Almanac of the Dead

  Seese told the cabdriver the name of the bar. He had stared at her in the rearview mirror, and she knew what he was thinking: “Cheap whores, bikers, and small-time drug deals.” The wind had died down, but the air was dusty. A double shot of brandy would help. Her heart was racing with the anticipation of finding Cherie. The cocaine made her tongue numb, made her clench her jaws, and made her want to go, to move, to do something. She took a deep breath and settled back to look at the town where things would be settled for her once and for all. Miracle Mile had a heyday once. The motel bungalows, blue kidney-shaped pools, tall palm trees, and hedges of pink oleander sprang up. Winter havens for house trailers stretched for acres. But years before either Seese or Cherie had ever seen Tucson, something had changed. The drought had left no green. In the dust-haze any lawns or grass that might have been alive was indistinguishable from the cement of buckling sidewalks.

  Even the so-called desert “landscaping” was gaunt; the prickly pear and cholla cactus had shriveled into leathery, green tongues. The ribs of the giant saguaros had shrunk into themselves. The date palms and short Mexican palms were sloughing scaly, gray fronds, many of which had broken in the high winds and lay scattered in the street. One frond struck the underbelly of the taxi sharply, which broke loose a tangle of debris. Tumbleweeds, Styrofoam cups, and strands of toilet paper swirled in the rush of wind behind the taxi. Running over the palm fronds, even if they were grayish and dead, had reminded Seese of the Catholic Church and Palm Sunday. She laughed out loud and the cab-driver had looked hard into the rearview mirror. “I was just thinking,” she said, avoiding the eyes.

  She could endure it no longer. She had to know where Monte was—what had happened to her baby. The old psychic was somewhere in Tucson. Seese had to get help soon. In the desert life might evaporate overnight. The dead did not rot or dissolve. They shrank into rigid, impermeable leather around their own bones. Inside the cracked stucco bungalows and rusting house trailers, people got poorer as they got older. What had once been a winter getaway eventually became permanent. One year when the heat arrived in late March, they did not return to Ohio or Iowa. Instead, they retired. They sat motionless by window coolers or floor fans with the curtains and shades drawn until November. They were only passing time, waiting.

  Eric would have liked Tucson. Too bad they had never quite managed to get here. He would have liked the northwest side the best because he had been fascinated with decay and death. Eric would particularly have liked the idea of the old “retiring” to await their extinction on the edge of a desert. Eric had been excited about a certain desert somewhere in Peru. That had been before Eric had realized that Beaufrey had no intention of allowing him to accompany them to Colombia. Eric had read all about the Spanish explorers because, he said, it was good to understand the history of a place. All Seese could remember was this place in the Peruvian desert where the Indians had taken their dead. The mummies were kept in an extremely arid place. Relatives and loved ones could go there to talk to those long deceased. Seese wished she could talk to Eric tonight. She understood now what was wrong with cremation. She had never understood what the Catholic Church had against cremation before. Now Eric was scattered across the West Texas plains pushed by the same winds that gusted through Tucson.

  The cab ride was taking forever. Was he trying to fool her, to cheat her? She leaned forward to see where they were. The railroad tracks. She was almost there but felt something was about to overtake her—She had to know where Monte was, and what had happened to him. The old psychic lived somewhere in Tucson. Seese had to find the woman or she would be like all the others there, suspended in one endless interval between gusts of wind, and waves of dry heat.

  THE STAGE COACH

  THE STAGE COACH was on the frontage road to the freeway. The semis were parked north of the truck stop where the drivers showered and ate before hitting the bar for the strippers’ show. Tiny didn’t want the bar parking lot clogged with tractor-trailer rigs. Truckers didn’t drink enough to suit him, and what Tiny wanted to sell was booze. Tiny had also sold pills to the truckers. He couldn’t beat them, so he joined them, he liked to say. But the sale of a few pills didn’t mean Tiny had to have giant semis a block long congesting his parking lot.

  Big Harley-Davidsons, chromed and customized, were parked in perfect rows. Seese laughed. Cocaine was behind the bikers’ mania for perfect rows of bikes, perfectly spaced. Biker perfection went no further than the motorcycle. Bikers themselves tended toward beer bellies and dirty T-shirts with jeans slipped down to expose their hairy cracks.

