Claire Watkins - Gold Fame Citrus

CODY

That step she took was it, looking back.

DALLAS

Levi put Luz down and she took one step away from him, a big step, bigger than seemed possible.

THE GIRLS

We saw it, yes. A divot in the sand where she had been, and another where she stood now.

JIMMER

And the sand between these absolutely pristine. That was crucial, from my perspective.

DALLAS

Levi’s arms still raised in the shape of her.

JIMMER

It was finished in that step, though its finishing took some time.

THE GIRLS

It hurt to witness, honestly.

CODY

And we all stayed there, even after she took Ig and the three of them walked to the Blue Bird. We stood waiting to see where to go, I guess.

JIMMER

Until the sand whispered around our ankles.

DALLAS

After we moved the Rambler we were drawn back to the Blue Bird, waiting.

CODY

We stayed there until bonfire, like the day Luz came, except Dallas was with us, pacing.

THE GIRLS

Locked out of her own place, which wasn’t right.

JIMMER

Pacing foretells ill fortune. Doubly when the pacer is a mother.

THE GIRLS

When Luz came out it was dark and she was a different woman. The baby held her hand.

CODY

She did seem changed, I guess you’d say.

JIMMER

Like she’d found a sachet of bird beaks in the eaves and had emerged to fling them out.

THE GIRLS

We needed so much from her.

DALLAS

But all she said was, He’s asleep.

Luz told the rubberneckers outside the Blue Bird that Ray was asleep and took Ig on one of their old walks around the transmuted colony, surveying the new high plain.

Luz chawed some brute root as she walked, feeling the fungal juices leech into her gums before she spat, taking in the new territory. Here and there among the structures were haystack clumps of dead roots, half-entombed in sand. “What is?” asked Ig, and Luz said she did not know. The harvest moon was fat and orange overhead. Ig said, “What is?” and thereafter never tired of whispering its name.

What did it mean to have Ray back? All the anger she’d succored to starve her grief had boiled off upon seeing him, and she was not sure what would fill that space. She was waiting for it perhaps, weaving through the domes and shanties in their new constellations, looking for what would grow in her now that he’d made room.

The bonfire was somber that night, musicless and sparsely attended. The fire itself was paltry, though Ig still grunted her wanting it, staggering toward the blaze in her light-ups and whining tragically when Luz picked her up. Luz was sad not to see Levi there, and her sadness revealed that she’d come looking for him. She could continue looking — she had seen the silhouette of his dome out on the edge of the colony — but knew she would not.

Instead, she lingered on the periphery with Ig in her arms, gazing into the fire. Comparisons insisted. Ray’s crescent hip bones and Levi’s heaving, hair-damp chest. Ray’s flat feet and the cracked yellow callus where the two smallest toes on Levi’s right foot once were. Where Ray was riding waves, Levi was half-buried; where Ray was whisking along whitecaps, Levi was hunkered. Where Ray was leaning into the curves, Levi was arms outstretched. Where Ray was brittle grapevine, Levi was boulder. Where Ray was a liquid slug sluicing down the canyon, Levi was the Amargosa’s solid sandstone foot. She was drawn to Levi the way Ig was drawn to fire — she should fear him but did not. Meanwhile, going back to Ray was like rolling down a hill.

—

Once she’d touched Ray she’d not been able to stop. They sat on the floor of the Blue Bird, her silently stroking his bizarrely soft and white fingertips and speaking only to remind him to drink.

“I thought you were dead,” she said finally. “I have to keep touching you until you’re alive again.”

“I feel very much alive,” he said.

“You look different,” she said, “but the same.” He was thinner, burnt, with new shading in his face, impossible to map. Bloody crescents where some fingernails had been. But he was hers: fine mouth and prophet eyes. Delivered her by some great benevolent hand. She could not deny that.

“You look just like I remember,” he said. Though he was burnt all over he let Ig into his lap. He kissed the baby and burbled her stomach. She squealed and pinched her fingers together and Luz taught Ray how that meant more .

All his months in Limbo Mine, months that had not passed in that out-of-time place, that had instead hovered, waiting, at the surface, that had shuddered behind him as he walked, came upon him then. Lost time flooded through him. His tears came—“I guess I’ve missed a lot”—and then hers. Luz asked where he had been, and through Ig’s demands and diversions he told her, told her everything, even all that was madness.

When he described the attack the night before the rangers found him, she showed him the scarf she had stuffed into the cushion. “Here,” she said, stretching the wrinkled silk taut. “Levi brought me this.”

“Yes,” he said, touching the rusty stain. “That must’ve been where they hit me.”

“Who?” Luz asked, and Ig said, “Ooo, ooo, ooo.”

Ray said, “I’m not sure.”

Luz also gave him the Leatherman. He looked at it for a very long time. “This was my dad’s,” he said.

“I didn’t know,” she said.

He took her face in his hands and they both checked to see if she would allow this. She did, but his hands felt like a skeleton version of Levi’s and soon she pulled away. They were silent awhile before Luz said, “What do I look like to you?”

Ray was confused. She added, “With your eye thing. What are you seeing now?”

“It’s sort of pink in here, pink and yellow-orange. Sunset colors, a lovely sunset, and you’re like a happy purple cloud on the horizon.”

“A happy cloud. And Ig?”

Ig was luminous, with dark, hard feet. She was the same size as when he left her, but her head was larger, with spots larger than freckles sprayed along her hairline. “Sun spots. From the Melon.” He wept again as she told the story of their afterworld.

Luz was quiet for some time. Her shimmer evaporated. She went dark as coal. “You left us,” she said finally.

“I know. I’m—”

“I mean, you left us to die .”

“No, I… Yes. I was afraid. I convinced myself I was doing it for you, but it was for me.”

“I fucking know that,” she said. “You’re not telling me any news.” She took a gash of root from her pocket and nibbled it ferociously. “Everything was like that.”

“Everything?”

“You were always convincing me I was a burden. That I needed taking care of. I felt like an infant at the end, and then you left me with one.”

“I know, babygirl.”

Luz croaked.

“I’m sorry,” said Ray. “Habit. Goddamn it, I’m sorry.” He sobbed some, binding his hands with the stained scarf. Luz had been so small on Sal’s TV, smaller still as he’d come down from the dune sea. He’d known it was her immediately, folded into another man’s arms, as she always was. He wanted to be those arms, but knew he never had been and did not deserve to be now. And yet here he was, trying, and in this way he was as selfish as ever, more. Luz was maybe happy without him — no, he would not allow for that. When he touched her, she’d softened. She was his home, and he hers — he still believed that. Finally he said, “I needed you to need me, I see that now. I thought you were my project. I was so afraid, Luz, and I didn’t know how to love someone who didn’t need me. And you didn’t need me, and you don’t now. I know that… But, have me? Please have me. If you’ll have me I’ll deserve you.”