Harold Wallace lived in a well-kept adobe townhouse close to the center of Santa Fe, on a street where sunflowers and gladioli bloomed brightly next to desert plants in large pots. Every home wore a decorative ristra, a blue-tile accent, or a Kokopelli door knocker. When I rang the bell I heard him long before he got to the door, a slow rustling, and so I expected someone much more decrepit than the handsome old guy who ultimately appeared. He was wearing a long white shirt over loose-fitting gray trousers and a necklace composed of small, chunky silver beads. With thin gray hair falling to his shoulders, his skin splattered with liver spots and the occasional mole, he looked like an aging actor or a very successful guru. I was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, and for the first time since leaving New York I felt underdressed.
“Well, I realize I don’t even know your name,” he said.
The house had been decorated in tones of off-white and white, the scheme relieved by an occasional flash of beige. “Call me Harold,” he’d said, leading me to an off-white couch in a sunken living room and offering me a drink. When I requested water, he left the room and came back with a Mexican blue glass tumbler crowded with ice, lemon slices, and a matching blue straw. He kept looking, without even trying to hide it, at my breasts, and I let him, figuring it might help. I sat with the glass in one hand and my notebook in the other. Reclining opposite me in a wicker armchair, Harold flicked his thin hair over his shoulders, a weirdly girlish gesture, and asked in a broadly patronizing tone what he could do to help me with my “school project.”
“It’s my dissertation, actually,” I said, straightening up and setting my glass on a bamboo coaster. “I’m intrigued by a pair of paintings that were purchased by my father, and that have your name listed on the backing. Desert I and Desert II, they’re called, as I said on the phone, with subtitles in brackets, painted in the late 1970s.”
“And you said the name of the girl was—”
“Eva Kent.”
“Well, as I said, I don’t remember every painting I ever sold or gave away, especially not from those years. You’re too young to remember, of course, but the seventies out here in Santa Fe— well, you know. It was a good time to be alive and a man on this planet. A little too good, maybe. Sometimes things went a little bit over the top, over the edge, if you know what I mean.”
“Not really.”
“Well, maybe your father did. Sometimes paintings changed hands — well, you can see what I mean.”
I tried to picture my father flirting with girl painters, or at all, and I couldn’t even come close to imagining it. Forced to attend neighborhood parties, he’d retreat to the edges, smiling awkwardly, making the hostess and other women uncomfortable; they’d go over and start conversations on subjects he cared nothing about, sports or community activities or municipal taxes, and he’d nod and smile politely without saying anything in return. Half a drink later, all talk would wither on the vine.
“I doubt that about him,” I said. “He was kind of a straight arrow.”
“Well, you would know,” Harold said skeptically. He spent some time staring blankly at a spot over my left shoulder. His eyes were an electric shade of blue, rare and attractive, marred by bloodshot streaks. I let a moment pass, thinking he was formulating some reminiscence; but he was just sunk in silence.
“I think she had a child,” I went on. “In 1979. If you don’t remember the paintings, perhaps you remember the child.”
“The late seventies,” Harold Wallace said, “were not a time for children. It may be difficult for you to imagine now, in this age of prudery, but back then it was all fun and sex and singles and swingers. When people had children, they left the scene.” He shook his head and smiled at the rug as if at an old friend.
“You said you had some files? I’d love to have a look, if you wouldn’t mind. Maybe I could find something to jog your memory.”
“Oh, yes,” he said slowly, still looking at the rug. “I do have a few files. You’re welcome to look through them if you like, my dear, but you’re not likely to find much. I traded a lot of my paintings for — how shall I put it? — black-market goods and services, if you know what I mean. We all did, as I was saying before. Things you wouldn’t necessarily want on your books.” I sighed and stood up, the image of my father as a seventies swinger still floating through my mind. I pictured him in his glasses and his receding hairline, his shirt opened halfway down his chest, a drink in one hand and a girl in the other. It almost made me laugh out loud. “Well, thanks for your time,” I said.
Looking up, Harold seemed sad to see me go. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like a drink?” he said.
“I’m sure.” I scanned the living room. There were no traces of any other person, no family photos, nothing.
“Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll take a look through those files, and if I find anything I’ll give you a call.”
“I’d be very grateful,” I said. His expression suggested he was wondering how grateful, exactly, so I gave him my mother’s number and fled.
At the Route 66 Motel, I flung open the door and kissed Angus full on the mouth. He kissed me back, then gently moved me aside to get at a bag that was lying open on the floor. I saw a flash of metal and leather before he zipped it up. He was wearing work boots, but not the white coveralls.
“What are you doing?”
He didn’t say anything.
The room was empty of all our clutter. My own clothes lay neatly washed and folded on the bed, inside a plastic bag from the grocery store. I felt suddenly sick. “You’re leaving,” I said.
Angus put on his hat and pulled the brim down low on his forehead. His mouth was set in a strange flat line — strange because he smiled so much — and the creases around his eyes sank deeper into the skin than usual. I felt a horrid tingle in my blood, the onset of panic, and I sat down on the bed. He knelt on the carpet in front of me. My skin hurt; it was as if my body was grieving.
“I want to come with you,” I told him.
“Lynn Marie Fleming,” he said, “you are an obstinate person.”
“Can I come or not?”
“You don’t really want to. It could be dangerous. It could be, well, sublegal. It isn’t really your scene.”
“I’m so sick of people talking about scenes.” I sounded like a child, even to myself, and I straightened up and looked into his pale eyes. “Tell me the truth. Do you not want me to come because you want to protect me, or because you’re sick of me?”
There was a flash of freckled skin, and I was lying on my back on the bed, with Angus on top of me, his heart beating, slow and definite, against my chest. I could never figure out how he managed to move so fast.
“You know the answer,” he said.
“I’ll drive the Caprice.”
“Well,” he said, “we could use another car.”
At Wylie’s apartment, Irina smiled and waved enthusiastically, though I was standing only a few feet away, and I waved back, surprised by how pleased I was to see all of them, not just my brother, even Stan and Berto. They already felt like some kind of family. They were standing around the bare room, waiting, I realized, for Angus to show up. Wylie was slouching against the kitchen counter, and when he saw me he grimaced and said, “What are you doing here?”
“Don’t worry. I won’t mess anything up.”
He looked unconvinced. Angus walked up to him and whispered into his ear, their two heads close together: one hat-ted, the other bare and dark; one smile, one frown. After a minute Wylie shrugged and said, “I hope you’re right.”
Angus turned and clapped his hands. “It’s time,” he said.