The sky was fizzing. Small green rockets popped and showered in the air, and every once in a while a big white explosion was followed by a single bang, like a bomb going off, whose sound hit me right in the chest and made me shudder. At these moments Angus squeezed my hand. We drifted through the streets, not talking much. The smell of innumerable barbecues sailed out on the night air. Cars swerved recklessly through the streets and ran red lights, their stereos pumping. Everybody seemed to be drunk. On the enclosed front porch of an adobe bungalow, the windows of the house itself dark, a dog was shaking piteously and howling in fear. I told Angus about Wylie defining “toad killer” in his argument with my mother’s boyfriend — I stumbled over the word, but couldn’t think what else to call him, really — and he practically keeled over laughing. He was wearing jean cutoffs, and when he slapped his leg his hand left a white imprint on his skin.
“Those people sound horrible,” he said when he finally straightened up. “How do you stand living in that boxy little place with the boxy little backyard and those horrible people? Why don’t you leave?”
The idea had never occurred to me, though I wasn’t about to admit it. “I don’t know,” I said. “My mom—”
“Your mom thinks I’m the devil.”
“I didn’t know you two had met.”
“We haven’t,” Angus said, grabbing my hand again.
We kept walking, in silence now, until we came to the gate of a small, run-down cemetery with crooked graves whose colorful fake flowers competed against an army of weeds. We went inside and looked around, examining all the old Spanish names. Angus was quiet, and I knew he’d decided this was a romantic and memorable context for a kiss. I didn’t think this kind of seriousness suited him as well as laughter did, and didn’t feel like being the target of his courtship, so I got it all over with by kissing him.
We stood there kissing under the moon. I touched the nape of his neck, where delicate hairs lay slick with sweat. His skin radiated heat against the palm of my hand, and his arms came around my waist to pull me closer. There was a flash of red behind my eyes.
“Let’s go to a motel,” I told him.
“We could just stay here. It’ll be gorgeous and unique.”
I stepped back, although I maintained a gentle grip on his hands. “It’ll be more gorgeous in a motel. Also, comfortable.”
“Come on.” He was grinning again, and running a hand through his hair, now all helter-skelter points. “Let’s make love in the face of death. Let’s feel alive.”
“I’m leaving,” I said. “Are you coming?”
He crossed his tanned arms. “I love the way you make unreasonable demands.”
“You’ve got a real knack for compliments,” I said.
I loved the sterile anonymity of the motel, its small bathtub and plywood dresser. We could be anywhere, I said to myself. We are anywhere. An hour later, Angus in the shower, I left a message on my mother’s answering machine.
“It’s me. Lynn. Listen, I’m going to be away for a few days but I don’t want you to worry. I’ll be fine. So will Wylie — I mean, I think he will, not that I’m with him right now or anything. Okay, see you. Bye.”
Angus went out for a six-pack of beer and a pizza, and we sprawled on the bed watching CNN. Every once in a while he’d run the palm of his hand from my neck down my back, then start over again from the bottom. I fell asleep to the weather forecast, blue currents and red arrows crossing a map of the world.
I woke up to see Angus returning to the room from somewhere. He stood beside the bed jiggling keys, his white coveralls gleaming in the shadows.
“Where did you go?” I said. “How long have you been gone?”
“I have to work today,” he said. “Want to come with me?”
“You really work?”
This seemed to offend him, and he stood up straighter, fussily adjusting the fit of his coveralls. “I told you, I’m a plumber. Today I’ve got an out-of-town job. We can go for a drive. It’ll be fun.”
“I don’t have the Caprice, remember? We walked here.”
“I went and got the van,” he said.
“The what?”
He opened the curtains, unleashing massive sunlight through which, squinting, I could make out what looked like an enormous eggplant parked in front of the room. When my eyes adjusted I saw it was a dull purple van with PLUMBARAMA written in white letters on its side. Small drips of white paint burst around the letters, symbolizing either the excitement of plumbing or the reality of bursting pipes, I wasn’t sure which. I got dressed, and short minutes later we were cruising on the highway with Angus singing along to “My Way” from the Sinatra tape he must’ve recovered, along with his hat, from Wylie’s car. He had a surprisingly pleasant voice, trained and lilting, and could hit the high notes without any apparent strain. The city spread into the desert, miles of development, chain restaurants and movie complexes and subdivisions, before petering out. On either side the land lay brown and skeletal, starved of grass or trees, under the enormous sky and the relentless sun.
Fifteen minutes later we passed a billboard with a background of lush, verdant lawns and the profile of a man in white clothes swinging a golf club: FUTURE SITE OF SHANGRI–LA. I laughed out loud.
“What?” Angus said, interrupting his performance of “Night and Day.”
“They’re building Shangri-la out here,” I said. “Did you know?”
“Oh, I know all about it,” he said, flushing red down to his neck. “Developing this land into a golf course is insane. It’s a profanation.”
“It definitely seems like an odd choice of location.”
“Albuquerque’s going to run out of water within twenty years. No water. None. The whole city shouldn’t even be here, but what are they going to do about it? Build another golf course. And do you have any idea how much water a golf course uses? Do you think they’re going to forgo the grass and use native plants?”
I guessed these weren’t rhetorical questions. “I doubt it,” I said.
“They’re leasing the land from a pueblo, and you can’t blame them. Of course they need to make money — but do they have to make it from this?”
“I don’t know.”
“It burns me up,” he said, his face so red that it might well have burst into flame.
Five minutes later he took an exit that led past a gas station and then turned into a parking lot full of cars in front of a windowless gray building, flat and square as a storage compartment. The small neon sign outside read SUNRISE CASINO, with spikes of sunrays poking up from the o, but the sign was turned off and didn’t glow in the late-morning glare. Inside, it still looked like a storage compartment, without decorations or pictures or even a carpet, a place stripped down to the barest of uses. Country music was playing, dim and static, on a bad sound system. Against the walls stood slot machines where people of diverse race and age sat smoking and pulling levers, the smoke hanging thick as cobwebs in the air over the blackjack and roulette tables in the center of the room. With his white overalls and healthy glow Angus looked alien here, and I expected we’d draw some unfriendly stares. But as he strode by purposefully, nodding to people here and there, they nodded casually back. He’d been here before.
I followed him down a green hallway with linoleum floors to a closed door whose black sign said MANAGER. Angus turned, sudden and intent, and kissed me, then knocked and opened the door.
“Gerald Lobachevski, man of many hats,” he said, stepping inside. “This is Lynn Fleming, woman of my life.”
Reclining in a chair behind the plywood desk was the middle-aged Native American man I’d seen at Wylie’s place that first night — the same thick glasses and braided hair and turquoise jewelry. He gave the distinct impression, looking at me, of being unimpressed. I found myself reaching up to tuck my hair behind my ears.