Hunger's Brides (68 page)

Joy.

Sweet corn—
elotes
with mayonnaise,
¡ven prueba, amiga!
green mangoes diced on sticks like ginger flowers like pineapple
grenadas—
tart grenades
bursting on the palate's steppes
. Ven, señorita
, try this too—mine are just as good as theirs and different—no you don't pay, not this day, you have come for her from far away.
Oye
—here, try sweet papaya with chilli and lime.
Mi vida
—try these
tamales con rajas
—very hot. No you don't pay, my boss is off in Acapulco.
Oye, flaquita
,
†
from California?—all you
chicanas
are so thin—eat! Don't listen to him,
corazón
—look, these tacos with
piña mi hija
are to die for—how many, only six? let's make it eight, they're small anyway—
taquititos!
—how much they charge you for the tamales?—
nada?
that is only as it should be on this day.

Mexico sweet bed of rushes I remember you—once as a girl I walked these streets. Childbride of the jack of hearts, do you remember me, that girl?

And how could I not trust how could I not eat with you who ask me are we not all dying,
señorita
, are we not alike in this? Who is not alone? Let me feed you. Together let us eat our deaths. What counts more than this, this one meal this night?
¿Quién sabe lo que nos trae la mañanita? ¿Quién sabe, de veras?

All the gentle courtesy—how can people speak this way, even here or especially in the quake zone, world's largest landmine—time's chalked endzone.

Twenty million people / seventy thousand taxis licensed to kill / twenty thousand factories big and small vomiting a chemical mind-sucking in/solvent-sea. How can it be that still you speak this way?
mi amiga mi hija, mi vida, mi corazón
—my friend my daughter my life my heart. Is this how to speak to one another in the jaws of hell—teach me, how you do this how you live, teach me this poverty.

Let me stand beside you when the trumpets bark

Hide me in the flowerscreen bower of your gentle smile, archaic courtesy.

Yes I will sit down and eat. With you.

R
OUGHING
I
T
        

April 12th, 1995
.

E
RIC
H
EFFNER, LL.B., LEFT HIS OFFICE EARLY
and drove out to see me. He was coming to collect my cheque, a courtesy call both to save me the trouble of coming into the city and because a certain journalist was keeping her dogged eye on his office. He was not particularly good at cloak-and-dagger. I think she found me in the first place by following him.

It can be mildly deflating to see your lawyer in weekend clothes. Orioles cap, corduroy shirt bulging over a thin brown belt. Jeans, hiking boots. All of which brought a certain youthfulness to a freckled face lengthened appreciably by the receding hairline. He had something about him of the summer camp director. In fall.

“What if, just for argument's sake,” he said, “and I stress, speaking hypothetically—you could keep your job?”

I sat silent for a moment. Awkwardly he leaned back in a willow chair across from me on the couch, a driftwood coffee table between us. His features were hard to make out at first against the bright white drapes shutting out the afternoon sun. The possibility that things might simply carry on as before had never occurred to me. I'd only just got used to the idea that I might be facing a stay in prison. Now this vague, unreasonable sense of having been cheated of my dessert. I was being rehabilitated?

“Not so fast. What I'm trying to tell you is if, and I mean
if
the police decided not to file, everything else'd be up for grabs. That is, if you aren't determined to fuck things up thoroughly and completely.”

“You're saying they're not already.”

“Thoroughly, but incompletely.”

“That's good, then.”

“If the girl doesn't die.” Watching his face soften slightly I sensed my lawyer and I were arriving at a new plateau in our relationship. “I'm sorry, Don. It's rough and I've been pretty hard on you.”

“Drink, Counsellor?”

“What do you have?”

“Scotch. Ice.”

“How about some ice water.”

He accepted the glass without comment and leaned toward me without pausing to drink, glass in both hands, elbows propped on out-turned knees. “I need to know what you want, Professor. The less the police do, the more it falls to the university to handle it internally. This would be a nightmare for them. I'd see to that and they know it.”

Did I want to keep my job.

No. I wanted an unending series of ever more distinguished situations offered to me over the years at a manageable but rapid rate. A stately, considered ascension towards eminence emeritus. No, I did not want just to keep my job.

“Anyone following the news of course will want to see you get yours—there's tremendous pressure to fire you. But such purgatorial agonies they'll suffer! Meetings and more meetings. Committees struck, policies parsed, ethicists consulted. Cagy and conflicting legal opinions tendered …”

This kind of proceeding had become a graveyard for careers, and not just for the accused. Perhaps I'd heard. Schools all over the continent had been badly chewed up, from presidents on down. This would just be another case where proof would prove perversely hard to come by and a wrongful dismissal suit just a misstep away.

He paused to swirl the cubes in his glass, glanced down undeterred as a bit of water splashed over his fingers. A man warming to his topic.

“And for them, it gets worse. Here the
potential
plaintiff is in a coma. Nobody's got the faintest idea yet whether she would even want to pursue the matter.”

I had an idea, hundreds of pages of her ideas.

“It might be days, weeks before this shakes out—and what are they to do with you in the meantime?”

“Their options?”

