The wrinkly faced woman’s demeanor epitomized the same-old-tired-same-old. She neither had much of an individualized face nor recognized individual faces. Proof: Missus Wrinkly Face responded by staring right at him sans comprehension.
She piled his plate with extra bread.
Leo sarcastically flashed a thumbs-up.
Mrs. Wrinkly Face responded belatedly, looking peeved.
The blackboard read:
Food was memory. The good ones. The crappy ones. Hot tamales. Mashed potatoes. Vegetables assorted. Bread. Day-old bread. Chef’s salad. Lunch: a beet salad and a bologna sandwich. Funny spaghetti combinations. Spaghetti with turkey. Spaghetti with ham. Corn beef. Enchiladas. Guacamole. Chicken legs. Bisque and pork ’n’ beans. Straight out the cans. Good. Bad. Crap. A stingy church group strictly served chef’s salads. Loaves sans fishes. Bums pretended it was okay. Remember that Giggles liked to say: “Santa Fe food is mush. Santa Fe style: sweet, sour, and sordid. Try swilling it all without getting sick.” Remember the lunch when a volunteer group served filet mignon? Gotta love it. Hope springs eternal.
“Did I eat all that? Don’t remember. I suck it down,” he grumbled, when Giggles finished her recitation of past meals.
He noticed that the woman across from him at the shelter table weighed maybe three hundred pounds. Blind. Near-blind. Handicapped. Homeless. She dipped her Sloppy Joe into her chocolate ice cream, then spilled her water cup into her broccoli salad. She swallowed without hesitating.
Giggles meanwhile shuffled her bare feet in and out of her goofy slippers, her bottoms still her pink pajamas from a night spent at the shelter.
“Do I mutter? This is what I got when I said, No bread.”
“Guess she didn’t hear you,” Giggles replied, pointing at his plate. She cupped her ear. “Watcha say?” She studied his plate colors: the blues, the greens, the juices bleeding into themselves.
In Leo’s mind images flashed: blue police car lights.
“Least at the county jail they give you plates with dividers,” a particularly well-dressed man with an accent argued.
“He’s Total Texas,” Giggles shot back, pointing at his cowboy hat.
The Texan smiled, tipping it.
Leo heard an edge in her voice. Funny, sometimes. Like Giggles’s humor. Nobody knew her real name. She slept at the shelter because she somehow knew a way to keep a penknife wrapped inside her favorite blanket.
Other voices swarmed the tables: President knows what he’s doing. He’s gonna screw Korea. It’s like when two mad dogs face off. There won’t be any World War III. Tall tales. Rumors. Lost-my-car-title blues. All I regret about my last stint is that my daughter died. A stroke. I dunno. I think they might have took her out just to hurt me again. Seems they’ll do anything to hurt prisoners
Hey. My lease is up this month. The real reason I’m splitting is it’s past time to join up with cousin. My cousin? Remember. He’s in a militia in Oregon—
It’s a crock.
Listen. Not to Giggles. Giggles snarling. Is he hot shit in Texas?
Listen. He didn’t escape from prison. He escaped while he was on work detail.
Right under their noses. Part of what this manhunt is about is they’re embarrassed.
Next. Helicopters. Manhunts.
Leo remembered he still had the latest Santa Fe New Mexican. Stained: foodstuff all over the front-page photo. Greens, blues, ketchup. Colors of police sirens and, yeech, blood. He waited to hear the victims’ names. Lisa Marie Bennett. Or Marie-Jose Jaramillo. When he stood, he got up to stuff the Santa Fe New Mexican in the trash.
Red alert.
Schroeder approached. Since Leo didn’t want to engage, he split toward the exit. Bums bowed and blanketed in tableau along the walkways resembled a refugee camp. He heard rain. Storm rumblings. Nobody who changed shirts, shoes, and socks sparingly appreciated rain. The murkiness oozed lava lamp — like into the shadowless horizon. He backtracked. He spoke inexpressively to the lunch-line server: “Can I have a second plate?”
“Pardon me. Everybody gets two plates. You’ve already had your two.”
In the background he heard Giggles snapping that she wasn’t a cigarette bank. Bums and winos should scalp smokes at the Santa Fe Cigar Shop.
“This is my second plate.”
“I’ve seen you in line twice. I’ll have to ask Schroeder if we can let someone have three plates.”
“Don’t ask Schroeder nothing. Okay. Okay?”
The lunch-line lady signaled Schroeder.
Leo began walking toward the exit. Shadows filled the distance. And he knew what all the bums were thinking: How hard, how bad. Then he realized the soiled newspaper was still in his hands. He folded the paper at a point that cut the suspect’s eyes, while he lifted the garbage top.
Giggles at that precise moment asked him to see his New Mexican. “Crazy shit,” she said. “I knew her,” she added, less ambiguously, since the other headline threatened nuclear war.
“Lisa Marie Bennett?”
“No.”
Names stuck in his head. “Marie-Jose Jaramillo?”
“How’s everything going? How are we feeling?” Schroeder asked.
“No trouble here.” Giggles intuited that Leo didn’t want to answer.
Schroeder recorded infractions.
“Wait a sec. Should you be here? Didn’t I say you were on suspension?”
“That was way, way back,” Leo mumbled.
“Oh. It’s you. Leo. You’re not on suspension.”
Leo drawled his words out: “Good. Everybody talks. Nobody listens.”
“Who did you think he was?” Giggles piped in.
Schroeder was conciliatory. “I’m listening. Seriously. Where do you stay? How have you been?”
Giggles pointed at the photo in the Santa Fe New Mexican. “That guy who broke loose?”
“The killer. He’ll do it again. Sometime.” Schroeder smiled, shrugged. Befuddled.
Leo thought: Gimme. And snatched the newspaper away. “I gotta use it for toilet paper.” He tossed his hand like a salt pinch over his shoulder. He reread the section that stated the cops had reasons to believe—
Faces: while reading he saw prematurely wrinkled faces — faces regardless of chronological ages withered inside balls of flesh to the point that physical ailments and psychological tics appeared interchangeably sourceless. The bad skin. The cracked stare. Stringy, scraggly, silvery hair camouflaging a profile. Looks like me, sure. Photo looked like every white homeless guy who badly needed a shave.
He thought: Me. Him. Just like the lady got me confused with somebody else. He finger-drummed the newspaper photo. Wondered about it. Wouldn’t I be a wonder boy with a mirror and a comb?
Been too long. Been too long.
Think happy thoughts. Flowers. Pastels. Big blooms. Day that me and Giggles panhandled. Giggles had the idea that selling some trinkets would be sweetest; when she returned thirty minutes later she pushed a shopping cart full of floral arrangements.
Q: How in the hell did she get them? The blooms?