Shaking out the Dead (16 page)

She stopped.

“Geneva,” Tatum said. “Paris kissed me once.”

“Did you kiss him back?”

Tatum thought for a minute. She had honestly never considered it.

“I think I did.”

Geneva stayed quiet.

“If it doesn't work out,” Tatum said, “I could lose him forever.”

“We lose everybody anyway,” Geneva said. “To death. To busyness. To the failure to make the effort. That's why you just have to love them, love them, love them. No matter what.”

“Unconditional love, huh?”

“I don't think of it that way,” Geneva said. “I just think of it as love. Why qualify love?” Geneva finished climbing her stairs. “Good night,” she said, “and good luck.” She slipped through her door. Her porch light went dark.

Tatum looked at the sky, black and silver. The stars above were not immortal. The space in which they hung was not eternal. Big bangs come, and worlds collapse. Nothing is forever. Not even nothing.

Inside, Tatum peeked at Rachael asleep in her bed. The tough hand life had dealt her did not yet show up in her face. She looked innocent. Unruined. Tatum considered Geneva's proposition that feeling unworthy of love entailed withholding it, that there was no such thing as one-way traffic when it came to the heart. If that were so, Tatum figured her love had probably been as useful to Rachael as her dead mother's. Something guaranteed, but existing on the other side of an invisible barrier. Love that's there, but not
here
. Tatum's body accepted the truth of it. The biochemistry of regret kicked in and took shape. She felt guilt.

Revelation is not necessarily ecstatic. Rarely is it the turning point that its reputation suggests. Revelation is merely an option. A flashing arrow, perhaps, but not a destination. Tatum pressed her hand to Rachael's forehead, checking for fever. She was warm but in a good way.

Tatum left the bedroom door cracked, put on her p.j.'s, and paced the living room. She stared at her coffee table, empty seeming, without Paris's hat.

Paris.

The moment you realize you've waited too long, you worry it might be too late.

She would call him. First thing in the morning. They would see each other, and she would tell him everything, though, she had no idea what “everything” was. She would tell him she missed him. She could start there.

In the bathroom, she brushed her teeth, trying to imagine what words she would say. She looked at herself in the mirror, ready to rehearse. But nothing came to her but memories, the past throwing up a sand storm. The kiss in the park. Margaret's funeral. Motel rooms. Tatum forced her focus through the haze of it and made eye contact with her own reflection. She had managed to land squarely in the moment, apart from the memories and tomorrow. Green eyes met green eyes. Then, in one fell swoop, like ripping off a Band-Aid, she pulled her top off over her head. She looked at the gash, the angry searing where a breast used to be. Not once had she mourned it. The scar had given shape and form to a thing already there, something embedded that had finally and simply risen to the surface. Never had its violence shocked her.

But she thought of Paris now. She stood behind his eyes to see. For the first time, she looked at it.



A fluorescent light above the counter buzzed. Paris looked up and watched it sputter. None of the customers took particular notice. Not the two Goth girls, looking young and vulnerable, despite their black makeup and practiced vacant stares. The couple in the corner failed to notice too. They focused on their newspaper and tried to resign themselves to each other's failings. The meth-head at the counter picked at his doughnut, never looking up.

It was business as usual, as Paris liked. Routine is dismissed by most as the daily grind. But Paris found it good and holy. Spring, summer, fall, winter. Over and over. The planet never wearied of it and wished for more.

Besides, Paris had had plenty of business-not-as-usual for one day. Too much unspoken and misspoken. He hated the sense of a boundary, invisible but solid, between him and Tatum, like Plexiglas in the ether. They had tried to act as though it wasn't there. Maybe the acting was the problem, Paris thought, but what else is there to do? Bang on his side watching her bang on hers? Is it that one couldn't get out or couldn't get in?

The meth-head abandoned his doughnut. It looked as though it had been pecked by birds. Paris opened the vat and stirred the soup, thinking about the women who would straggle in later. The soup was
for
them. He would be here
with
them. Then he came around the counter to sweep beneath the stools and noticed Blair, the bartender, in the casino talking to one of the Deluxe's owners. The owners were two brothers who had inherited the place from their father, a former Butte miner with a prosthetic hand. The father's grit, however, had skipped a generation. His boys were effeminate without being gay. Their faces were pointed, and they looked both craven and mean at the same time. Their edicts flowed through Blair to Paris, even though Blair wasn't Paris's supervisor. Blair and Paris were more like separate rulers of neighboring kingdoms. It was a chain of communication, not of command. Blair shot Paris a look over the brother's shoulder. Paris didn't like it. It nipped at the heels of a fragile well-being he was struggling to cultivate in cleanliness and routine.