“Stick it out and see what happens or negotiate a severance package. My guess is, if you're ready to fall on your sword here and resign, they'll fall all over themselves in gratitude. Could be very substantial. That college trust fund for your daughter would no longer be a worry. Something funny?”

Funny? Oh yes, little gags fairly multiplied before my eyes, looping lightly like nooses through the quiet air. Beulah paying for my daughter's education …

“No. Go on.” I tried yet again to dismiss the notion that she had foreseen all this. Orchestrated it, made a very public theatre of my life.

“In exchange for seeing you gone,” he said, “the family could be persuaded to raise no objection to the size of the settlement.”

“Yes, I imagine they could.”

“Of course all parties'd eagerly agree to complete non-disclosure. As it is, I think I can arrange an interim deal right now. Indefinite leave, full pay. Non-disclosure till the police go one way or the other.” He paused to glance around the room.

“You know, you should consider getting out of town when the police are done with you. By the looks of things here you could use a break.”

What my friend Chris Relkoff called ‘the cabin' was in reality a five-bedroom ranch house built by his father, who'd paid for an early retirement by selling pastureland to the south and east as acreages for wealthy executives moving out from Calgary. As Chris tells it, his father was already wealthy when oil was discovered in the north pastures. A run of good luck that ended in a violent, early death.

Chalet construction. A snug loft in the apex converted into an office with a fold-out couch, low pine bookshelves and an antique, oiled-mahogany writing desk. The living room where we now sat and the loft above us faced southwest through a towering wall of windows all but overwhelmed by a sweeping vista of the Rocky Mountains. Stone fireplace, walls of bright varnished log, cast-iron woodstoves, fully renovated kitchen, mod cons. A palace of rusticity.

I'd been here a few days. Papers—mine, hers—sorted into several ragged stacks on the floor. Bulky manila evelopes half-covered in colourful Mexican stamps stiff with glue, like military braid. A quantity of unwashed dishes, socks lying where they fell, a rumpled blanket on the couch. I was catching up on what felt like years of sleep, nodding off wherever it overtook me. Another blanket on the willow chair that Eric Heffner was sitting on, as his eyes scanned the scene. Crumbling pellets scattered in the dampness around the dog dishes at the door. Jewel would be out chasing rabbits somewhere. The usual bachelor clutter. Nothing worse than you might expect, under the circumstances. A certain, dim airlessness maybe at the moment, with the curtains drawn tight. On a bright day with snow still up on the mountains it could be blinding inside. Sometimes I opened up towards evening.

He had the names of a couple of good divorce lawyers. If ever I felt the need.

“Do you have somewhere you could go?” he asked. If this kept up, Eric (Rusty) Heffner and I were at risk of winding up bosom buddies.

I told him Madeleine and I'd been planning a trip to Britain, a celebration of sorts. “Next month when classes were done. Her parents have family over there—star turn with the new baby. I was going to leave her in Kent. Do a week's research in London.”

“You could still go.” He set his glass down, got to his feet. “Just let me know what you want.” He paused at the door to adjust his Orioles cap against the glare. “We've got a couple days at least till I get a read on which way the investigation's headed.”

I trailed him into the bright sunshine and out to where his old Volvo was parked behind my rental. Right foot resting on the floorboard, fingers lightly grasping the door frame, he glanced past me toward the house. I followed his gaze back to the low porch running the length of the southwest wall. It rests on pilings driven into the brow: from there the tableland tilts steeply down to the river. On the far bank begin the foothills. Tipped back beneath the window ledge was the twin of the willow chair he'd been sitting on inside. Another blanket crumpled heavily beside it. Nearly dry, evidently, after last night's storm. A plate or two left for the dog to lick clean. An ashtray half-filled with grey rainwater.

I was left with the distinct impression my lawyer thought me a likely source of further trouble. His concern for housekeeping I was just then finding profoundly irritating. No doubt he had some anxious little helpmeet to handle his.

“Take care,” he said. “Call you soon.”

P
EACE
        

13 Dec [19]94

[Mexico City]

I
F
I
MAKE A PRAYER FOR YOU
this night, will you come …?

Dusky maid in the flower dress, let me kiss your apocalyptic lips. The crown I've made you wear, is it heavy, is it you? I'm sorry, but I need you to—walk again barefoot on a sickle moon, firewalk the four hundred malevolent stars.

Blessed Queen of Sciences, how may we call you?
⁵⁰
Which of our immaculate conceptions wounds you least? Guadalupe / Coatlalocpeuh, she who has dominion over serpents or Quetzalpetlatl, who loves FeatherSerpent as brother, or Coatlicue who takes him as an emerald on her tongue?

By which of your exploits do we remember you? Who takes the secret name of Ra. Who challenges BlueHummingbird to nourish his children on milk not blood. Mother of the child god, who seeds herself with the clay of the Nile and the life that is in her mouth. Androgyne who swallows horns and engenders dilemma, whom some call Phanes, others LadyLord 2. Sacred harlot—Aphrodite, Xochiquetzal—who couples the sexes in mutual love. FlintButterfly, who severs them at the ankle and unleashes history on us and us on history.

Are you Toci, Mother of All, or Toci, Woman of Discord … Mistress of Tongues, who leads us to our destiny. Can you be both and neither, none and all?