Claire Watkins - Gold Fame Citrus

Rita directed Luz and Ray to an L-shaped sofa in the darkened living room. She left to find Lonnie. Luz sat on the floor with Ig. She took tortoise Ig from the starlet’s orange crocodile birkin-turned-diaper-bag and presented him to human Ig with some other toys — not the kachinas, she had thrown the kachinas in the ravine. Ig did not bother with the toys. Her coin eyes rolled in their sockets, looking for Rita.

Luz, jealous, leaned down and whispered to the child. “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”

“I wouldn’t lead with that,” said Rita, returning.

Lonnie loped in behind her, wearing some kind of orange-gold robe, itself once a drape, Luz was sure. The robe was cinched around his narrow waist with a chain of sterling silver conchos, each faceted with a gob of turquoise. Lonnie had dressed this way on occasion, the solstice or the Fourth of July, a joke or a near-joke. But there was no joke in it now. He stood in a way that begged to be described as regal. His head was shaved though his black eyebrows were as intense as ever. A long, dense goatee hung from his chin, sculpted square and unmoving, facial hair of the pharaohs. Luz wondered fleetingly where he got the razor. A stupid question, for Lonnie was the great procurer; why they’d come.

“Brother,” he said, pulling Ray into an embrace. He waited for Luz to stand, too. When she did he grinned and hugged her chastely.

“You’re kidding,” Lonnie said down to Ig. “I thought for sure she was fucking with me.” He knelt and Luz fermented inwardly at the thought of him touching the baby. She’s not a baby, Ray would have said and indeed had been saying. To which Luz would reply, She’s a relative baby, meaning maybe that she was closer to being a baby than a girl, or meaning maybe that they just got her and so she was newborn to them. Ray would have said, too, Please behave yourself — was in fact at this moment saying it with his breath and his posture and his darting eyes and the taut filaments of his facial muscles, all of which served to remind her that Lonnie was the only person who could help them, and that she should be gracious, or do her best impression of someone gracious, despite the fact that in any other context she would have hated him.

Squatting, Lonnie said to Ig, “Hello, pretty girl.”

No, she hated him here.

“Say hi, Ig,” said Ray. “Ig, say hi .” Ig refused. The car ride had lulled her to sleep, and she had perhaps not forgiven them for yanking her from the buttery backseat. “Can you say hi ?”

“She doesn’t want to,” said Luz.

Lonnie adjusted his robes and sat at the vertex of the L sofa, Rita beside him. Ray sat at the end of the L’s long leg and Luz returned to the floor. Ig, free to do as she pleased now, crawled beyond the coffee table to Rita — she had reverted to crawling lately — and offered her Ig the tortoise.

“She’s giving it to you,” said Luz.

“I’m good,” said Rita, though Ig insisted and finally Rita let the saliva-softened tortoise corpse rest on her lap.

“This is something of a novelty,” said Lonnie. “How old is she?”

“One,” Luz said, already wanting to keep her young forever.

Rita scoffed. “Big for one.” They sat with that awhile.

“So what’s the deal?” Lonnie asked finally, aggressively caressing his shorn head. “Luz making some extra money babysitting?” Luz did not meet his gaze.

Ray said, “What do you mean?”

“I guess what I mean is the last time I saw you two you didn’t have a baby. Luz was not pregnant, so far as I could tell, you two were not in the process of cooking up a puppy. And you certainly, so far as I can recall, did not have a newborn. Did they have a newborn, Rita? Or am I demented?”

Luz pulled Ig back from the glass coffee table, almost thankful to Lonnie for forcing the question. Did what they’d done have language in Ray’s mind? And what were the words?

Ray’s Muir eyes were dry when he told Lonnie, “We found her.”

Lonnie leaned back and smiled. “I know how that is. We found a Red Cross flatbed. We found a few dozen guns.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Luz said, by which she meant, We’re not like you .

“No, I’m into it. Upend everything. Snatch all the Montessori canyon babies from their cribs. I just wish we’d thought of it.”

Rita muttered that all the Montessori canyon babies were gone.

“Truth,” said Lonnie. “Where then?”

They did not answer.

“Don’t say it.”

Ray rubbed his mouth.

“Jesus,” said Rita.

“Fuck me, Ray,” said Lonnie. “Some serious cats down there. Some serious cats even I wouldn’t want for enemies.”

“I know,” said Ray, which was puzzling because he had never said as much to Luz, so either the genuine dangers of raindance had just occurred to him or — and this was the truth, she knew — he had been thinking it all along, those serious cats had been with him those sleepless nights in the canyon and he’d kept them to himself. Here comes Luz, don’t make any sudden movements. She was not a serious cat.

Ray said, “We came here for a favor.”

Lonnie leaned back on the sofa and stretched both his arms to rest atop it. “Naturally. Only reason anyone comes here anymore.”

Ray took a breath. Luz saw how brutally he wished he were not about to say the thing he was about to say. “We’re leaving. Going on the list.”

Rita scoffed. Ig body-slammed her tortoise self on the glass coffee table, shuddering some stones from the fountain and setting them spinning on the glass. Luz retrieved Ig, fetched her nini from the birkin and used it to coax the child into lying in her lap.

Lonnie was still, then neatly took the dislodged Zen rocks into his hand. He looked stunned — even saddened, Luz saw, which was so unexpected and baffling that she kept watching him until she was sure that was the expression. Then she realized: he must have thought they were coming back. That they had come now to ask his permission to rejoin the complex. Of course. He’d donned his best Krishna curtains in preparation for their groveling. He was a small, needy creature who looked now as though he might utter a disgusting phrase, something along the lines of I believed in you . (Almost as unforgivable as the bald admiration he’d whispered before he’d had her, those months ago: Oh, Luz, in another life! ) Luz rubbed Ig’s back and prayed he wouldn’t make a scene, though she would not have called it prayer.

Lonnie sniffed once and dropped the stones back into the bowl, eyeing Ig as though she were a strange dog come upon them. Luz saw Ig then as Lonnie must have: stunted and off, lopsided head, eyes lolling of their own accord. She had the hot urge to scream that there was nothing wrong with Ig. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Finally, mercifully, Lonnie said just, “California, the failed experiment.”

Ray tiptoed over his old friend’s withered pride and said, “We have to, Lonnie.”

“Clearly.”

“We need a birth certificate,” said Luz. “And an ID for Ray.”

Lonnie raised his eyebrows at Ray. “So she knows? Good for you, brother.”

Ray nodded. “Can you help us?”

Lonnie flattened a seam of his curtain robe. “Can’t do it. No one can. Can’t be done anymore.”

Ray said, “We can pay you.” They’d brought the hatbox.

“Don’t insult me. There’s nothing I can do.”

“Come on,” said Luz.

“A clean ID, a birth certificate —it’s too much. Six months ago, maybe. But now… Everything’s contracting, everyone’s drying up. Even if I could, man, do you know what they do to us in those places? It’s not a vacation, Ray. First thing they’ll do is give you each a number, next thing is split you up, paperwork or no. Men one way, women another. Whole garrisons just for kids. ‘Boarding,’ they call it. Labor camps. Your part for the cause. Only way out is to enlist, and I gather that’s not available to you.”