“Mr. Smith, Chuck?” asked Eryn, the Barnes & Noble manager. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, sorry,” said Low Man. “I’m very tired.”
“I wish we’d known you were going to be in town,” she said. “We would have ordered more copies of your books.”
She smiled. Low Man decided that she was the kind of woman who lost sleep so that she could finish reading a good novel. He wondered if he was going to wake up before her the next morning and pass the time by scanning the titles of the books stacked on her nightstand.
“I didn’t know I was going to be in Missoula,” he said. “I was supposed to be spending a week up on the Flathead Reservation.”
“Oh, I thought you might be here to see Tracy.”
“Who?”
“Tracy,” said the manager, and when that elicited no response from Low Man, she added, “Tracy Johnson. You went to college together, right?”
“She lives here?”
“Actually, she works here at the bookstore.”
“Really?”
“Well, she’s here part-time while she’s getting her MFA at the university.”
“She’s a writer?”
“Yes. Didn’t you know that?”
“I haven’t seen Tracy in ten years,” said Low Man.
He closed his eyes and when he opened them again two uniformed police officers were standing in front of him. One of the officers, the tall one with blue eyes, carried Low Man’s suitcase.
“Mr. Smith,” said the tall cop. “Are you Mr. Smith?”
“No, no,” said Low Man. “You must be mistaken. My name is Crazy Horse.”
Later, in the police station, Low Man paged through another telephone directory. He hoped that Tracy Johnson’s number was listed.
He found her.
“This better be you,” she said when she answered the phone, clearly expecting somebody else.
“Hi, Tracy, it’s Low Man.”
Low Man remembered, when it came to poetry, that a strategic pause was called a caesura.
“Bah,” she said.
“No bah.”
“Damn, Low, it’s been forever. Are you still an Indian?”
“Yes, I am. Are you still a lesbian?”
They both remembered their secret language, their shared ceremonies.
“Definitely,” she said. “In fact, I thought you were my partner. I’m supposed to pick her up after work. We’ve got a big date tonight.”
“Well, you think maybe you could pick me up, too?”
“Are you in town?” she asked, her voice cracking with excitement. Low Man hoped it was excitement, though he feared it was something else. His chest ached with the memory of her. During college, when he was still drinking, he had once crawled through her apartment window and slept on her living room floor, though he’d made sure to wake up before dawn and leave before she’d ever known he was there. During the long walk home, he’d veered off the road into a shallow swamp, not because he was too drunk to properly navigate but because he wanted to do something self-flagellating and noble, or at least something that approximated nobility — a drunk twenty-year-old’s idea of nobility. He’d wanted to be a drunk monk in love.
“Damn, Low,” she said. “Why didn’t you call me before? I would have gone out and bought a dress. I know how much you like me in dresses.”
She remembered him so well. He liked that.
“I didn’t know I was going to be here,” he said. “And I didn’t know you lived here.”
“So, how’d you get my number?”
“Well, your manager at the bookstore told me you were getting an MFA.”
“Eryn,” she said. “I bet you were wondering if she was going to hop on you, right?”
Low Man couldn’t answer.
“Damn, Low,” she said, laughing loudly. Her laughter had always been too loud, impolite, and wonderful. “Eryn is a lesbian. You always fall for the lesbians.”
Low Man had once kissed Tracy, though they each remembered it differently. She’d thought the kiss was a desperate attempt to change her mind about him in particular, and about men in general, but he believed that he’d kissed her only because he wanted to know how it felt, how she smelled and tasted, before he put his feelings into a strongbox and locked them away forever.
“Yeah, that’s me,” said Low. “The Dyke Mike. Now, can you pick me up?”
“Low, I can’t, really,” she said. “I mean, my partner’s parents are coming over for dinner. They drove over here from Spokane Rez and, like, it’s the first time I’ve met them, and they’re not exactly happy their daughter has come roaring out of the closet on the motorcycle called Me.”
“I really need you to pick me up.”
“Low, I want to see you, I really do, but the time is so bad. How about tomorrow? Can’t we do this tomorrow? Hell, we’ll talk for three days straight, but I really need tonight, okay?”
“I’m in jail.”
Low wondered if there was a word in Navajo that meant caesura.
“What did you do?”
“I broke my heart.”
“I didn’t realize that was illegal.”
“Well,” he said. “In Missoula, it seems to be a misdemeanor.”
“Are you arrested?”
“No,” said Low. “Not really. The police said they just don’t want me to be alone tonight.”
“Low, what happened?”
“I came here to see a woman. I was going to ask her to marry me.”
“And she said no.”
“Not exactly.”
“What then?”
“She married Chuck yesterday and moved to Flagstaff.”
“I hate Arizona.”
She’d always known exactly what to say.
“Low, honey,” she added. “I’ll be right there.”
Tracy Johnson drove a 1972 half-ton Chevrolet pickup. Red with long streaks of gray primer paint. Four good tires and one bad alternator. Hay-bale molding in the bed.
“This truck,” said Low as he climbed in. “What stereotype are you trying to maintain?
“There are no stereotypes in Missoula, Montana,” she said, appraising his face and body. “You’ve gained weight. A lot of weight.”
“So have you,” he said. “I love all of your chins.”
Forty pounds overweight, she was beautiful, wearing a loose T-shirt and tight blue jeans. Her translucent skin bled light into her dark hair.
On the radio, Hank Williams sang white man blues.
“You’re lovely,” said Low. “Just lovely.”
“Yes, I know,” she said. “But don’t get your hopes up.”
“My hopes have never been up,” he said, though he knew he was lying. “Your partner, what’s her name?”
“Sara Polatkin,” said Tracy. “She’s Indian.”
“Indian dot-in-the-head or Indian arrow-in-the-heart?”
“She’s Spokane. From the rez. Unlike your lame urban Indian ass.”
“Yes,” said Low Man. “And you can say that, given you’ve spent so much time on reservations.”
Tracy dropped the truck into gear and drove down a narrow street.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m freaking out her parents. Completely. Not only am I a lesbian but I’m also white.”
“The double whammy.”
“She’s in law school,” said Tracy. “She’s smart. Even smarter than you.”
“Good for you.”
“We’re getting married.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, that’s why Sara’s parents are coming over. They’re going to try to talk her out of it.”
“Jesus,” said Low Man, wondering why he had bothered to get on the flight from Seattle.
“Jesus has nothing to do with it,” said Tracy as she stared ahead and smiled.
Ahead, on the right side of the street, Sara Polatkin was waiting outside the coffee joint. She was short, thin, very pretty, even with her bad teeth and eccentric clothes — a black dress with red stockings, and Chuck Taylor basketball shoes with Cat in the Hat socks.