Miss Arizona
IT’S GOTTEN BEYOND cold and I don’t feel uncomfortable no more. It’s nearly my time and I don’t even care. Why in God’s name should I? I ain’t leavin without her and I sure as hell can’t take her with me.
It ain’t like I’m feelin anythin; my arms or legs, and I ain’t even sure whether or not my eyes are open. I guess it don’t much matter that all I got is thoughts. They ain’t worth shit but I don’t see them stoppin for a while. The joke is that it’s gonna be the cold that’ll take me away, when outside, beyond those thick stone walls, they got people frying in that heat. Guess we all gotta go sometime. It’s just the circumstance I would never have figured in a thousand years.
I suppose I paid for my arrogance, just like he did. And yeah, I finally understand that crazy ol drunk now: just another asshole who fell on the sword of his own vanity. You get to thinkin that you’re the man: the ice-cool, shit-talkin, big-dicked artist. Everyone else: why, they’re just your itty-bitty subjects. So then you reckon this means you can just do as you damn well please. That it somehow gives you rights. But it gives you no goddamn rights at all.
When did it start?
It started and it ended with Yolanda.
Miss Arizona.
She was an ol gal, who looked like she’d been rode hard and put away wet. Yep, she said she was Miss Arizona at one time. Well, I was darned if I ever could see it. She sure was one heavy lady; I’d seen gals in Louisiana trailer parks had asses didn’t wobble like the flesh on her arms did when they moved — usually to pick up a drink. Ol Yolanda had the type of red hair that might have been comely at one time, tho I reckon it had long since come outta bottle; piled high and lacquered stiff on that big piggy-eyed head of hers. Her skin was white as your momma’s sweet milk; the sort that don’t take too kindly to the sun, and that’s one thing they got plenty of round here.
Miss Yolanda mostly kept away from it. If she were outside she’d be in the shade, sometimes sittin on the back porch over-lookin that small rear garden, with its little scrap of grass as brown and dry as the ruined old ranchlands that surrounded her house. The scrubby patch sure did contrast with that beautiful, turquoise swimmin pool. Even though Yolanda often sat in a candy-stripe one-piece swimsuit (usually with a big floppy straw hat sat on her head and a robe over her shoulders, while a big fan blasted her with cool air), she never seemed to get into that pool. Probably didn’t want to mess up that hair of hers. But that damn pool was kept so good I always reckoned it was a crime for it not to be used, specially in these parts. But yeah, skin like that and here she was in this place; right in the middle of the goddamn desert, a good three hours’ drive from downtown Phoenix. She just sat there on that chair under the parasol, with ropes of blue vein runnin out from those pale, flabby thighs, turning coal black as they got down to her skinny calves. Yep, she was Miss Arizona. Reckon right about when that state was counted under Mexico.
I remember the first time I pulled up outside that big ranch house. I was thinkin that when somebody puts up a house that belongs in cattle country right here in the desert, you know two things right away: first is they got money, the second bein they ain’t lookin for too much in the way of company.
That’s ol Miss Yolanda. But it strikes me that as this looks like being my last story, it might be time to talk a little bit about myself. My name is Raymond Wilson Butler. I’m thirty-eight years old, divorced, and a native of West Texas. Before I met Yolanda I was livin in a one-thousand-bucks-a-month rented apartment near downtown Phoenix with my girlfriend, Pen. What about her? I could go on forever. But all I can think to say right now is that she sings beautiful songs, when she ain’t working in a bookstore in a city mall. My life changed for the better when I met Pen. She was the best damn thing that ever happened to me.
But Yolanda was different. She changed everybody’s life. Every single sonofabitch she came into contact with. I started seeing her through my work; every other day I’d drive out to her place. I guess I should tell you how that went.
To get to Yolanda’s from our apartment, I had to drive west right out of Phoenix. It would never fail to amaze me how the city stopped so suddenly, town-to-desert within the arc of a drunkard’s piss. Then you’d pass one or two subdivisions, mostly completed, some now just bein redeveloped after standin crumblin in the sun: concrete and steel carcasses, for almost twenty years. A lot of people thought land was the primary resource out here and went bust buyin it. Not when you only get around seven inches rainfall a year it ain’t. The buildin only started up again when they finished the canal system, comin down from the Rockies to hook up this region with precious water.
Then, when the last of the subdivisions passed, you had a long haul through desert before you got out to Yolanda’s. Driving out to see her, I always had a goddamn thirst on me. This kind of terrain didn’t help the likes of me much. Cruisin down that interstate they all had a shot of trying to tempt you to stop for a cold one; Miller’s, Bud, Coors, and even some of the drinkable ones. And damn, was it hot.
The particular day I’m thinkin of was my second visit to Yolanda’s, the one after I had secured her agreement as to how she could be of service to me. It was midday and the sun was at its cruelest and even an old Texan boy like myself, living in LA till fairly recently, could sometimes forget how fierce it could be. Out there the bastard baked all the freshness out of the air, leaving it feelin like particles of iron in your lungs. As your throat seared your respiratory system started bangin and you sweated like a solitary truck-stop hooker gaspin goodbye as the last lusty buck in that convoy pulled on his dirty ol jeans.
My first jaunt out to Yolanda’s had reminded me how much I liked to drive that Land Cruiser into the desert. I’d headed off the interstate and onto the back roads before goin right off that grimy ol track, just veerin onto what looked like virgin sand but was really more kinda broken shale; tearin through it like a wet cloth across a dusty table. You couldn’t take your ass outside the car for too long, as I learned on that second visit. I had the inclination to step out for five minutes to the sound of that dirt crushin under my boot and the buzzards squawkin in the distance over some roadkill. That was just about all you could hear in this clear empty country, where the sky met the earth unbroken, every direction you turned. I looked northeast and couldn’t even see an indication of the jagged, ridged mountains that were probably only a few miles away.
Takin in that emptiness and feeling the isolation, you could just about distance everythin. Through this comforting filter of solitude, I’d think about Jill and the terrible mistakes I’d made. Then I’d cheer myself at how I’d been blessed with this second chance with Pen, which I was determined not to blow.
I distrusted Phoenix, in much the same way as I did all them shabby sunbelt cities with their pop-up business districts, soulless suburban tracts, strip malls, used-car dealerships, and bad homes almost but not quite hidden by palm trees. And then you had the people; drying out like old fruit in the sun, brains too fried by heat and routine to remember why they ever did come here in the first place. And that was just the poor. The wealthy folk you only saw under glass; in their malls and motor cars, breathing in the conditioned air that tasted like weak cough medicine. I was used to heat but this place was so dry the trees were bribin the dogs.