The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel (10 page)

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They had spent the rest of the night side by side on chaise lounges by the penthouse pool above Mission Bay, and the city lights. They had finished off a quart of tequila, talking about how they would go back to Lubbock as husband and wife and pick up Eric’s inheritance from Granny, drawing interest these past four years until Eric “came around.”

In one version they had concocted that night, they stayed in Lubbock long enough to get married, picked up the cashier’s check and left town before the sun set. She and Eric had settled on that version as the one that would make everyone—from the Baptist preacher to Beaufrey—the happiest. Eric would have the money, and they would go on together as they had before, except they’d have money. Money might give them a better chance with David.

But a week later, when Seese had mentioned the trip to Lubbock, Eric had shaken his head and laughed. “Oh, I never told you the whole story, darling,” Eric had said, waving a mock limp-wrist at her before he flipped the blender switch on their frozen daiquiris. Eric had seemed cheerful, and he’d been full of jokes the last week. Seese thought he was over his sadness. They had spent almost every day by the penthouse pool where they had enjoyed laughing about having a pool fifteen stories above the Pacific Ocean. Eric pointed out that a pool might be more confining, but at least the sharks couldn’t get him. “Oh, yeah?” Seese said, diving under to grab at his legs. Then David and Beaufrey had returned. David came and stretched out on a lounge chair. Seese could not see if his eyes were closed behind the dark glasses. Beaufrey had stood in the doorway only a moment and then turned away. Serlo slid the glass door shut.

SEESE LISTENED to the toilet flush and refill in the dark. The motel was quieter than any of the cheap joints she and Cherie had ever stayed in. She was getting anxious about Cherie. As far as she knew, Cherie was still in Tucson. Cherie sent Christmas cards no matter how
broke she was. Seese had tried to tease her about it once, but Cherie, who was usually easygoing, did not see any joke in Christmas cards. But Seese thought it was hilarious that Cherie, who had performed the most bizarre sex acts for paying customers and sometimes their women, that same Cherie never dreamed of neglecting to send Christmas cards. Cherie did not merely send Christmas cards. Cherie always wrote what she termed a “personal note.” Now Seese was going to cash in on Cherie’s Christmas cards. If Cherie herself was not living in Tucson, then Cherie was “keeping in touch” with people who did live in Tucson. Seese would be able to track her down, and then Seese would be able to collect on an old favor she had once done for Cherie.

It was only ten to midnight. Seese put on jeans and a gray sweater and tore through the suitcases for a nylon windbreaker. Mostly the suitcases were full of the “settlement goods”—cash and cocaine. It didn’t matter. She just had to get from the door to the taxi. There was still time to catch Cherie at the Stage Coach. If Cherie was still dancing there. The possibility that Cherie had quit, had left town, brought a surge of the dark, hollow feeling Seese had long connected with coming down from cocaine. But it had been hours since she had had any coke, and even the marijuana she had smoked in bed had worn off. What she was feeling was the plain old jones—all nerves and her own guts reading false prophecies to her. So a little coke would readjust the world. She scattered a tiny spoonful across the peeling night table by the bed. Being around Beaufrey had got her into any number of bad habits, and wasting cocaine had been only one of them. She and Eric had always joked about the Mexican maids who cleaned the penthouse. How the maids put clean bags into their Electroluxes before they did the penthouse, and later all got high in the basement just from the sweepings off the carpet.

Seese told the cabdriver the name of the bar. He had stared at her in the rearview mirror, and she knew what he was thinking: “Cheap whores, bikers, and small-time drug deals.” The wind had died down, but the air was dusty. A double shot of brandy would help. Her heart was racing with the anticipation of finding Cherie. The cocaine made her tongue numb, made her clench her jaws, and made her want to go, to move, to do something. She took a deep breath and settled back to look at the town where things would be settled for her once and for all. Miracle Mile had a heyday once. The motel bungalows, blue kidney-shaped pools, tall palm trees, and hedges of pink oleander sprang up. Winter havens for house trailers stretched for acres. But years before either Seese or Cherie had ever seen Tucson, something had changed.
The drought had left no green. In the dust-haze any lawns or grass that might have been alive was indistinguishable from the cement of buckling sidewalks.

Even the so-called desert “landscaping” was gaunt; the prickly pear and cholla cactus had shriveled into leathery, green tongues. The ribs of the giant saguaros had shrunk into themselves. The date palms and short Mexican palms were sloughing scaly, gray fronds, many of which had broken in the high winds and lay scattered in the street. One frond struck the underbelly of the taxi sharply, which broke loose a tangle of debris. Tumbleweeds, Styrofoam cups, and strands of toilet paper swirled in the rush of wind behind the taxi. Running over the palm fronds, even if they were grayish and dead, had reminded Seese of the Catholic Church and Palm Sunday. She laughed out loud and the cab-driver had looked hard into the rearview mirror. “I was just thinking,” she said, avoiding the eyes.

She could endure it no longer. She had to know where Monte was—what had happened to her baby. The old psychic was somewhere in Tucson. Seese had to get help soon. In the desert life might evaporate overnight. The dead did not rot or dissolve. They shrank into rigid, impermeable leather around their own bones. Inside the cracked stucco bungalows and rusting house trailers, people got poorer as they got older. What had once been a winter getaway eventually became permanent. One year when the heat arrived in late March, they did not return to Ohio or Iowa. Instead, they retired. They sat motionless by window coolers or floor fans with the curtains and shades drawn until November. They were only passing time, waiting.