Paris cleared the meth-head's plate and rang up the seventy-five cents due and dropped the three cent tip into his apron pocket. He continued to work efficiently, as he always did, boss or no boss looking on. The Deluxe's owners were not bright but knew enough to largely leave Paris be, recognizing, if not appreciating, a bargain employee when they saw one. The brother waved to Paris from the casino before leaving. Paris nodded in response, all business.

Blair and Paris met at their kingdoms' boundaries, where bright light met neon haze. Both wore white T-shirts and jeans. Paris's cook's apron was wrapped around and tied in front. Blair had a rag thrown over a shoulder.

“Gary says they're selling the building,” Blair said. “Thinks they can sell it for office space.”

Paris frowned.

“He didn't leave a copy of the want ads,” Blair said, “but it's coming.”

“Shit,” Paris said.

“No shit,” Blair responded.

An old cowboy stepped past them into the diner. Blair and Paris turned away from each other as duty called.

The cowboy ordered off the breakfast menu. Paris started a fresh pot of coffee and flipped hash browns. Axioms jangled in his head: Was the news about the diner the proverbial second shoe? First, disconnect with Tatum. Now this. Had, indeed, the other shoe dropped? Or was the governing theory the theory of threes, that bad tidings were packaged like blind mice and little pigs. If this were the case, there was more to come. It was just a matter of time.

The cowboy ate his eggs and potatoes. He came and went quietly, leaving a modest tip. The couple left too, the man placing his hand on the small of the woman's back as they slipped through the casino. The Goth girls enlisted Paris's help to figure out their check. They paid, and Paris was alone.

He cleared the dirty dishes and wiped down the tables.

Paris worked. He tried to insist that all was well. But his feet told the truth, hot and nervous, and deadly, no doubt, when he would peel off his socks in the dawn.



Linda arrived at 2:20 a.m. with the retarded girls in tow. Paris took the girls bowls of soup and fistfuls of crackers. He poured Linda coffee.

“Soup's good tonight,” he said to her, pleased there was so much of it.

But Linda made a face and shook her head no.

Paris went into the kitchen to run a load of dishes. He kept an ear open to the dining room should more of the women arrive. Through the cook's window, he saw a dishwater blonde in a man's coat he hadn't seen in weeks slide into the booth in the corner. Her B.O. was acidic, but it clung to her, leaving most of the diner unscathed. Paris was sympathetic, and he took her soup without asking and poured her coffee too.

If the worst were to come to pass and the Deluxe closed its doors, he thought as he returned the coffeepot to the burner, he would never say anything about it to the women. Let the doors one day be locked, he decided. Let it be heard of by word of mouth. Let it disappear as it once appeared out of nothing into nothing.

He collected the napkin holders and was restocking them behind the counter when he felt the foreign presence enter the room. Actually, what he felt, at first, was the antennae of Linda and the retarded girls going up, reaching and assessing threat vs. opportunity. Paris looked up. Two Indian dudes slid onto stools at the counter. It was perfectly normal. It was completely wrong. An invasion on sacred ground. The retarded girls watched them warily. Paris dropped menus in front of them and set them up with utensils.

At 8 p.m., Paris would've liked them. One wore a western shirt with a zigzag pattern in purples and reds and a bolo tie with a bear. He had long hair and a cowboy hat. The other one had a clean-shaven look. Smooth skin. Short hair. A plain, white dress shirt with blue jeans. Their vibes were good ones.

The men both ordered burgers.

Paris dropped the patties on the grill and smooshed them down with the spatula. He listened to their conversation through the hiss of the meat.

“His old lady wrapped him in silk,” Bolo Tie said. “Then, she wrapped him in a tarp and duct taped it.”

“That'll do,” said White Shirt.

“She says the silk will protect his ‘vibration' — it's a New Age thing. Little Mickey and Amos packed him in the truck. Too bad it's been warm, eh?”

White Shirt nodded. “I can't drive my truck anywhere anymore,” he said. “Not off the rez.”

Paris served their burgers slightly rare.

The men ate in silence for a time, following up bites of burgers with fistfuls of chips. Paris didn't make eye contact with Linda or any of the other women, feeling somehow responsible for the intrusion.

“I didn't know Buster at all until the cancer,” Bolo Tie said through his chewing. “I guess like overnight he got hooked in with the traditional stuff. Started carrying rocks, smudging. He got real particular about funeral arrangements.”

“Sounds like he came to his senses.”

Bolo Tie pushed his dish away, tossing his napkin onto it. Paris approached to clear it.

“Hey, Vincent, by the way,” Bolo Tie said, “Frankie wants to talk to you before we move Buster.”

Paris's eyes darted toward the man in the white shirt.

“Yeah, that's cool,” Vincent said, “as long as I'm on the road by the day after tomorrow.”

“I told them.”

It wasn't hard to piece together. This was Vincent. The Vincent. Paris wasn't sure if he wanted to hurry them along or keep them there to study him more closely.