  Seese did not see Cherie, but told herself don’t panic—breathe deep. Even if she wasn’t dancing here, chances were good Cherie would still be in town. Cherie’s oldest girl was eight or nine now. Cherie wouldn’t move around so much with a child in school. A tall redhead was bobbing and weaving out of a tiny fringed cowgirl skirt. Her breasts pushed open the white cowgirl vest. She had two toy pistols she aimed from the hip at the men leaning over the edge of the narrow stage. “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,” the jukebox played. The bikers at the pool tables ignored the dancer on the platform. She had kicked the skirt out of the way, and was now doing deep knee-bends, legs apart, with the men out of their chairs at the edge of the stage whistling and yelling. The noise got one of the bikers to glance at three or four men reaching onstage to tuck dollar bills in the redhead’s G-string. The other bikers had only bothered to turn their heads briefly. Seese could imagine the contempt the bikers had for the other men.

  Tiny waddled out of his office when he heard the yells and whistles. He had gained a lot of weight since the last time Seese had seen him. He had to keep watch on the girls constantly. They’d show any little thing to get big tips from the audience. Being outside the city limits still didn’t make it legal to spread her legs that wide. Seese laughed. Tiny had always been scolding her when she danced, complaining that she was going to get the Liquor Control boys down on him. But that had been when Tiny was hot for her, and the scolding had been his way of letting her know how sexy he thought she was. Tiny made a sudden cutting motion with his fat hand across his throat and swore at the redhead. As she closed her legs, Seese saw a sequin flash from deep within the folds of her flesh. The men at the foot of the stage booed Tiny and gave catcalls, but they didn’t want the Stage Coach shut down by the Liquor Control Board either.

  Tiny had turned to go back into his office, but caught sight of Seese. She took her double shot of whiskey from the bar and walked over to him. “Seese,” he said as if he were seeing a ghost.

  “Hi, Tiny.”

  “I heard you left,” he said, still surprised. Tiny meant the rumor that Seese was dead meat. “Ancient history, those rumors,” Tiny said, warming up, stepping closer.

  Seese took a big swallow of whiskey. “Yeah, just rumors.” She was scanning the barroom for Cherie. Dancers in garter belts and no bras, dancers in baton-twirling skirts, and dancers in bikinis circulated past the tables, passing the hat for tips before they danced.

  Tiny had been in love with her once, but then David had come along. Seese finished the whiskey and Tiny nodded for the bartender to bring her another. Sweat was forming in the folds where his chin met his neck. Tiny was living proof that snorting cocaine didn’t always cause weight loss. “I heard about your baby. I’m sorry.” Tiny sounded sincere. He patted at his neck with a handkerchief and made a motion toward his office, but Seese shook her head. “I have a little something,” Tiny said, meaning drugs.

  “No. I’m looking for Cherie.”

  Tiny seemed short of breath. He wheezed. She would not have fucked him even if David had not come along. Tiny gave up too easily. Despite everything that had happened between Tiny and Beaufrey, Seese knew Tiny would not help her because he was afraid of Beaufrey. But Cherie owed her one.

  Tiny nodded his head at a table against the far wall. Cherie was hunched over the table, her head close to a man in a worn denim cowboy shirt and scuffed
cowboy boots. She was trying to convince him of something. She looked startled when she saw Seese. The cowboy was suspicious. He studied Seese intently. She tried smiling but he had already sized her up. “Seese!” Cherie scuffed the chair back from the table and hugged her. She was dressed for her act. Baby-blue, see-through, shorty pajamas and blue satin high heels. “This is my husband, Teddy. Teddy, this is Seese. Remember, I told you how she helped me that time.” Seese could see that Teddy didn’t like to remember anything he knew about Cherie’s past.

  Seese didn’t know where to begin. Cherie was nervous. Probably because the husband got jealous when she danced. “I guess you heard what happened—about Monte, I mean.” Seese was surprised at how quiet her voice was, almost a whisper. She felt nothing when she said “Monte.”