Eric would have liked Tucson. Too bad they had never quite managed to get here. He would have liked the northwest side the best because he had been fascinated with decay and death. Eric would particularly have liked the idea of the old “retiring” to await their extinction on the edge of a desert. Eric had been excited about a certain desert somewhere in Peru. That had been before Eric had realized that Beaufrey had no intention of allowing him to accompany them to Colombia. Eric had read all about the Spanish explorers because, he said, it was good to understand the history of a place. All Seese could remember was this place in the Peruvian desert where the Indians had taken their dead. The mummies were kept in an extremely arid place. Relatives and loved ones could go there to talk to those long deceased. Seese wished she could talk to Eric tonight. She understood now what was wrong with cremation. She had never understood what the Catholic Church had against
cremation before. Now Eric was scattered across the West Texas plains pushed by the same winds that gusted through Tucson.

The cab ride was taking forever. Was he trying to fool her, to cheat her? She leaned forward to see where they were. The railroad tracks. She was almost there but felt something was about to overtake her—She had to know where Monte was, and what had happened to him. The old psychic lived somewhere in Tucson. Seese had to find the woman or she would be like all the others there, suspended in one endless interval between gusts of wind, and waves of dry heat.

THE STAGE COACH was on the frontage road to the freeway. The semis were parked north of the truck stop where the drivers showered and ate before hitting the bar for the strippers’ show. Tiny didn’t want the bar parking lot clogged with tractor-trailer rigs. Truckers didn’t drink enough to suit him, and what Tiny wanted to sell was booze. Tiny had also sold pills to the truckers. He couldn’t beat them, so he joined them, he liked to say. But the sale of a few pills didn’t mean Tiny had to have giant semis a block long congesting his parking lot.

Big Harley-Davidsons, chromed and customized, were parked in perfect rows. Seese laughed. Cocaine was behind the bikers’ mania for perfect rows of bikes, perfectly spaced. Biker perfection went no further than the motorcycle. Bikers themselves tended toward beer bellies and dirty T-shirts with jeans slipped down to expose their hairy cracks.

Seese did not see Cherie, but told herself don’t panic—breathe deep. Even if she wasn’t dancing here, chances were good Cherie would still be in town. Cherie’s oldest girl was eight or nine now. Cherie wouldn’t move around so much with a child in school. A tall redhead was bobbing and weaving out of a tiny fringed cowgirl skirt. Her breasts pushed open the white cowgirl vest. She had two toy pistols she aimed from the hip at the men leaning over the edge of the narrow stage. “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,” the jukebox played. The bikers at the pool tables ignored the dancer on the platform. She had kicked the skirt out of the way, and was now doing deep knee-bends,
legs apart, with the men out of their chairs at the edge of the stage whistling and yelling. The noise got one of the bikers to glance at three or four men reaching onstage to tuck dollar bills in the redhead’s G-string. The other bikers had only bothered to turn their heads briefly. Seese could imagine the contempt the bikers had for the other men.

Tiny waddled out of his office when he heard the yells and whistles. He had gained a lot of weight since the last time Seese had seen him. He had to keep watch on the girls constantly. They’d show any little thing to get big tips from the audience. Being outside the city limits still didn’t make it legal to spread her legs that wide. Seese laughed. Tiny had always been scolding her when she danced, complaining that she was going to get the Liquor Control boys down on him. But that had been when Tiny was hot for her, and the scolding had been his way of letting her know how sexy he thought she was. Tiny made a sudden cutting motion with his fat hand across his throat and swore at the redhead. As she closed her legs, Seese saw a sequin flash from deep within the folds of her flesh. The men at the foot of the stage booed Tiny and gave catcalls, but they didn’t want the Stage Coach shut down by the Liquor Control Board either.

Tiny had turned to go back into his office, but caught sight of Seese. She took her double shot of whiskey from the bar and walked over to him. “Seese,” he said as if he were seeing a ghost.

“Hi, Tiny.”

“I heard you left,” he said, still surprised. Tiny meant the rumor that Seese was dead meat. “Ancient history, those rumors,” Tiny said, warming up, stepping closer.

Seese took a big swallow of whiskey. “Yeah, just rumors.” She was scanning the barroom for Cherie. Dancers in garter belts and no bras, dancers in baton-twirling skirts, and dancers in bikinis circulated past the tables, passing the hat for tips before they danced.

Tiny had been in love with her once, but then David had come along. Seese finished the whiskey and Tiny nodded for the bartender to bring her another. Sweat was forming in the folds where his chin met his neck. Tiny was living proof that snorting cocaine didn’t always cause weight loss. “I heard about your baby. I’m sorry.” Tiny sounded sincere. He patted at his neck with a handkerchief and made a motion toward his office, but Seese shook her head. “I have a little something,” Tiny said, meaning drugs.

“No. I’m looking for Cherie.”

Tiny seemed short of breath. He wheezed. She would not have
fucked him even if David had not come along. Tiny gave up too easily. Despite everything that had happened between Tiny and Beaufrey, Seese knew Tiny would not help her because he was afraid of Beaufrey. But Cherie owed her one.

Tiny nodded his head at a table against the far wall. Cherie was hunched over the table, her head close to a man in a worn denim cowboy shirt and scuffed cowboy boots. She was trying to convince him of something. She looked startled when she saw Seese. The cowboy was suspicious. He studied Seese intently. She tried smiling but he had already sized her up. “Seese!” Cherie scuffed the chair back from the table and hugged her. She was dressed for her act. Baby-blue, see-through, shorty pajamas and blue satin high heels. “This is my husband, Teddy. Teddy, this is Seese. Remember, I told you how she helped me that time.” Seese could see that Teddy didn’t like to remember anything he knew about Cherie’s past.