The Enigmatologist (15 page)

“Alright,” John said, half-whining. “Let’s go.”

“Hot damn!” The sheriff slapped his hands together, eager
as a kid with a handful of Mexican fireworks ready to lose some fingers.

John, hand on the door knob, turned back to the empty
room. “Hold on a second. I forgot something.”

He grabbed his gun out of the nightstand and clipped it to
his belt. He hoped he wouldn’t need to use it, but knew, after last night, he
needed to be prepared.

The unmade bed, the room smelling of sexual toil. The next
time John walked through the door, the place would be clean and spotless,
aerosoled
and aromatic. John went to the side of the bed
where Rosa had slept. He bent over, picked up her pillow, buried his face in
the poly-cotton blend, breathed deeply, inhaling what remained of Rosa from the
room. Even if he’d never be with her again, he wanted to remember her scent.

Outside, John pulled the door a couple of times, making
sure it was locked.

“You got everything?” Sheriff Masters asked.

“Let’s go,” John said, putting his gun in the glove box.
They drove down the road. In the side mirror, heat waves blended the motel into
the other buildings, another motel, a fast food restaurant, a self-storage
facility. Everything eventually melted together.

The
house stank of bachelorhood, stale beer, body odor, and the general filth of
young men who were ill-equipped to live on their own. Rosa stood in the doorway
to Jose’s house, amazed that her brother could live that way, not caring that
his house smelled like a toilet full of bong water. She wiped her feet on the
mat she bought him as a housewarming present and stepped inside. She shook her
head in disgust and hurried past the coffee table littered with plastic
sandwich bags that were dotted with green flakes and seeds, past the pink-tiled
bathroom and the stacks of
Maxim
magazines next to the toilet, not
wanting to think about the magazines Jose and Jed didn’t leave lying around, to
her brother’s room.

“Jose! Get up!” She said, pounding on his door, the thin
wood almost cracking.

“What?” Jose said, the door muffling his voice.

“Get up! We have to go.”

“What the fuck. I don’t
gotta
be
in until…Shit, it’s still early.”

“Get. The. Fuck. Up. Now.”

Rosa heard shuffling and collisions as Jose stumbled over
piles of clothes and bumped into cabinets and an end table. He cracked the
door.

“Are you alone?” Rosa asked. “Do you have a girl in there
with you?”

“Damn, woman. What
kinda
question is that? You know this ain’t Las Vegas, it’s Las Vaginas.”

“Are you alone?” she asked again.

“Yeah. Come in,” Jose said, rolling his eyes, rocking his
head. He was wearing light blue boxers and a wife-beater that was sweat-stained
around the collar and arm pits.

Rosa crossed her arms, stared at the brown, circular water
marks on the popcorn ceiling. She was always amazed that they were related. She
was organized, motivated, driven. Her restaurant had become the star of the
plaza. She intended to capitalize on her success, spread out, franchise, grow
her business, bring jobs and money to town, make a difference. Jose was interested
in growing other things. Every time she visited him, Rosa was reminded of this.
It started when she helped him move in. Jose had refused to unpack until he had
smoked a blunt and covered the walls of his room with posters of cannabis leaves
and large-breasted women.

Jose plugged his phone into a set of speakers, nodded his
head to a
reggaeton
track about the singer and his
friends smuggling weed across the border in underground tunnels, stopping
periodically for blowjobs.

“Pack a bag,” Rosa said.

“How’s about I pack a bowl? I don’t
gotta
be at work for, shit, I don’t know, a while.” Jose plopped onto a beanbag
chair. The bag wheezed and little Styrofoam bits spewed out of tiny holes. He
picked up a red, plastic bong, a foot long, and poked the bowl with his finger,
checking to see if there was something in it he could smoke.

“Hold on. I
gotta
hit this shit.
Wake and bake,
beotch
.” Jose grabbed a plastic
lighter, the childproof metal band pried off, from his dresser and lit the
bowl, inhaling. The dried grass and resin sizzled. Gurgling water. The red tube
filled with smoke. Jose slid the bowl out, clearing the chamber, and the foot
long column of smoke was vacuumed into his lungs and stomach.

He coughed.

“It’s
Leadbelly
.”

“That
pendejo
?” he said through
his coughs. He exhaled the gray fog, polluting the room with the smell of burnt
herbs, light and pungent. “You want some?”

“I’m trying to have a serious conversation here,” Rosa
said, fanning smoke from her face.

“Didn’t think so,” Jose said. He took another hit. The
embers in the bowl glowed then died.

“You remember the other night when we saw him? He said
someone was after him.” She crossed her arms and leaned against the door.

“You can’t take anything that guy says seriously.” Jose’s
voice was high-pitched from holding in the smoke.

