Barbara Samuel (22 page)

“This is crazy, Thomas,” she said, breathless, and rubbed her nose against his cheek.

“Yeah,” he agreed, and sucked her lower lip into his mouth, not caring. Not caring.

She pushed him away, almost violently, bending, walking to the back door. She went out and stood on the patio, breathing in. “This is too much, too fast,” she said.

He followed her, still lost in a narcotic golden haze, and touched her shoulder. “You need to stop thinking so much.”

“Maybe for some people that’s the right answer,” she said. “I have to be careful.”

There was such a depth of sorrow in her voice. “Of what, Luna?” he asked gently, brushing his fingers over her neck. “Not me.”

“No,” she said, raising her big dark eyes. He could see nothing in them, only a dim light of regret. “Myself, mainly. Being too rash. Making mistakes that hurt people.”

“Drinking.”

“Mostly,” she agreed. She put her hand over his wrist, and it wasn’t clear at first whether she would pull his hand off her, or hold it there. In the end, she let her palm fall over his knuckles, and met his eyes. “I just don’t ever want to go there again.”

“You’re too hard on yourself,” he said quietly. “There are a lot of alcoholics in the world.”

“I was a drunk.”

In spite of himself, he winced a little at the word.

Her smile was bitter. “It wasn’t pretty, and I don’t want it to ever sound prettier than that.”

A breeze swept over them, lifting curls around her
face. They glittered like gold and silver, and he captured one corkscrew in his fingers. “Let me come to the river,” he said quietly. “I’ll be good, I promise.”

For a moment, she didn’t answer him, only gazed up at him. Then she shook her head with some bewilderment. “How is it that we’ve suddenly arrived here, Thomas?”

“I don’t know,” he whispered, bending down to kiss her once more before he left. “I’m glad.”

A cool breeze fluttered through the kitchen and sniffed over the supplies scattered over the counter. Picnics were one of Luna’s favorite things, and she kept a big wicker basket of supplies—plastic glasses with bright blue and yellow flowers, a set of inexpensive flatware, cloth napkins, and a big checked cloth to put on the ground. On top of those, she packed bananas and freshly baked devil’s food cake, cheese and apples and celery sticks, a big box of assorted crackers, and a can of fake cheese for Joy to spray on them.

All the while, she was thinking of a cigarette. Lighting it, inhaling it, blowing it out. She’d put on her nicotine patch already, but then Thomas had arrived, tasting of himself and smelling of the motel room last night, and …

She exhaled, hard. Maybe she needed
two
patches to deal with everything that was stirring up.

The basket was packed, ready to go. Still only five minutes to seven. Joy had asked to sleep until eight or so, which wasn’t unreasonable for a weekend morning, and Luna restlessly poured a second cup of coffee, a sharp blend that tasted almost too bitter. She carried it outside, where she breathed in the light mountain air, breathed it out slowly. Still the clutch of cigarette hunger clawed her nerves.

She took a tiny sip of coffee and wondered what she wanted to say that cigarettes would keep quiet. A part of it was that she was dying to call Allie and tell her about the night, say
Oh my God, he kissed me and kissed me and kissed me.
She would tell about how beautiful his hair was when it was down around his shoulders, and how gentle he was, and how he’d come over this morning to make sure she was okay.

But it was all too new and fresh and private just this moment. She wanted to savor it and walk around it some more first.

A bold, bitter, biting rocket of nicotine withdrawal went through her. Sudden. Inexplicable. It made her want to scream. It hurt. It tugged at every nerve in her body, little demon claws curling into the edge of her jaw and the back of her eyes and the base of her spine.

Putting down her coffee cup, she pulled the back door closed and headed down the road that looped in a long circle resembling a city block, but much, much longer. It wasn’t enough to just walk hard, and after a minute, she bent down and broke into a little jog, then a faster one. The sandals on her feet were scant protection from the gravel on the road, but she welcomed that pain, welcomed the protest from her shins and ankles, and ran until she couldn’t breathe anymore, and was sweating so much she’d have to take another shower before they left.

