It’s amazing how quickly a pack of men can size up a woman walking alone, in the heat, in the desert, in the night. But just as quickly they looked away. Had she become that hideous? Just a bit ago Justin hadn’t thought so. But Justin lived on memories; the moment he’d started with remember this and remember that, she knew where they were headed, and it wasn’t Indio.
“Remember that time when I came over and you were pregnant and wearing an orange bikini?”
Hell yeah, she remembered. That week there’d been no way to get comfortable other than floating in the pool all but naked. And Justin had come stomping in with his leaf skimmer and his jugs of chlorine and just about scared the baby out of her. And her wishing he had. But it would be two more long, hot weeks before Baby Carol popped out. Baby Carol just a few miles from here. To hell with Baby Carol.
“Go away, esqueleto,” one of the brown men said.
She looked up at the mountain behind them. Atop that mountain were Anza’s high desert, homes without alarms, and men who weren’t so rude. Those men took your money, made the transaction quick, and the stuff was all good, always.
“I got money,” she threw back at him.
“Shit’s still missing,” Don Donner said.
I had to look to make sure he was talking to me. Unfortunately, he was. “It’s history, Don, let it go,” I said, and I meant it.
“She was holed up in Dusty Road.”
“Yeah, I heard that.” I’d heard it but I didn’t believe it. So they found some things that might have belonged to a homeless person. What does that prove?
“You let her slip through your fingers. You ever think about that?”
“What would you have done with her, Don, if you’d caught her?”
We were at the post office. Anza doesn’t have mail delivery. We all go to the post office to get our mail and parcels and to run into the neighbors we mostly don’t want to see. The post office is next to the town hall, which is across from Circle K. Farther down the road is our Dairy Queen and farther down the road is the rest of California.
“I’d bring her to justice,” he said, and he said it so casually that for a moment I took him for a reasonable man.
“She’s hardly worth the trouble, considering all she took.”
“That ain’t the point, Dave. Nobody appreciates a person walking through their house, going through their things.”
I shrugged and sifted through my envelopes — Senior Fitness, Senior Dating, Reverse Mortgage Lender, Assisted Living, Retirement Community, Burial Insurance, and without fail, the American Association of Retired People. I’m not even sixty yet! I wanted to scream every time. But I knew the envelopes couldn’t hear me. They had started arriving just as I turned fifty. As if turning fifty wasn’t depressing enough.
I looked up — Donner was still there, his little blue eyes glowing, his eyebrows sprouting white tentacles that reached out to ensnare me. “Then there is no point,” I said. “If some one is taking stuff you don’t really want or stuff you can easily replace, then where’s the crime?”
“There were valuable documents.”
I nodded in agreement. Sure, there had been a couple of birth certificates. That was about the most valuable thing.
Donner spoke like he was reading my mind: “Them birth certificates are more than just paper.”
“You ever hear of the Internet? Those things can be replaced, all you got to do is contact the hospital where you were born.”
“What about the fucking Mexicans?”
“What about them?”
“They can make themselves legal with them. You want some Mexican walking around with your name on ’em?”
He wanted to argue but I didn’t, so I made for the door. He tap-tapped behind me. “They can make themselves legal with them,” he said louder, as if I hadn’t heard him.
I was at my car and he was right there behind me. He was looking at me like he expected an answer, so I gave it to him. “All right, Don, I hear you. So two Mexicans are now legal because they got ahold of some birth certificates. Two.”
“Yeah, two today,” he just about shouted, tapping his cane hard on the gravel, “but the way those people fuck, there’ll be twenty by Sunday.”
I drove off but I was sure he was still talking to me. People come up to Anza for all sorts of reasons. Mostly good ones. When I called that meeting a couple of weeks ago, I felt I was doing my civic duty. All I wanted to do was alert the neighbors that there was something going on that might affect them. I did not count on reactivating Don Donner. I did not anticipate that lynch mobs would be formed, like it was up here in the 1860s when this was all Cahuilla land. All because a woman got desperate enough to go klepto. I’d heard talk at the barbershop that Donner and some old guys had decided to waste their time dragging the mountain for her, had found some stuff in a shed on Dusty Road. Stuff that could have belonged to her.
“Empty beer cans,” said Jimbo, while snipping away at what was left of my hair.
“Could be anybody’s,” I shrugged.
“Oh yeah, get this — rag, used.”
“You mean like for the period?”
Jimbo nodded, a big grin across his stupid face. “Could be anybody’s,” he repeated. “Donner’s sure it was hers.”
“Oh yeah, did it taste like her?” I said, appealing to Jimbo’s subtle sense of humor. It worked. He about took an ear off, he was laughing so hard.
I couldn’t help thinking about her, at least whenever I drove past the Circle K, which was all the time. She hadn’t slipped through my fingers. I saw her, that’s all. Plenty of people had. She was always there, sipping a beer or a cherry Froster, smoking, minding her own, watching the traffic go by. I wondered if she had plans, dreams, a past. I guess everybody has a past. It was her present that sucked. Not much of a life. Who can blame a woman like that for sneaking into houses? Seeing how we lived gave her something to do. I blame myself for what happened because I’m the one that made a big deal out of it. I’m the one who tagged her as a cat burglar. I’m the one who brought Don Donner into it.
Kimberly Miller was lying on human skin, warm, moist, a chest moving up and down beneath her own. How long had she been here? No matter, it was nice. She kept her eyes closed. Better not look at him too close, there was no telling what she was cuddled up to. She used the same technique she had used when at Bernard’s — she had developed the ability to see without seeing. She could, for example, put on makeup without really looking at her face. She could walk by mirrors, shop windows, anything with a reflection, without seeing herself. It was better that way. She did remember things, though. She remembered handing money over in the dark, she remembered the small packet in her hand. She remembered an arm around her shoulder.
Suddenly she had a boyfriend! Who’s a ratface now? Ha ha. She liked having an arm around her, she liked being led this way and that, to a car, to a park, to blankets. There were stars and cicadas and she felt so good it was as if her whole body had become a young, lovely vagina. This is what God must be like, this arm around me. What is the matter with people? She had giggled at the thought last night, and the night before, and the night before that, when no one needed to sleep or to eat. If everyone got some of this there would be no wars, no murders, no sadness. Everyone would be a vagina and live free. She felt the sun on her face. The desert sun she knew too well, the thing that reveals everything that should be kept hidden. She could feel it burning her through the leaves, each ray a laser beam. She had to move, go find some real shade.