Rust (32 page)

H
E
WONDERS
if this is the same city. It is polished now, like a sapphire in the August sun, but all he remembers is grit. He arrives at Donny’s building, which has a new front door, a new intercom system, and a new voice that answers from Apartment 4B. That person has never heard of Donny, never heard of Margaret. He says no, the Irish lady who Vincent remembers lived next door is no longer there. “She’s not among the living,” the voice says. She died two years ago.

He backs away from the building as if it were on fire. He looks up at the windows of the fourth floor. All he sees in them are reflections of the other buildings, taller buildings that have gone up along the riverfront.

He walks to Fiftieth Street and turns the corner. Sacred Heart School is halfway down the block, and as he walks there, in a hurry, he prays that one of the nuns will remember a little girl who finished the eighth grade eleven years ago. That is not such a long time, he tells himself. But when he arrives at the place where the wrought-iron fencing should begin, the fence he remembers distinctly for its points and scrollwork is gone. There is no statue of Christ holding open his robe to show a heart pierced with a ring of thorns. There is a hotel instead. It has a two-story lobby with a doorman, and well-dressed guests are slipping in and out of taxis in the semicircular driveway.

He feels his heartbeat like a hammer in his chest.

How can things change so much in a city made of stone and concrete, he wonders. He gets on another subway train and takes it to lower Manhattan, even though he feels afraid of what will happen to him if his last landmark, the Bit O’ Blarney bar, has disappeared, along with Donny and his apartment, along with Margaret and her school.

It has.

He stares into the glass front of the new highrise, and he sees himself reflected: an old man. He is dressed in clothes that are too big for him. Tears stream down his face. They stain his button-down collar shirt. They splash onto the pavement.

F
OR
MOST
of the next day, Margaret obsessed about her sculpture. She spent so much time kneeling on the concrete pad in her work area that she finally made a quick run to the Home Depot to buy a thick doormat to protect her knees. The more she stared into the assortment of parts, the more complex her self-portrait became, and soon she was contending with issues related to the three dimensions, like visualizing how to keep the back of the head from flattening out when all the parts were resting on a flat surface as she laid them out. She collected her sketchbook from inside and made drawing after drawing, blueprints in a way, that she hoped would make sense when she finally began to weld.

At three in the afternoon, she collected Magpie and walked over to Garcia’s Automotive. Rico was working on the rear brakes of a P.T. Cruiser that looked new compared to the classic cars he usually doctored. “Hey, Rico,” she called, and he turned toward her, breaking into a big smile.

“Hey, girl,” he said. “Hey, dog.” He put down the wrench he was using and stepped away from the car.

“I forgot to tell you, I got a job at that courier service where Benito works. I’m going to deliver something way out on the Navajo rez over the weekend, and I was wondering if you had time tomorrow to check out my car before I go. Benito’s been there before. He says I’d better make sure the car’s in good shape for the ride.”

“
No problema
. Bring it in tomorrow, say around two. I’ll fit you in.”

“Thanks, Rico. Everybody’s acting like I’m taking my life in my hands to drive out there.”

“Who’s everybody?”

“Oh, the lady who runs the courier place, Benito, you know, everybody,” she said with a little laugh.

“Got time for a coffee break?” he asked.

“Sure, if you do,” she answered.

So Rico abandoned the job at hand, dumped out the remnants of his morning coffee, and made a fresh pot. While he tapped the coffee out of the can and into the paper filter, Margaret asked, “So, did you find anybody to listen to since I last talked to you?”

“Nope,” he said.

“What brought that on anyway?”

“I was talking to Rosalita,” Rico said. “I don’t think I was listening to her.”

“Well, if you were talking, guaranteed you weren’t listening,” Margaret said.

Rico was quite aware that he had said Rosalita’s name, conjured up, perhaps, an image of him and his wife together in Margaret’s mind. It felt risky to him to do that, though Margaret seemed unaffected.

“I think it’s funny that you’d call me,” she said. “I’m not the expert on the fine points of communication between spouses.”

“I wanted a fresh point of view,” Rico said.

Margaret nodded, but she looked somewhat perplexed. Then she added, “Hey, can I ask you something, Rico? And please say no if you feel like it.”

“What?”

“Can I come over here and do some welding tomorrow? I know it’s not our usual day, but I’m possessed. I have all the parts ready to be welded, and I want to move along with it. But I don’t want to get in your way.”

“You wouldn’t be in the way,” he said. “Saturdays, I just do oil changes and routine stuff. No welding.”

“I’d pay you the same,” she promised, “and try not to ask you any questions.”

“
No problema
,” he said, pouring her a mug of coffee and passing it to her.

“Really?”

“Really.”

“That’s so great. I have to get the basic structure welded before I can get into the challenging stuff, and even the basics are way beyond me and . . .” She talked and talked and Rico listened carefully, but even so it was quite a while before he figured out she was describing some kind of so-called feminine figure she meant to wrap up in that so-called wad she had made the other day. He did not laugh, though the whole picture made him want to, not out of disrespect for her, though. It was just so crazy, what artists did. What they thought was important to do. He could tell she was lost in another world, just telling him about it. So he stayed quiet and sipped his
café con leche
until she snapped out of the trance she was in and segued into, “Okay, break’s over. I better get out of here. You have work to do, and I’m interrupting you.” She got up and so did Magpie. Within a few seconds they were on their way down Barelas Road, and Rico was back under the Cruiser, replacing the worn-out brake pads.

