正文
“Saccharine.”
“Okay. No fair,” said the man. “You’re just playing off my words.”
The woman smirked at him. She had a pretty face, I thought. Bright blue eyes and high cheekbones and little freckles across them. She had on a gauzy top, some sort of linen, and even though it was just a little swath of fabric, you could tell from the texture of it and the way she wore it and from her herself that it was something fine. I knew, just knew suddenly, that it had probably cost more than the money Del had stolen from the 7-Eleven the night I first met him. And I knew too that I wanted a top just like it.
“Fine,” she said, pretending to pout. “Here’s another one. Schmaltzy.”
“Better! Um . . . sad.”
“No,
this
is sad,” she said, holding up her own plastic wineglass.
“Agreed,” he laughed.
“Swill,” she whispered, dragging out the
s
sound, just touching his hand with her fingers, and they both giggled as they moved on to the next picture. And the next letter too, it turned out. T was for tarnished, for trashy, for tragic.
Del had made the full circuit. Even from across the room, I could see the elbows shining on his blazer. Then he turned and saw me and made a little side-nod with his head, motioning toward the door. Time to head back home. Back to the trailer.
I looked once more at the painting of the couple on the beach. I’d thought it was pretty. Still did.
I’d thought the wine had tasted pretty good, too.
But suddenly it all left a bad taste in my mouth.
* * * *
A bad taste still as we drove south now.
The steep turns and drop-offs that had taken us out of Taos had given way to little villages, small homes on shaded roads, people up and about, going about their lives. I saw a couple of signs pointed toward the Santuario de Chimayo, which I’d visited when I first moved out this way, picking Northern New Mexico just because it seemed different, in every way, from where I’d grown up. I’d found out about the church in Chimayo from a guidebook I’d ordered off the Internet, learned about the holy earth there and how it healed the sick. When I’d visited it myself, I gathered up some of the earth and then mailed it off to Mama—not that she was sick, but just unhappy. I don’t know what I’d imagined she’d do with it, rub it on her heart or something. “Thanks for the dirt,” she told me when she got it.
“Do you think they’ve found him yet?” I asked Del.