“I got some people to see tomorrow,” Vincent said. “Some stuff to do.”

Paris wrote up their check, tore it off his pad, and placed it in front of them.

“Thanks, man,” Vincent said, reaching into his back pocket for his wallet. “I got it,” he said to his friend.

Paris looked in Linda's direction, and her eye caught his. He could see what she saw. Him, unnerved. Paris hovered at the counter, performing fake chores. He wiped clean surfaces and checked freshly refilled condiments. Linda stole glances. The two men leaned on their elbows and worked their teeth with toothpicks. Paris cleared Vincent's plate. Vincent gave the pile of check and cash a shove in Paris's direction.

“Keep it, man,” he said.

The tip cleared 20 percent.

The two men slipped off their stools and motioned a thank-you to Paris as they left. Paris watched Vincent go. He cut a tall, lean figure. He was taller than Paris, but only barely so. Paris suspected he was a man without camouflage. No powers of invisibility. But Paris couldn't deny it. Vincent had it going on. Cool.

“Friends of yours?” Linda said, interrupting his thoughts.

“Friend of a friend,” Paris said, “I think.”

“Friend of a friend, but not your friend.”

“Something like that.”

Paris watched the men slip out the casino and into the night. When his attention returned to the room, heat rose in his face, recognizing the humility of the diner. Dingy counters. Bug-filled lights. Carpet in the casino you wouldn't want to think about. The place was worn down and worn out. Those who claimed it were only able to do so because of its undesirability. For some reason, it reminded him of something Tatum had said earlier, about love being useless, unable to change a thing and unable to raise the dead. Perhaps, like the Deluxe, love was a humble dump, not the great force it was rumored to be. Perhaps it was even as humble as Paris himself. But Paris dismissed the thought quickly. It was a possibility he could not allow. He needed something mightier than himself on his side.

Then, feeling eyes upon him, he looked down the length of the counter. Linda. Their eyes met, and he felt the impulse to tell her all of it. But there she sat, half-invisible, knowing when a person wanted different. Different than what he had. Different than the moment. When a man needed to be someone other than himself.

The other women had already left, having slipped out while Vincent and his friend were eating. Paris never said a word. At least, he was pretty sure he didn't. So he didn't know how it happened, why it happened, that Linda stood and stepped behind the counter, took his hand, and led him into the kitchen.

Inside the janitor's closet, Linda pressed him into a corner between the wall and some shelving. Paris didn't resist, and he watched through the cracked closet door and through the cook's window a sliver of the doorway between the casino and dining room. Linda went for his belt and said, “It's forty bucks,” as she dropped to one knee. Paris was half-hard, rubbery. Linda stuck him into her mouth and sucked him firm. One hand on the shelving, the other on the wall, Paris braced himself. He looked down briefly at the part in Linda's hair and the few wiry grays that grew from her crown, and then he looked back through the cracked closet door. He bit on his lower lip and fought to keep his eyes from closing. He caught himself rocking a bit but kept his hands off of her head. The thought of the forty dollars that he couldn't really afford crossed his mind but quickly disappeared. His mind followed his body now, away from the afternoon, away from the Deluxe, away from Vincent and his people to see tomorrow.

Pressure focused in his groin and grew excruciating. It was deprivation, time, and blank canvases. Desire sharpened to a point. He saw an image of Tatum in his mind. The picture of her breasts. The smallness of the nipples. The curved half-moons above her ribcage. The draw of her throat. Her tits. Linda was no longer a prostitute but a woman, just not the woman who she was.

Then Linda paused, mouth drawn up and hesitating at the bulb of Paris's dick. When she resumed, it was with slower strokes, calculated, it seemed to Paris, the knowing clear that it was better to work 'em up and back 'em off, work 'em up and back 'em off, than to find yourself in a prolonged, frenetic frontal assault on your face. The comfort of the neck and jaw, it seemed, took precedence over expediency.

Paris realized his eyes had closed. He cracked them and checked the coast. Still clear. Linda's new rhythms backed the heat up from his groin into his chest. It had to go somewhere. It was briefly more diffused but not diminished. When she picked up speed again, the sensations all refocused, dropping downward, bigger and with more force than before. Then Paris was with only himself, his body turned to rock, his dick and every other muscle. His jaw tightened. His toes gripped the floor through his boots. One hand dropped to the side of Linda's head and returned to the wall just as quickly. Then his head dropped back, and he burst, gulping in reverse. He rocked and shuddered, softly buckling, the small of his back gently banging against the wall behind him.

Linda, still on a knee, wiped her face on her sleeve. Paris hiked up his pants and zipped them. Linda stood. She was almost as tall as he was. She gave him a “well, that's that” smile. Paris looked at the lines outside her eyes curved downward along the outside of her cheek. She was not hard. She was not bitter. And she was not Tatum.