“That was good timing,” I said.
He took the booklet. “No, I was watching you through the monitor. Enjoy your vitamin water?”
I had barely touched the glass and now I was relieved.
“Vitamin water?”
“Drink it, it’s good for you. B Complex mostly, one hundred mg of niacin and lots of other good stuff. High potency, not like that crap in 7-Eleven. Better than coffee. Drink up.”
“Uh, no thanks.”
Toby began drawing a line through my answers, forming a kind of chart.
“Well, this will give us some idea,” he said. “If I wasn’t pressed for time, we could do the proper thousand-question test; that’s the real deal.”
“Uhm, look, Toby, I’m an insurance invest-”
“Ah, you’re from Denver! Denver, Denver, Denver!” Toby exclaimed, his eyes wide, his fist pounding the table.
“What about it?”
“Denver holds a special place in our pantheon. Is that the right word? No matter. It was in Denver that Battlefield Earth takes place, surely Denver’s claim to fame as a city.”
He leaned across to me and his eyes now took on a furtive expression.
“Do you want me to spill? Do you think you can handle it?”
“Spill.”
“There are some of us who don’t think it’s a novel at all.”
“No?”
“No. Not a novel, but a…” he lowered his voice. “Prediction.”
“Ah, I see.”
“That’s just between us.”
“Of course.”
“That’s why some of us think Mr. Cruise has moved to Colorado. And when Xenu returns… No, forget that, I’ve said too much, but let’s just say that the rumors about Mr. Cruise’s bunker aren’t just rumors.”
I leaned back in the chair while Toby finished his chart. When he was done he passed it across the table and began explaining it. It looked like the stock market index after a turbulent week, but according to Toby the fluctuations weren’t the problem, the problem was that the high points and the low points were in the wrong places. My life was a mess, I was rudderless, confused, clearly unhappy; however, there was an answer. He further explained that the Church of Scientology could help me iron out these personality defects, with the assistance of vitamin water, the thousand-question audit, and motivated people like Toby.
After this little speech he began biting his nails and, when he thought I wasn’t looking, exploring his ear canal with the eraser on the top of the pencil.
When he began nibbling at the eraser I decided that as amusing as this all was, I’d had just about enough of it.
I was a serious person, here on serious business.
I gave him my card and heavy hit him with words like “dead Mexican” and “hit and run” and “intoxication” and “manslaughter” and “leaving the scene” of an accident.
He was already fragile, on edge. He began to simper and, sipping my vitamin water, confessed that he had been drunk the night of the golf cart incident, but he’d only been trying to drive from the Scientology Center on Pearl Steet to his apartment on Arapahoe, that there was no way he could get up the mountain, and in any case everyone had been given strict instructions to stay away from Mr. Cruise’s estate and not to invade his personal space. The sheriff’s department hadn’t cared.
Still, he groaned, he knew it was wrong to get drunk, it was weak, and if they found out that he’d been drinking he could get into big trouble. He wanted to talk about it but I’d had enough.
I assured him that his secret was safe with me, exited IV#2, and, forsaking forever my chance of being accomodated in Tom Cruise’s bunker when the aliens returned, walked back out into Fairview.
Within a minute I had dismissed Toby from my mind and had steered my trajectory back onto its proper course.
Got to eat. Call Esteban and eat.
The long road back.
The motel.
Upstairs, look for Paco.
A note: “Overtime! See you tonight!”
Stomach rumbling. Needed some food.
I had money left.
Paco said there was a good burrito place downtown on Logan Street. Good because it was too greasy for the white people and it was cheap.
Out again.
Sun, but a chill in the air, and a hundred meters from the motel Mr. New York Plates still there in a turning circle by the forest. Sipping a coffee, reading a Denver Post. Latino, bald, forty, chubby. Shifty-looking character, possibly an INS agent, possibly not.
I crossed the street.
“Good morning,” I said to him.
He pretended not to hear.
I tapped the glass.
Window down, paper down. “Yes?” he said in accentless American.
“Do you know the way to San Jose?” I asked.
He grimaced. “I’m a stranger here myself,” he said.
“A stranger in paradise, well, that’s ok. Have a nice day.”
The window whirred back up.
Now that he’s been made, I’ll never see him again, I thought with what turned out to be poor powers of prescience.
I walked down the hill.
I was wearing my third change of clothes of the day. Blue jeans, black shoes, a red blouse, and a raincoat Angela had left for some reason. Didn’t she watch the movies? All those Yuma flicks with Bogart, it’s always raining in L.A.
Main Street. Gray clouds. Few people about.
A family with kids. A gaggle of high-maintenance girlfriends buying apresski gear. Half a dozen individuals sitting outside Starbucks and Peet’s Coffee and Tea, some of them still defiantly in flip-flops and shorts.
They didn’t notice me.
I didn’t register them.
I did see Mr. New York Plates again, following me on foot.
An INS agent almost certainly-the FBI investigating a murder in the New Mexico desert would surely do a better job.
I found the intersection for the burrito place, turned the corner on Logan, and ducked down an alley.
Garbage cans, Dumpsters, squirrels.
I waited for Mr. New York Plates.
He passed by in a hurry.
I waited until he had turned at the next block and then I ran back up the hill to the Wetback Motel.
His Toyota was still there in the turning circle.
On my second day in the force Lieutenant Díaz showed me a trick with a coat hanger that can open practically every car on the planet. I’ve used it many times. But I didn’t have a coat hanger, and why not give the INS a little of their own back?
I picked up a log and smashed the passenger’s-side window, opened the door, looked inside the car.
A sleeping bag, McDonald’s wrappers, soda cans, a water bottle filled with urine. Nothing interesting until I found a digital camera in the glove compartment. I took it, slipped it in my coat pocket, and went back down the hill again.
Our paths did not cross as I had hoped they would.
I found the burrito place, ordered a beef fajita, and scanned through Mr. New York Plates’s photographic work on the digital’s tiny screen.
Pics of the motel, of trees, several of squirrels, of himself, and finally the jackpot: several shots of me, Esteban, Paco, and a few of the others.
Yeah-INS. Didn’t bother me but I’d have to warn Paco. He should have gone to L.A. If they deported him now he’d be back to square one again. Poor kid.
I ate the burrito and drank a warm Corona.
“You’re not good at this,” Mr. New York Plates said in Spanish.
I looked up.
“Not good at what?” I asked, attempting sangfroid.
He didn’t look angry, just tired. He put his hand out. I gave him the camera and he put it in his pocket.
“I like the ones of the squirrels best.”
“What else did you take?” he asked.
“Well, I was spoiled for choice: the bottle of urine or the McDonald’s wrappers?”
“Good day,” he said and turned to go.
“Wait. Who are you?” I asked.
“Me? I’m someone who doesn’t like to get dicked around by stupid fucking bitches!”