Then, sweating and breathing hard, she walked it off, shaking her arms and shoulders, circling one end of the loop. She walked around a wide yellow field broken only by a tuft of sheep clustered beneath a willow tree, the light skating over all of it like dew. The road headed down, and she could see her own house, sitting in its hollow back from the road. The Jacob’s Coat rose was a smear of Monet-like color against the soft dun of the
adobe, the grass verdant from the recent rains, and the sight eased her.

Better.

What couldn’t she say? That she was afraid of Thomas?

A swelter of irritation.
That’s not it.
She’d
said
that aloud, to herself and to him.

Was she afraid of the idea of involvement? This had the potential for seriousness, for serious love and serious hope, and because of that, serious pain.

Not it, not it, not it.

“Argh!” She breathed in deeply—and a hosanna might as well have gone up, because she smelled cigarette smoke. Close by. Narrowing her eyes, she looked around for it, and spied a woman standing in front of the house that belonged to Joy’s new friend. The woman was standing in grass up to her ankles, her thick hair gathered haphazardly into a ponytail that hung down her back. She was much too thin. In her hand was a cigarette.

“Good morning,” Luna said brightly.

The woman looked up, surprised but not startled. Gesturing with her cigarette to the yard, she said, “It’s out of control.”

Luna knew why she’d stopped and she didn’t question it, didn’t stop to think or ask herself if this was what she really wanted. The words spilled out of her mouth. “Look, I don’t want to be weird, but do you have another cigarette? I’ve been trying to quit, but I just want one.”

“Oh, sure!” Smokers were always helpful in this circumstance. Luna herself had always been more than happy to supply a fellow addict.

The woman reached into the pocket of her skirt, one that had fit much better once upon a time, and shook
out a Marlboro from a red pack. Luna took it and bent into the flame the woman offered.

Smoke hit her throat, swirled into her lungs, and she closed her eyes to blow it out. “Oh. My. God.”

The woman laughed. “Better than sex, isn’t it?”

“Sometimes,” Luna agreed, dizziness filling her head in the most pleasant possible way.

“You live right over the arroyo, don’t you? By Placida’s old house?”

“Yeah.” Luna switched the cigarette to her left hand to offer her right. The woman had to do the same thing. “Lu McGraw. I think our daughters might be friends. Joy Loggia is mine. Weird hair, a thousand earrings?”

“Sure. I met her the other day. I’m Sally.”

“She’ll smell this on me when I go in,” Luna said, and took another drag. Even better. But the shape of it seemed sort of wrong, too big, fatter than she remembered. And there was a certain awkward selfconsciousness to the act of lifting it to her mouth, holding it there.

“Tell her you talked to me and I was smoking.” She smiled, but it was the kind of worn-at-the-edges look to it that said she didn’t do it much. “She knows I smoke.”

“Good idea.” Holding the cigarette, looking at it, she felt the fury and sadness and black-hole weight of whatever just dissolved. “Why does everything that feels good or tastes good have to be bad for you?”

“I know, huh?”

They stood there companionably, united in the quiet and the morning and tobacco. “Thank you very, very much.”

“No problem.”

Still, Luna didn’t move on. Sorrow was etched in the sharpness of Sally’s collarbone and the way her hair was tied in a ribbon at the back of her neck, not even
brushed. Eyeliner from the day before was smeared below her eyes.

And the old therapist in her noticed other, little things—the way Sally kept her arms crossed over her middle, protectively. The way she looked at the yard, moved a foot, put it back down, like the task was too much for her. “It’s hard, isn’t it,” Luna said, “taking care of a house by yourself?”

“My husband, he used to do it all. He took so much pride in it, too.” Weariness crossed her face. “I just don’t know. See, look I let his roses go.”