The thought didn’t arrive at once, but somehow, over the three hours between the time Margaret left and the moment when he cashed out the last customer of the day just after six, Rico realized that he was taking it for granted that he would be riding right along with Margaret on her adventure into the Navajo reservation. He didn’t like the idea of her being all alone out there in an old car. She was a city girl, after all. A New Yorker, who probably couldn’t tell east from west if her life depended on it. The possibility that she might not want him along for the ride crossed his mind, but he ignored it. The idea of accompanying her was perhaps a gesture in the right direction, a beginning attempt to tame his strong feelings into friendship. Of course, telling Rosalita what he intended to do with his Sunday presented its challenges, and he ignored that, too. It had been many years since he’d been out around Gallup, but one thing was certain: nothing would have changed much over there. Out on the rez, it remained timeless. Hawks, and sometimes eagles, drifted on air currents. Coyotes trotted along in search of a meal of prairie dog. Antelope and elk meandered in small herds along arid riverbeds. The sun bore down. That was it.

It was not the type of landscape Rico was drawn to. He preferred the greenbelt along the Rio, with the tangle of weeds ready to take over, the cactuses, the Spanish broom and stalky wildflowers in shades of orange and blue. He liked the New Mexican sunflowers that grew thick along the riverbank, and the low-lying
yerba del manso
with its cone-shaped white flowers, which could be collected and used to fight medical conditions from arthritis to asthma. He liked shade and Mexican birds of paradise and pampas grasses and river reeds that grew as tall as his house. Sometimes, like this very night, when he turned down Riverside Drive, with the
bosque
to the left and the adobe houses tucked in among the cottonwoods and the trumpet vines, he thought there was no place better to be than where he was. He was well aware, though, that half the people in the city of Albuquerque avoided the South Valley, which they equated with gangs and guns and drunken Mexicans. Those things were there, but they were in shorter supply than the horses, ponies, llamas in backyards, chickens and roosters scratching in the gravel, fruit trees, kids playing ball in the street, and garden patches where chile peppers grew.

He arrived home to see his whole family assembling on the patio for dinner. Rosalita liked to eat outside on the summer nights that weren’t too hot. They had bought a small gas grill at a neighbor’s yard sale, and Rosalita had taken to grilling vegetables and hunks of chicken or beef on wooden skewers.

“We’re waiting for you, Papi,” called Mirabel. “Hurry up!”

“I’ll be right out,” Rico called back. It was the same thing every night: six women of various ages all waiting for him to arrive, always telling him to hurry up or chanting “
Cinco minutos
” or “We’re all starving, Papi!” He cleaned up quickly, as always, and put on a fresh button-up shirt with pictures of low riders on both the front and back, a gift from a satisfied customer who brought his car to Garcia’s Automotive all the way from Flagstaff.

Food was already being dished out when he took his place at the table. They had to crowd in and barely had room to move their elbows. Tonight, they had Rosalita’s shish kebabs with barbeque sauce, sliced avocados and tomatoes in oil and vinegar, corn tortillas, roasted
pappas,
and a cold corn and three-bean salad. “What a feast,” Rico said as he filled his plate from bowl after bowl. And it felt like one, like a celebration of some sort, and Rico relaxed, enjoying himself and his family to such an extent that when Elena asked, “Does anybody want to go to the Breakfast Burrito Bash at the Holy Family church after mass on Sunday?” Rico simply replied, “I’m going to have to take you to church tomorrow night this week,
mi madre
, unless somebody else is willing to go on Sunday. On Sunday I’m taking a drive out to Gallup for the day.”

“You are?” she said. Rico had never skipped a Sunday with her unless he was sick, which was rare.

“
Sí
, Elena,” he said; and then, as an experiment in normalcy, he added, “I’m going to take a ride out there with my friend Margaret.”

Suddenly silence descended on the table like a monsoon rain that came out of nowhere intent on spoiling the party—washing away the good feelings—and every single person turned to stare at Rico. But with his stomach full and his mind relaxed, Rico had to laugh at the scene that unfolded before him at the table. Each of his girls looked the most herself in this moment: Maribel’s face was vaguely disgusted, as if she thought he, as she might put it, didn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground; Ana’s was curious and detached; Lucy looked like she might start to cry. Rosalita had turned her head slightly, as if she wanted to pretend she didn’t hear anything. And Elena’s hands fluttered to her chest, as if she wanted to make the sign of the cross but had temporarily forgotten how.

“Take it easy, everybody,” Rico said, feeling very much like the man in control. “Margaret’s somebody I’m teaching to weld. I want you all to meet her. Rosalita, maybe we could invite her over for dinner, no?” and then he said to the rest of the girls, “Mommy’s already met her over at the shop.”

Now their daughters looked back and forth from their mother to their father.

“Is that true?” asked Maribel with more than a little suspicion in her voice.

“Yes,” said Rosalita in a voice that sounded lined with dynamite, “she seems like a very nice little
gringa
.” Then she turned to her husband, her voice gathering wind and thunder, and she added, “Maybe she could just move in with us, Rico.”

And that’s when the cloud burst.

M
EANWHILE
,
BACK
in Barelas, Margaret noticed the neighborhood filling up with people and cars, which was certainly unusual. All along Santa Fe Avenue, where she lived, high-priced SUVs, Suburus, and Volvo coupes parallel-parked, spilling out families and lovers and friends who opened the trunks and took out folding chairs, picnic baskets, and blankets. They all marched like pilgrims down the block, and finally Margaret stopped a young couple and asked, “Where’s everybody going?”

“Zoo Music,” the man replied. He had light brown rasta hair in fat clumps that he had tied together like a cornstalk that sat on the top of his head. “Cadillac Bob and the Rhinestones. Ever heard of them?”

Margaret shook her head.

“It’s a local band that’s been playing together for twenty-five years. They got a great piano player—guy named Arnold Bodmer.”

“They play the blues and oldies, mostly,” added the woman, who looked more like a social worker than a rasta girl.