.

Trucks barreled down the road, their grilles and fenders shining in the sun.

A truck pulling a horse trailer parked at the pumps in front of me, and a stocky, dark-haired driver looked me up and down before heading inside. From the trailer came sounds of chewing and sneezing, so I went around the back to look. At least ten goats were packed tight in there, and they stared back at me and bleated their complaints.

The door to the shop opened, and the driver stuck his head out. “What you want there, lady?”