Claire Watkins - Gold Fame Citrus

Finally, Levi said quietly, “You didn’t tell me.”

“I didn’t know I had to,” said Dallas.

Then, Luz spoke. She was asking for Ig. She sat up and reached for the girl. Dallas paused, but laid Ig in her mother’s lap. Luz took Ig — swollen Ig and poisoned Ig and ruined Ig — and held her.

Levi kneeled beside them. “Luz, you need to take this nib. You’re sick. You could die. Just chew a little.”

Ray whispered, “Don’t, Luz.”

Luz did not look at either of them. She kissed Ig, then muttered something into the baby’s lumpy dome. The baby began to cry, a cry crimped by her injuries. Dallas went to take her again but Luz looked up, pleading for more time.

Levi raised the purplish strip of root. “Just a little bit, my girl, just to get you through.”

Luz spoke again, louder. “Leave us alone.”

Levi said, “Luz, you—”

“Please. Everyone. Leave us alone.”

No one moved until Dallas said, “Let’s go.”

They went.

—

Hanging high above the colony, the crests of the dunes were wind-smudged, but the air outside the bus was funeral-still. Levi turned to Dallas. “You’ve always been willful.”

“Fuck off,” said Dallas before she left. “I love you, but you have got to fuck off.”

Jimmer glanced at Levi, then told Ray, “Keep her hydrated. And bring that little one back to me when you can.” He went after Dallas.

Ray expected Levi to leave, too — hoped he would. But Levi stayed, watching Dallas and Jimmer until they disappeared, Jimmer’s hand on Dallas’s back.

Levi rubbed his bare head. “Are they… together ?” Apparently he expected an answer.

“Jimmer and Dal?” said Ray. “I don’t know, man. I’m out of the loop.”

Levi sighed, looked up at the dune sea, then gathered up his robe and began to piss. He was ample all the way down, Ray noticed.

“The women in my life are turning on me,” Levi said. “Everything I do, I do for them. I think about them day and night. Everything I’ve done has been to make them comfortable. I worry for them. I take care of them. Every single thing I do is for them and they don’t even see me anymore.” He gave his penis a mournful shake, dropped his robe, and looked at Ray. “I can’t even trust Dallas anymore. I’ve lost her. She’s another person. The things I’ve done, to keep them comfortable…” He exhaled again and looked past Ray, to the looming toothy range. “Things are changing all around me. ‘Force-feeding.’ Did Luz say that?”

“I—”

“I know she didn’t say that. I’ve never forced anyone to do anything in my life.”

“How about your little harem here?”

“Harem?”

Ray touched the notch of scar at his brow. “That’s why you did this to me out there. Because I’m not useful to you.”

Levi shook this off. “The dune curates. Some are called here—”

“Cut the bullshit, man. I’m a threat to you.”

Levi pinched one broad brow between his fingers, then the other, as though trying to wring the irritation from them. “Do you have any idea what it would take to threaten me? That’s not rhetorical. I sincerely want to know. Because I’ve never felt threatened or otherwise afraid of anyone in my entire life and I am curious about that sensation.”

“You attacked me because I wasn’t useful to you. Because you weren’t interested in fucking me.”

“No.” Levi smiled, a sick crescent in the leaving light. “That we did for fun.”

Levi turned and raised his arms to the colony around him. “The whole natural world is arrayed against you, Ray. I can hear it. There is a certain order of things here — everywhere, really. You’ll fit in somewhere, but not here. Surely you’ve felt that.”

Ray had.

“Luz belongs here,” Levi said. “Dallas and Jimmer belong here. Estrella, too.”

An involuntary spasm of disgust crossed Ray’s face — a gift for the dowser. Levi accepted it. “Yes, I know about Estrella . I know everything.”

Ray turned to reenter the Blue Bird. “Don’t call her that.”

“You know,” said Levi, “I could find those people — Estrella’s people.” Whimsy and titillation picked up speed inside him, as if this were a spontaneous road trip he was planning. “I could find them in a day! Why don’t I bring them here and we can see what they think of you?”

“Bring them here?” Ray scoffed. “Go ahead! Call on them. Make a day of it. Let me give you their address. Oh, damn, I don’t have it on me. But you know what? I think they’re in the phone book.”

Levi’s amusement was almost perceptible, a living breathing thing. “Funny,” he said. “I know where I am. Do you know where you are?”

Luz found the rootless world hot and lacking, scooped out, herself a bored husk blowing through. In her beige sobriety she clung to the idea of Ig, whose reported recuperation was the only gift life had left her. They were hardly alone together, for the sake of both their healing, so she tried to get by on conjuring the child’s oddness and affection. But when Dallas or Jimmer brought Ig for a visit, the child was staggeringly hurtful, enjoying nothing more than dropping something, having Luz pick it up, and then dropping it again. Worse, the baby was in a Ray phase these days, putting her sourness on the shelf only when he was near.

With her newly clear head, Luz was free to feel acutely this injury and all the others she’d postponed with the root. She felt all the time. There seemed no intermission to her new stirrings — the guilt and shame and self-loathing were physical, concrete burdens, and heavy. Boredom flopped on her chest. Regret sagged in her gut. The daisy chain of Ig’s scars was a yoke she dragged from her neck. On her own and too awake, Luz recalled the corridor of her withdrawal, the arctic tube, the passageway in which she’d been trapped for such a long time. She’d come upon objects there: the scarf with its rusty stain, the bonfire circle of mostly women, mostly young, mostly pretty. She had come upon some artifacts and not come upon others. No rainbow chuckwallas or blue chupacabras in the corridor, and all the trees were wither-rooted and dead. Evidence in the corridor, breadcrumbs of reason: Jimmer the healer, Cody the grower, Nico the mechanic and the muscle.

Objects and artifacts and evidence and epiphanies: No one’s name was their name. Everyone here was running from something.

She managed to gain weight, thanks to Cody, who came in to make sure she always had something to eat. Luz watched him warily on these deliveries. She’d thought him an errand boy at best, but saw now that Cody was smarter than he pretended to be. One day, remembering a ruby-red orb hovering like a chandelier in her withdrawal corridor, she said, “Can I ask you something?”

Cody said, “Will it stop you always eyeballing me?”

“It might.”

“So ask.”

“Where did that grapefruit come from?”

“What?”

“When I first came here, I had a grapefruit.”

“You didn’t have no grapefruit.”

“I did. Dallas brought it to me. We ate it with Ig.”

“You might have imagined it. I still dream of dairy.”

“You don’t grow grapefruits in the vans, Cody.”

He silently conceded.

“You don’t have citrus trees.”

“No, ma’am.”

“So where did it come from?”

He rubbed his tight mouth. “That’s one of those questions you’re better off not asking.”

“I need to know,” she said.

Cody looked at her, somber and a little angry. “Levi wanted you to have it. He really cares about you, you know.”

“Where did he get it?”

The kid said nothing.

“What’s he doing out there, Cody?”