  “Did David—?” Cherie stared down at the ashtray where her cigarette was burning into the filter. The husband reached over and squashed the butt. His jaw was set hard. Cherie was trying not to cry, but Seese saw big tears. Seese hardly cried anymore except when she woke up dreaming she was holding Monte in her arms. “Seese—it’s just so sad—not to know—”

  Seese nodded at Cherie. The husband had relaxed. He leaned back in his chair and watched a tiny flat-chested blonde bump her way out of a belly-dancer skirt. Women’s tears or sad talk didn’t seem to interest him.

  “You been back in town long?”

  Seese shook her head. She finished the whiskey. Cherie signaled the barmaid for another round. Tiny let dancers have all they wanted. It kept them loose and limber. “I waited for a long time. I thought David took Monte.”

  Cherie became alert. “You mean it wasn’t David?”

  Seese could not shake her head or reply without something breaking wide open inside herself. She took deep breaths and sipped the whiskey. “There’s a woman who can help. I have to find her.”

  Cherie glanced at her husband watching the stage. She was rolling the hem of her shorty pajama top between her fingers. Seese could see Cherie was nervous, afraid something from the old days might slip out.

  “Listen. I saw this woman on TV. She finds missing persons.”

  Cherie had looked puzzled. “I don’t know anyone like that.”

  “Look,” Seese said, raising her voice, “the only thing I have to go on is something about a crippled biker—a guy who works—”

  At the mention of a man, Cherie’s husband sat up with both elbows on the table making a barrier between the two women. Cherie shook her head.

  “The old woman is with this biker—” Seese began, but Cherie had pushed back her chair.

  “I’m up now!” Cherie looked at her husband, then glanced at Seese. “Ask Tiny!”

  Seese nodded slowly and leaned back in her chair. The husband moved forward in his chair, gathering himself like a rodeo cowboy. His turn next. For eight minutes he had to stay in his chair while the men at the edge of the tiny stage leaned over to pry their eyes into his wife. Cherie selects her music on the jukebox. Roy Orbison. Chubby Checker. She dances staring straight ahead, her eyes miles away from this place. Neither of them were ever really dancers. But the men never cared as long as they got an eyeful. Cherie’s husband looks down at his hands. He’s a blond cowboy with a pretty face. Green eyes. Hands and fingernails stained with motor oil. There never has been quite enough money for Cherie to quit dancing. The husbands and boyfriends come and go on account of this.

  Cherie holds the filmy blue nylon in both hands and flips it over her face to reveal her breasts. Mangoes—golden flesh served peeled—Beaufrey’s morning meal in Puerto Vallarta. Metallic-blue sequins glitter on each nipple. The husband finishes his beer and motions for another. He ignores Seese. He ignores everything but the men reaching up on the platform, with both hands grabbing for her crotch or her breasts. An old man in white painter’s coveralls grins so wide his false teeth slip. He’s tucking five-dollar bills in the front of the shorty pajama bottom. Next to him, two men in identical work khakis huddle together, company logos and their first names embroidered on the front pockets. The black lights overhead make the scar and stretch marks on Cherie’s belly glow uranium blue. Cherie has never lost a baby. Cherie can’t stop getting pregnant. Still, the stretch marks only show under the black light. It doesn’t seem fair. Cherie has four, can have five more, and Seese could only have one.

  “Mama’s got a squeeze box—Oh, my love, darling, I’ve hungered for your touch a long, lonely time—Daddy never sleeps at night”—off comes the blue pajama top. Cherie drops it casually, oblivious to the whistling and clapping. She stretches her arms up and can almost touch the purple tubes in the light fixture. Her breasts jut out. She turns away and shakes the cheeks of her ass, then spins back around. They want the bottoms off. They want the G-string now. The old man is standing up. He’s got a twenty-dollar bill in his hand. She smiles and tosses him the pajama panty. He tucks the twenty into the blue satin G-string. For a moment the attention is on him, not her. The old man lifts the shorty pajama bottom high over his head, then brings it down to his beer glass. He stretches the crotch across the rim of his glass and downs the last of his beer. The others applaud and laugh. The cowboy is sweating. Seese smells it—hard labor. Sweat, great exertion. His hands clenching and unclenching fists. Seese wonders how Cherie manages to always find men who will eventually want to kill her, but remembers the bullet through the penthouse window and has to laugh at herself. Cherie’s cowboy gives Seese a murderous look. She starts to explain that she is not laughing at anything here, that she is, laughing at herself, but the cowboy has already turned his head away. It takes a certain kind of man to watch his wife or girlfriend striptease in front of a crowd of drunk, grab-happy men and not blow up and kill them all. This pretty little cowboy was the wrong kind. The right kind would have been proud, would have had contempt for all the other men who did not have a beautiful woman—the right man would have enjoyed parading his wildly sexual woman in front of the needy and deprived. Seese had seen men who gloated over how badly the leering, shouting crowd wanted what was theirs, what the crowd could look at but never touch. But Cherie’s blond cowboy did not appear confident that the others were only going to look.

