Carrie’s house was a two-story gray adobe located in the north part of town, just off West Alameda and close to the small co-op and a coffee shop where hipsters hung out and wrote poetry and screenplays. As soon as Bella got out of her car, half a dozen black cats swarmed around her feet. “Oh, pardon me, excuse me!” she said, and laughed as they purred and rubbed against her calves.
“Well, hello there, stranger!” Carrie ignored Bella’s hand and came in for a hard hug instead. It took Bella’s breath away. “Nice hair. You look good.” Carrie had makeup on and her hair was swept up in a tight bun, but her large brown eyes were the same. Large and full of gold and black specks.
“Oh, thank you. It needs a cut.” Bella ran her fingers through it. It had never felt so dry.
“Well, I can see you’ve met the posse. Turns out the black cat superstition is especially strong in a town like Santa Fe. But it’s not their fault how they look, is it?”
Bella looked down at a cat with different-colored eyes and decided he was the cutest of the bunch.
Carrie picked him up. “Well hello, Oscar!” she said into his face, before motioning Bella to follow her. “So,” she called over her shoulder, “I guess you haven’t lived here long enough to know you’ll have to put gobs of coconut oil into your hair. It’ll help with the dryness, I promise!”
Bella followed Carrie down the cool hallway and into a large kitchen with terra-cotta tile floors and a kiva fireplace in the corner of the room. The whole space was flooded with color. It was beautiful.
“Wow,” Bella said, amazed. “I’ve never seen a fireplace inside a kitchen.”
“Yeah, it’s an old Santa Fe thing. You can have a fire while you’re making a snack.”
“My gosh, how nice.”
“Yeah, it’s a shame — most other houses around this area are like cinder-block dungeons. Made fast and cheap. Not with real wood ceilings or in the real adobe way. Come with me for a sec. I was just finishing up with something.”
Outside the kitchen, three large black pots stood three feet from one another. Each had a different design of turquoise inlay. “I’m just getting ready to ship these to a gallery in Texas.”
“Oh, are these yours? Amazing, Carrie! I had no idea.” Bella came in for a closer look.
“Yeah, they’re mine. Let me just finish this.” Carrie began cutting large swaths of bubble wrap before wrapping each vessel.
The last time they’d seen each other they were fourteen and probably friends because they’d been the token ethnic kids at their Catholic boarding school in New Hampshire. They’d always been shocked by how much their classmates owned. Their rooms were full of down duvets, feather mattresses, velvet hair accessories, plush rugs, Beverly Hills creams, and French perfumes. Even Bella’s and Carrie’s mothers, who both worked in restaurants, wouldn’t have been able to afford such fancy items. Bella did her homework in Carrie’s room because of all the rooms at the dorm, she felt most comfortable there. It smelled like fast food and chips and the linoleum floor was bare like in her own room.
“So, what have you been up to?” Bella managed to smile, knowing how flat and stupid her question must have sounded.
Carrie cut a piece of packing tape and wound it around and around the bubble-wrapped vase. She draped a faded quilt over it and sat down with a sigh. “Geez, I don’t know. It’s been, what, twenty years?”
Bella nodded. She wanted some good news. Anything to get out of herself. The cold sweat covering her chest and back was giving her the chills.
“Well, I got married and divorced. Lost my parents. Worked as a waitress. Work as an aesthetician up at Ten Thousand Waves now.” She winked. “I’m excited for us to be coworkers up there. Sort of like the old days.”
“Oh. I’m sorry to hear about your parents.”
“No, it’s okay.”
“Well, I see that you still don’t go by Caroline.”
“That’s right, it’s still Carrie.” Her eyes brightened. “But now I introduce myself as, I’m Carrie, like Stephen King’s Carrie, so there’s that.”
Bella smiled. “Yeah, true. That tells me something.”
“Then I’ll tell people something like, But I don’t seek revenge on young white girls I knew in high school, because people around here might want to know that kind of thing. You know — with all the liberal white guilt and all.” She laughed, and grabbed an orange from a bowl on the ground. “No, you and I both know those little bitches didn’t know any better.”
“And what about the Korean girls?”
Carrie snickered. “Of course not, I love you. I’ve always loved you.”
Bella fidgeted with her hands. Such declarations made her uncomfortable.
Carrie elbowed her leg. “But you do remember them, don’t you, Bella? Those arrogant princesses with their black Mastercards and their feather beds. Meanwhile — meanwhile — we had magazine ads decorating our walls and our late-night stashes were the cheapy instant ramens and Doritos.”
“Yeah. It sucked.” Bella pushed a few pebbles around with her sneaker and shivered. The sun had dipped behind the mountains while they were talking.
They had constantly complained about their classmates, but Bella knew, and she knew Carrie knew, that they would have traded in their “real” for the other girls’ “fancy” in a second, and probably still would.
“You used to introduce yourself a little differently back in the day.”
“Ha! Right. Something like, Hi! I’m Carrie, like a fairy! I know.” She shook her head. “So stupid.” She finished peeling her orange and offered Bella a section.
“No, it made me laugh!” She glanced at the orange. “No thank you.”
“Well, you were the only one, I think. Sort of innocent, both of us.”
“Yeah.”
Carrie bit her lip. She watched Bella move pebbles around with her sneaker. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I hate that word, innocent. It’s a stupid, stupid word.”
“No, it’s true. We were so, so innocent. Especially me.”
“So — how are you now? Were you ever able to get over that... whole... episode? God, I’m sorry, I’m not sure what to call it.”
Bella smiled. “Oh yeah, of course. I’m good now. I mean, pretty good. You know, life isn’t perfect but I can’t complain. I’ve just followed my interests and they’ve led me here. I do massage and write poetry. It’s a weird, lonely life, but I like it. It suits me.”
“Well, good. Your face filled out some. I hope that’s okay for me to say that.”
“Of course, and I know. I used to have such a tiny little face and body! What did the senior girls used to call me? Baby doll?”
Carrie nodded. “Sounds right.”
“You were the pretty one and I was the baby doll that followed you around and got into bad things with you.”
“Like stealing the wine for Mass.”
Bella smiled. “Like stealing the wine for Mass. I’ve been stuffing myself with sugar lately ’cause I quit drinking and smoking pot.” She shrugged. “Partying can only numb so much.”
Carrie leaned forward in her chair, suddenly more interested. “So so true. I should know of all people.” She took Bella’s hands and got a serious look in her eye. “When I was eleven, my father’s father lost his land. It was land from the part of his family from Spain and so he was sad, like deeply, almost-go-crazy sad, and my grandmother got that way too. Then all of it spilled down to my father and mother and both their siblings, and it was happening to all kinds of other folks in Española who had also lost their family’s lands. Fucking US government. The sadness took everyone. It took and it took and everyone was chasing the numb.” She shrugged. “And it had already gotten their souls.” She brushed the white skin of the orange off her jeans. “But before all that taking and chasing, taking and chasing, it was just the sadness.”