“I know someone who can help you. He doesn’t charge much.” It was a lie. Luna did all the work herself, but surely there was someone who could be hired for basic lawn service and the like. “You want me to call you with his number?”

Sally nodded. “That would be good. Yes. Thank you.”

“I’ll get your number from Joy and call you tomorrow.” Something made her reach up and touch Sally’s arm. “Hang in there.” She wanted to add something more, but could see the small kindness had unnerved her enough.

“Thanks.”

Tiny Abeyta did not particularly want to go with his boss to the river. He wanted to stay home and see if he could reach his wife by telephone, maybe talk her into sneaking up to the house for a little while. His cousin had told him that Angelica was out with some other guy the other day, drinking beer at a café in Espanola. He’d tried calling her already this morning, but she sometimes went to Mass, and he figured that’s where she was. He would hang around the house so’s he could call her later and see.

But Thomas wouldn’t give up, not even when Tiny protested that he was on the bracelet and couldn’t go hang out whenever he felt like it. Thomas shook his head, knowing Tiny had Sunday afternoons for errands. So, stuck, Tiny helped Thomas load everything up. A gallon jug of iced tea he made from herbal tea bags, and candy bars and chips and roast beef sandwiches, all loaded into a cooler with pop. No beer, though Tiny was kinda hoping, even though Thomas didn’t do a lot of drinking anymore. Less and less every day, seemed like. The guys gave him a hard time about it when they went to the White Horse after work on Fridays, saying he wore a skirt and he was getting old. They called him
viejo
, and one even brought him a cane one day.

But it was just like the whole thing of Thomas paying on Mondays instead of Fridays—nothing they said could change his mind once it was made up, and if he said he wasn’t going to the White Horse, no amount of talk would make him go. It made it easier for Tiny in a way, he had to admit. He’d been doing real good not going to the Horse on Fridays, till that last time, and he wouldn’t go anymore now, never.

Stubborn, that’s what Thomas Coyote was. He kept nudging Tiny along with more things to put in the truck—blankets to lie on, and some fresh shoes in case they got wet, and fishing poles. He whistled the whole time, a cantina song about dancing. Cheerful. So cheerful, it kinda started getting Tiny in a good mood after a while, and he eyed the blue sky through the windows of the kitchen, and started thinking about the sound of the river and the smell of it, and he thought it might not be so bad to go. He could ask to bring along Ramundo, his youngest, who was only four and would like to fish with his dad.

But when he tried the house again, nobody answered.
He decided maybe Angelica was at her mama’s house, and called there, but though he could hear the kids hollering about something in the background, Angelica wasn’t there and her mother wouldn’t say
where
she was, which meant it was someplace he wouldn’t like. “I just wanted to take Mundo fishing with me,” he said, “but forget it now.”

It put him in a very bad mood, wondering where his wife was, and he slammed down the phone and glared at it, his mind racing, his stomach feeling sick and tight. He couldn’t eat a lot these days. Every so often, he’d be real hungry and eat a lot, mostly stuff
Abuelita
cooked because she made things like his mom, who had died a couple years back. Usually, though, his stomach felt like this, sick or tight, and he couldn’t get any food into it. He drank a lot of milk, just to keep up his strength for work, but he was losing a lot of weight.

Abuelita
came into the kitchen then. He hadn’t seen her in days and days—she was tired, Thomas said, sleeping a lot. When she saw him, she gave a little cry. “Manuel,” she said, calling him by the name nobody ever used. “I got something for you for bringing me to Chimayó,” she said to him in Spanish, and pressed into his palm a small packet. “It’s for good luck. Keep you safe from the witches.”

Thomas
tsked
at the word
brujas
but Tiny was honored. He raised it to his lips and kissed it, taking her old hand into his.
“Gracias.”

His heart felt lighter as he tucked the charm into his wallet, carefully, right behind his driver’s license. Maybe, he thought, he could just go to the river for a while for himself, and just forget about everything else.

Maybe, just maybe, he didn’t have to know everything all the time.