The Weather and Women Treat Me Fair Read online

  “It’s going. New paintings? May I see?”

  “Why don’t you buy one so I can pay a few bills?”

  “You’re out of my range these days.”

  “Give me a bid.” He hoisted the canvases and secured his grip. “Come on with me to the Junction.”

  “I’m not going in there with that bitch.”

  Evan Keeler laughed. “Are you two still at it. Even high school girls take a breather now and then.”

  “She’s no schoolgirl.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re both the reason I live so far away from everything. The women in this town are good for only one thing.” He was sorry for what he’d said even before the last word was out.

  Gert’s gaze fell to the ground and her sandals. She faded a bit.

  “Listen, Gert, I’m sorry I said that.”

  “Why?” She straightened her shoulders. “You’re absolutely right.” She looked ready to cry. “What else is there to do?” She forced a smile.

  “I’m going to take these on over there.”

  “Okay. Call me later?”

  He nodded.

  As he walked away he wanted to kick himself. He considered them. Matrons of the arts. Women with more money than sense. Most living on stipends from trusts left by husbands or monied families. Most nice enough, but concerned mainly with positioning themselves beneath a name they recognized.

  In the Junction Gallery, he found a young couple standing in the front room moaning over a Rod Breedlove print. If you’d seen one Breedlove you’d seen them all and all those to come. Besides, Breedlove chased boys. Not a bad thing in itself, but a guy who did that ought to have talent. Evan Keeler leaned his canvases against the desk. The young couple noticed him, mumbled to each other, pointing at the covered packages he’d just set down.

  “Karen!” Evan Keeler called out.

  A tall, blonde woman came from the back room. “Evan Keeler,” she said, spreading her wings for a hug.

  He squeezed her, knowing that she had said his full name loudly for the benefit of the couple.

  “What have you brought me?”

  He hated this sort of display. “You can look at them later. You have something for me?”

  “Yes, I do.” She opened the drawer of the desk and pulled out an envelope. She handed it to him.

  He smiled at the man and woman. He opened the envelope and looked at the check. “It’s always less than you expect,” he said. “The nature of checks.”

  Karen laughed politely.

  He’d upset her by not participating in the selling game. She would chide him about it later, but he didn’t care. “I saw Gert,” he said.

  “How wonderful. But why are you telling me?”

  “Just keeping things square,” he said, knowing she wouldn’t understand.

  “Are you staying in town tonight?”

  He hadn’t decided. “No, I don’t believe so. Gotta get back to my desert.”

  “At least stay and talk a while.”

  The couple began to make their way to the door. If he were to get out of there without a hassle he needed to go now. “I really need to hit the road.”

  “Someone’s interested in Hachita.”

  He stopped. She had him. Hachita was probably the best of his paintings of recent years, a medium-sized canvas with deep reds and rich yellows, of children in the street of a little hole of a New Mexican town. He’d never known what to ask for it. The agent he used for a while suggested six thousand as the bottom. Karen was asking five. Secretly Evan Keeler wanted to take it home. Instead he lied to himself, saying he could paint another like it. The young couple left. Karen waved to them. He watched the door slowly shut.

  “I’ll never understand you,” Karen said.

  “Okay. I should have said—”

  “Not that. Listen, Evan, if you want to sell your paintings you’ve got to play the game. Those people who were just here had bucks. It’s fine if you want to play the bohemian artist for young girls over at De la Peña’s, but this is the real world.”

  “Point taken. Who wants Hachita?”

  “Why do you care who wants it? They want to pay for it. Five, just what we were asking. Why do you look so damn sad?”

  “Five will be fine.”

  She studied him for a second, then went to the coffee-maker on a table in the corner. “What’s bugging you, Evan?”

  “When is all of this going to happen?”

  She poured herself a cup of coffee. “You want some?”

  He shook his head.

  “They’re coming by this afternoon. A couple of doctors from Portland.”

  “A syndicate is buying it?”

  “No, a husband and wife.”

  “Do they like the painting?”

  “Evan, they’re about to pay five thousand dollars for it.”

  “Do they like it? Or are they just collectors? Will they hang it in a place where children can see it?”

  “You’re sounding crazy.”

  “I guess. Mind if I watch the deal go down?”

  “I would love it if you were here.”

  “No, no. I don’t want to be here. I just want to watch. From the back room or something.”

  She sighed. “Whatever you want.”

  “Thanks, Karen. Can I take you to lunch?”