  Seese was drunk enough not to worry whether Tiny really did have the information she needed. If she had to, she could press Cherie in front of her cowboy, and Cherie would get it. Because Seese knew that Cherie didn’t want her new husband to know any more about the past than he had already guessed or suspected. The favor Cherie owed Seese actually wasn’t much. It had happened a long time ago when they had been so much younger and under Tiny’s thumb. Cherie had gotten set up by some undercover cops. Seese had noticed that “the college boys” always had money for their grams, and each time they had pressed Cherie to sell them more. Seese kept telling Cherie to be careful of people who didn’t beg you to front them three or four grams. Narcs always had money. But Cherie hadn’t worried because they had always snorted or shot up in the kitchen, right in front of her. After that the tall one who had played pro basketball always wanted to take her to bed; then he’d always leave $50 or $60. Cherie was sure undercover cops didn’t do that even when they were undercover. They hadn’t been anything but babies then, and Cherie never liked to tell Tiny what was going on. Tiny didn’t ask as long as the cash rolled in and the girls weren’t snorting too much themselves. So Cherie had set up a half-ounce sale.

  The arrangement had been that once Cherie had the money, she would tell the guys to step out to the alley behind the apartment to get the goods from Seese, who would wait in the car. Cherie had wanted Seese to keep the half ounce right beside her in the car, but Seese had been wary. She had hidden the plastic bag with the cocaine inside a cardboard milk carton, which she left next to a trash can in the alley.

  When Cherie’s ex-pro basketball player and his buddies had pulled their guns, and then their badges, and pushed Cherie outside into weeds and old dog shit in the backyard, Seese had not panicked. It occurred to her this might be a heist, and if it
was, then they might both be killed. But Seese knew if it had been shooting they planned, the gunmen would not have marched Cherie out the back door in broad daylight. It might only have been an alley, but the alleys in the neighborhood were well populated with university students. Gunmen would have shot Cherie inside, then come out to get Seese in the car. So Seese did not move, although she could see Cherie’s eyes urging her to run. One cop had stuck a .44 and a badge in her face while the other slid into the front seat beside her. Seese had pretended to glance at the cop as he opened the door on the passenger’s side, but what Seese had really been looking at was the old milk carton lying in the weeds and trash next to a trash can.

  “What’s going on?” Seese had asked Cherie just as the ex-basketball pro had opened the car door and pulled her out. “Can’t these guys take a joke? Hey, it was a little joke, that’s all.” The cops did not like the word joke. The ex-pro squeezed the handcuffs around her wrists so tightly tears came to her eyes.

  Tiny had got them both out of jail before the evening shift at the Stage Coach. The interior and the trunk of the car had been torn apart by the ex-basketball pro and his pals. Seese had never bothered to have the door panels or rubber floor matting replaced afterward because as long as she owned that car, she wanted to remember the April afternoon she had outmaneuvered the narcs. The cops had searched everywhere, but they didn’t notice the old milk carton lying on the ground. Without the goods, Seese had only been charged with conspiracy to distribute or sell. Cherie they hit for the sale of the grams in the past, and for prostitution. But none of the charges were big enough to interest the DA’s office. “Goddamn it,” Cherie said, “I wish we would have gone to trial. I wanted to testify about all those grams the scummy niggers shot up and snorted. Taxpayers’ money buying toot for nigger cops.”