“Sit down, join us,” Karen said.
“Just for a minute.”
“We’ve decided to buy the painting,” said Dr. McNally, the man. “We’re quite thrilled over it.”
Evan Keeler nodded. “I’m glad you like it”
“May I ask you a question?” asked Dr. McNally.
“Of course.”
“How old are you?”
The vultures! Counting down the days of a man’s life. “Forty,” he lied.
The McNallys looked at each other, frowning, puzzling.
Karen laughed loudly. “He’s such a clown. How old are you, Evan? Sixty? Sixty-two?”
“I’m fifty-nine.”
“Why, you’re a young man,” Dr. McNally said, playing with the bracelet on her wrist.
“Yes, I am.” Evan Keeler drank some water, but it went down the wrong way. He coughed, closing a fist in front of his mouth.
“Are you okay?” the McNallys asked.
“Fine,” he tried to say through the choking. He tried so hard to stop that he couldn’t. His face flushed. “Fine.” Cough. “Really.”
The McNallys examined his eyes and measured his pulse. He couldn’t believe this was happening. The whole restaurant was watching.
“How is he?” came a new but familiar voice.
Evan Keeler looked up and saw the fat Indian Breedlove. He got mad and coughed some more.
“Have you ever had heart trouble?” asked one of the McNallys.
“No!”
“Yes,” Karen said.
“Karen!”
“It’s okay,” Dr. McNally said. “Often, people don’t like to admit to heart problems.” He smiled at his wife, who smiled back.
Evan Keeler finally relaxed. He was resigned. The painting was gone.
Evan Keeler left the restaurant and went back to the gallery with Karen’s key. He just wanted to stare at the painting for a while, be alone with it, say goodbye. Five children played on a fresh blacktop, a dirt road the color of plywood rising behind them, a lot on one side of the dusty way, a row of adobe dwellings on the other. The larger of the girls was wearing a bright yellow dress, a simple but beautiful dress, her black eyes looking away from the barefoot boy who talked to her. Two younger boys played catch, but their attention too was turned to the girl. The smaller girl wore a red, a blood-red dress, her dark hair falling over it in braids. She also watched the older girl. The little girl smiled the smile of Evan Keeler’s daughter. Light played off the dark hair and eyes of all the children. Their brown feet were powdered with dust. Wisps of clouds gathered far off in the robin’s-egg-blue sky over the hills. One who knew the desert might see the slow formation of a thunderhead. Evan Keeler loved the painting.
The road slipped by. He was all the way to Camel Rock when he decided he had to turn back. No sale, he would say, and take the picture home. The late afternoon was painting a new face on the land as shadows lengthened and a yellow-green cast was taken on. The light up there was different from the light way south where he lived. They got majestic sunsets up there and great packs of cumulus clouds appearing to flatten on a glass table overhead. But the sky up there did not wash pink with the coming of dusk. The sun up there did not hammer down in a way to remind you of the land, of its severity, its importance, its integrity. The sun up there let the Indians become lazy.
He still saw the painting. Maybe he would donate the painting to the medical clinic in Hachita or to the lobby of the bank in Mimbres where dusty children and good people could look at it or not, at least stroll past it and see themselves peripherally.
It was dark when he reached Taos the second time. There was a parade of jacked-up pickups and low-riders on the main drag, fog lights glaring, horns blowing, radios blasting, Mexicans madly cranking chain-link steering wheels no bigger around than their heads to come about in mid-traffic. Evan Keeler turned off the strip at the drive-in theater and circled the town on dirt roads, kicking up dust in the dark behind him. He found the gallery dark and locked.
He went to Karen’s house up in the hills east of town. He knocked, then pounded on the front door before circling around to the back. She was sitting in the hot tub with a handsome young man.
“I have to talk to you,” Evan Keeler said.
“Evan!”
“I’m sorry. I have to talk to you.” He stepped away, through the sliding glass door into the kitchen. He took a mug from the cupboard and filled it with water from the tap.
Karen followed him inside, slipping on a robe. “What’s this all about?”
“I don’t want to sell it.”
“It’s sold.”
“Back out.”
“They’ve got it, Evan.”
He fell into a chair and held his head in his hands.
“Evan, what is it?” she stood behind him and placed a hand on his neck.
The young man from the tub was wrapped in a towel and leaning in the doorway. He pushed his fingers through his hair.
“Nothing,” Evan Keeler said. “Nothing at all.” He got up and started out. “Sorry I bothered you.”
“Why don’t you stay here tonight?”
“Thanks, but no.”
Evan Keeler left Karen’s house with one thing on his mind. He found his way back to De la Peña’s. He sat at the bar and nursed a club soda while looking around the room. There were many attractive women wearing sundresses of bright colors and bold floral prints and sandals, swishing across the floor on tanned legs. There was a woman on the stool beside him complaining to a friend about her weight.
“Yes, I am,” the woman said. “I’m too heavy. I’ve got to drop at least twenty.”
“You look fine,” her friend said, not looking at her, sipping a highly decorated and large drink, staring at herself in the mirror behind the bar.
“I do not.” She turned to Evan Keeler. “What do you think?” she asked.
“What do I think about what?”
“Am I fat?”
He looked at her, leaned back to take her all in. He tossed a quick glance to the bartender, at the friend, then said, without looking at the woman, “Yes, but it looks good on you.
She said nothing, just sat staring at him.
“On some people fat looks good,” Evan Keeler said, looking her in the eye. “You wouldn’t look good thin. I’m an artist, I know these things.”
The woman turned to her friend and they huddled there as if in conference. He thought she might be crying; her back and fat sides heaved spasmodically. The women got up and left the bar. As he watched them pass through the door his eye caught the entrance of a dark-haired woman. Her eyes were big and brown and he was amazed at how clearly he could see them from his distance. She sat alone in a booth with a table which had not been cleared.
He went to her, his club soda in hand, and fell into the seat opposite her. “I want to tell you something,” he said.
She pushed back into the cushion of her seat.
He stopped a passing waitress. “Would you clear this table and bring this young lady anything she likes?”
“I’ll be with you in a second,” the waitress said and hurried away.
He saw that the young woman was frightened. “You remind me of my daughter,” he said. “She’s seventeen.”
“She looked around nervously.
“Look at me,” he said. She did and he did not smile. “You think that I want to take you somewhere and do something to you.”
She started to rise.
“Stay!”
She fell back, terrified.
“I can’t do anything to you. A couple of doctors are, right now, flying to Portland, Oregon, with my cock.” Slowly, a smile came over his face.
She tried to smile.
“Do you want to know the really scary part about all of this? I’m cold sober.” He paused. “There are men in here that will want to take advantage of you. Don’t let them use you. Don’t give it up. I know what it feels like.”