  A reluctant but warm smile worked its way over Karen’s face.

  They went to De la Peña’s on the square. With the coming of summer new crowds were appearing, the skiers having left. The spring had seen only one good snowfall, shortening the season and making the merchants anxious for the next wave of tourists. De la Peña’s never seemed to suffer, however, being the favorite spot of gringo locals. Evan Keeler sat with Karen at a table near the back.

  While they were ordering, Rod Breedlove walked in. The fat Navajo had with him a young man, boy-faced and blond, and an overly made-up, tight-jeaned woman.

  “Every time,” Evan Keeler said. “I can’t sit down to eat in this town without that clown walking in.”

  “He sells,” said Karen.

  “He’s a bum.”

  “He sells.” She sipped her Gibson.

  Evan Keeler drank water. He was watching Karen’s face when she sat up and her eyes brightened. She waved to someone across the room behind him.

  “It’s them,” she said “The doctors from Portland.”

  “Oh, no,” he muttered.

  “Hello, Dr. McNally, Dr. McNally,” Karen said “I have a treat for you.”

  Evan Keeler stood.

  “I’d like to introduce Evan Keeler. Evan, Dr. and Dr. McNally.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Evan Keeler said.

  “No, the pleasure is all ours,” said the excited female Dr. McNally while the male McNally nodded.

  “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.”

  He stood and walked out, leaving her to think what she had to think, that he was crazy.

  A Good Day for the Laughing Blow

  Jake is four years old.

  Cecile has no visitation privileges. I have sole custody of my son. Cecile told me once that she wanted very much to eat Jake, devour my son, and so the battle started. I instructed my attorney to get her on the stand and ask her if she thought babies were nutritious. After a puzzled look, he did ask her that question and she did supply an affirmative response; witches don’t lie, Cecile had informed me. I got the child and she got observation in the state mental facility. She has since been released and lives with another witch. Together, they are lesbians. Alone, I do not know. Though Cecile has no privileges, I allow her to come by once a month so that she may view Jake through a window. She drools.

  I am replaying messages on my answering machine. There is my agent, who says he cannot sell anything until I write it. I find this a reasonable utterance; one of his few. There is my ex-wife, Cecile. She is calling because she has not been by this month. I will return her call. The plants outside Jake’s window are in need of watering.

  Jake is in his room, playing with his little xylophone with the brightly colored slats, what I ca
ll his diminutive dinker. I like the xylophone. I get on the floor and play, too. Pretty soon I have both mallets and he is watching. I stop.

  ‘It’s time to eat,” I say.

  “Are you going to cook?”

  I nod.

  He shakes his head.

  “Would you rather go out?”

  We are in the car. We are going out for pizza. I don’t feel any one way about pizza, but it will have mushrooms. My son is in his car-seat, which is slightly small for him and which has a little steering wheel affixed to it. And a horn. I do not use my horn. I don’t get upset. My son, though, pushes the horn and screams at the top of his lungs at the other cars. “Watch out, buddy! Hey, mac! What’re you doing?! Trying to take your half out the middle?!” He learned this from me back when I was emotional.

  The pizza place is owned by Tony Viggiano. He knows us. We always get a medium with mushrooms. We used to get pepperoni, but pepperoni gives Jake gas. We don’t need pepperoni. Tony let me work in the kitchen one evening. I chopped pepperoni. I pretended it was my publisher’s penis.

  The pizza eaten, we leave. At home, I tell Jake to prepare for bed. I call Cecile. We exchange polite but wonderfully empty inquiries as to each other’s well-being.

  “Tomorrow is Saturday,” I tell her. “I was wondering if you’d like to come by and peer through a window.”

  “I would like that.”

  “How is Lilith?”

  “She’s fine.”

  “Are you happy? I know it’s none of my business, but—”

  “There’s no need to explain, Grayson. I’m very happy. Very, very happy. Lilith is a much better lover than you ever were.”

  Her saying this does not bother me. “Three o’clock.” I hang up.

  Jake is in his bedroom, between the sheets. It is a warm night. I am sitting by his bed. He wants a story. I read him a chapter and he goes to sleep.

  The morning comes. I am up and in the bathroom. I urinate. As I stand before the mirror, staring dull-eyed at my face, Jake stumbles in and adds his load to the toilet. He climbs onto the high stool next to me and stares dull-eyed at my face. I dispense shaving foam into my hand and then his. We rub it on our faces. I shave. So does Jake. I use an old double-edge. Jake uses the key from a sardine can.