“Well, do you want to stop at Owl’s Liquors and get some?”
“No, it’ll waste time.”
“No,” Erica suddenly announces as we near the turnoff on Agua Fria, squeezing my arm, “I want to stop at Owl’s. We have to stop.”
I look at her and she pierces me with those eyes. I miss the turn and pull into the Owl’s Liquors parking lot a block later. I’m about to get out to get that pack when we hear screaming.
“It’s all your fucking fault!” a man’s voice is yelling. “If you’d have just gone to the store and bought some fucking paint and covered that shit up, like I told you to, none of this shit would be happening.”
Erica and I look over to where the shouting is coming from. There she is, in the far corner of the parking lot: French braid.
My take on Erica was more spot-on than I’d even suspected — she knows things. I look back at her, shocked.
I slide my hand into my jacket pocket. My pocketknife is there, as expected. I’d grabbed it before running out to meet Erica.
“Sure, blame it on me,” French Braid yells back at the guy, “that’s been your plan all along, right?”
They’re standing in the empty back corner of the large parking lot, away from the entrance to Owl’s Liquors, by the same Escalade I saw in the driveway this morning.
“...blackmail me after I found out your game and didn’t turn you in,” she continues shouting, “get me to do all your dirty work setting things up so you could always pin it on me if the shit went down!”
“That’s bullshit!” he screams, but it sounds like he’s lying, even to me.
I look at Erica. We watch him storm off into the store. French Braid, in turn, gets into the Escalade and screeches out of the parking lot.
It’s dark now. This is my chance. To avenge my Aunt Lupita and all our family’s suffering. To make sure this asshole can’t handcuff anyone ever again. To finally do something with my life.
I reach into my coat pocket and feel the hefty pocketknife, which I’ve never seen used the way I’m going to except in the movies. I undo the lock feature. The guy comes out and heads toward where the Escalade was, mutters something under his breath, then lights up a smoke.
“The minute I get out of this car,” I say to Erica, “drive away and don’t look back. Drive home. I’ll get my car from you later.”
“What?” I hear her say as I open the door.
“I mean it,” I hiss.
“Hey, you got a smoke, man?” I say, walking toward the guy. “I’ll pay you for it.”
“Um,” he says, looking over at me, “sure, okay.”
He reaches into his pack. I reach into my pocket.
Three minutes later, he’s slumping to the ground and I’m walking away, out of the parking lot onto Hickox Street. I pull some paper towels and a small bottle I’d filled with rubbing alcohol out of my other pocket and douse and clean the knife off as discreetly as possible as I go.
I walk several blocks to Tune-Up Café and walk inside. As I wait in line, I pull out my phone and check my e-mail. I order an Angry Orchard Hard Cider and find a seat on the outdoor patio. Someone wants an appraisal tomorrow at two; I press Accept, see a confirmation e-mail pop up.
I see a text come in from my mom: Por fin, justicia por Lupita.
I down my cider and order another.
Part II
The Children of Water
Táchii’nii: Red Running into the Water
by Byron F. Aspaas
Pacheco Street
In my dream, I hear coyotes heckling from the darkened arroyo near my old apartment. Shadow puppets dance on the wall, illuminated by car headlights passing east and west on St. Francis Drive. The Sangre de Cristo Mountains loom over Santa Fe.
He lies next to me, snuggled in the pit of my arm, his left hand on my chest. Who is this man? The weight of his arm on my chest entraps me. The stranger opens his eyes and stares into me, delirious.
I woke to the howls of an oncoming train. I slouched on the wooden bench, my legs splayed, my leather bag anchored around my shoulder.
The person next to me smiled.
I wiped my mouth.
“Is this your train?” The blue in the stranger’s eyes was daunting, the color of turquoise — like his, the stranger in my dream. His blond hair wasn’t completely blond but held bits of gray around the temples.
I nodded.
“I figured the squeals of the train would wake you up,” he said. “I wasn’t staring, just so you know. Is this your normal train?”
I nodded again, silent.
It had been close to a year since I moved to Brooklyn from the Harlem projects. Before Brooklyn, I lived with a family of three, in a two-bedroom apartment, near my job — just over a year. Now, I took the R train each morning to meet the 2/3 train that transported me back into the neighborhood, where I was employed as a social worker.
“I’ve seen you before,” the stranger said.
I smiled.
“You don’t say much, do you?”
I pulled my bag closer to my side. The howl of the train came closer. I tilted my head to the left — no pop. I tilted my head to the right — two pops. I tilted my head to the left once more, rubbing the sore muscle between my neck and right shoulder. I winced.
“I’m guessing you didn’t sleep well either?”
The R train squealed to a stop.
“Well, that’s us,” he said.
I stood, noticing the ache in my knees, and groaned. I stepped into the train and the door closed behind me. I took the first available seat.
My bench neighbor smiled from across the car, then surveyed the other passengers curiously.
Weekday trains were always stuffed with passengers heading into Manhattan from Brooklyn. For two years, I’d been erroring my way around this city, hoping to one day be able to navigate without the fear of getting lost. That day hadn’t come. I still lost myself in the strangeness of New York. Sometimes I pondered why I left the desert — the harshness of the Southwest had nothing on the harshness of New York City. And the desert was my home. The desert knew me better than anyone else. I missed the desert now. I missed my home.
Here, I’d trained myself to keep my eyes down, to move steadily. I kept my cell phone fully charged and my earphones in my bag, so I’d have a soundtrack for my ride to Harlem. Sometimes I listened to music, sometimes to podcasts about finding true love or refocusing on the laws of attraction to center myself and gain a better understanding of the universe. Sometimes, too, I sat quietly and just watched the characters enter and leave the stage until the next intermission, which came every few blocks, but too often the voices began to speak inside me.
Alone in the throng of bodies, it felt as if I were the star of my own show. I was cast as the main character of this episode of The New York City Subway, baggage sponsored by Coach, who also supported the cast, which included the man with the blue eyes, the man with his hat out begging for money, the woman who talked to the empty seat beside her, and a car filled with extras.
I closed my eyes to the sounds of FKA Twigs. The voice of the woman soothed me. I loved this song — “Two Weeks.”
The stranger’s blue eyes hardened on me.
My last clinical placement before graduating from Smith College in Massachusetts was Santa Fe. That desert town had been my second choice, but I couldn’t complain. Santa Fe was a reminder of my childhood — when my mom and dad packed us all up for family trips and we headed to Albuquerque, then Santa Fe, then Taos — that odd triangular circle through the northwestern part of New Mexico. I grew up in the Four Corners region, so this was home to me, but not quite home. Just close enough to feel at home.