“Well, he was right.”

“Shit, he’s a walking ad for herpes cream.” He exhaled,
coughing.

“Last night…”

“Let me tell you about last night.” Jose grabbed a large
plastic cup of water and drank. “Me and Jed went over to Dawn’s house. You
remember her? She used to work at the
Conaco
by the
airport.”

“These two guys came up to me at Levi’s.”

“Why you hanging out there? That place sucks. You
shoulda
come with us to Dawn’s. She was having people
over.”

“They tried to force me to go with them.”

“This guy Nick pulled out this bag of Purple Kush.” Jose
pantomimed holding the bag. “You
shoulda
seen that
shit.
Nugs
all covered in these red hairs. Nothing we
could do but smoke that shit down.”

“I think they were Air Force.”

“What the…How did they…” Jose leaned forward. “What did
they say?”

“They tried to make me go with them. Nothing happened,
though. Fortunately, John was there and stepped in.”

“Who’s John?”

“He’s kind of my boyfriend,” Rosa said, shrugging one
shoulder, tilting her head to the side.

“Is this that asshole kid from Denver?”

“He’s nice,” she said, putting her hands on her hips.

“Rosa, did you…”

Rosa blushed and looked at her shoes.

“You did! Holy shit! You fucking did!” Jose leapt from the
ground, the beanbag chair still holding the imprint of his body. He dropped the
bong, spilling the brown water on his stained carpet. “Why did you…Did Louisa
ask you to do this? You know we don’t have to do what she says. She’s out
there, sitting in the desert, we’re here. We can do whatever we want.”

“He’s sweet. I like him. And…I don’t know…” Rosa looked at
the posters on her bother’s wall, the bikini clad women sprawled across sports
cars or dangling on young men like platinum jewelry. Her brother wouldn’t
understand that John made her feel loved enough that she could wipe away the
barriers and disguises she used to protect herself from the leers of the men in
town, that with John she could be herself.

“She doesn’t get to tell us what to do. This is a new
world, our world. She wasn’t born here. We were. We don’t owe her anything.”

“You let those college kids beat you up because she asked
you.”

“That was different. You needed to get the sheriff
to…Doesn’t fucking matter why I did it. I ain’t doing shit for her again. Fuck
her. She can rot in that trailer park. From now on, I’m doing me.” He picked up
his bong, then added, “I
coulda
taken those frat boy
putas
.”

Her brother was right, that she was only responsible for
herself. She had always been loyal to the old ways, to the plan. When she was
younger she understood it, embraced her role, was excited about living a
double-life in New Mexico. She even anticipated the future, the end of
everything. It had comforted her. For the past several years, she’d been
operating on her own, building a life independent of oversight. She’d grown to
enjoy it and was scared by the possibility that she didn’t believe anymore.
Then she received her latest assignment: John Abernathy. It was supposed to be
simple reconnaissance, find out everything she could about him. She would
smile, thinking about him, the puzzle-related puns he’d make when he hung out
with his college friends, how he worked on his puzzles for hours every night
after his mom went to sleep, how he believed in true love and felt ill printing
photos of men covering other women’s feet in
Nesquik
strawberry powder, cheating on their wives, and how he always gave half of his
roast beef
panini
to Doug, the homeless guy who lived
in the alley next to his office. And she was surprised when she realized that
she was in love with him. Now all she wanted to do was see him again. Only, she
wasn’t sure he’d want to see her if he knew the truth.

She wasn’t alone in her apprehension, and she knew Jose
wasn’t alone in his thinking. There were countless others like him who just
wanted to kick back, coast for a while, delight in the indulgences of this
world before everything became really complex.

But that didn’t matter now.
Leadbelly
was dead and they needed to run, leave behind everything they loved. Rosa would
never see John again, explain how she felt. She knew her brother wouldn’t want
to leave, knew she’d have to convince him to give up the parties, drugs, bad
music.

“You enjoy this life? hanging out with your friends,
smoking weed all the time?”

“What the fuck do you care?”

“I always…” she started, hands on her hips. She composed
herself, folded her hands and ran them over her nose and mouth. “Jose, the Air
Force knows about me. I don’t know how, but they do. That means they know about
you. What do you think’s going to happen when they find you?”

“
Putamadre
,” Jose said, grabbing
a pair of jeans off the floor. “I was just starting to like this place.”

He reached for his wallet and cell phone on his dresser.

“No phone,” Rosa said. “We don’t want anyone tracking us.”

“No reception where we’re going anyway.”

Rosa waited for him in the living room, surrounded by
pizza boxes, video game consoles, wondering how upset he’d be if she came over
and cleaned when he wasn’t home. If they had a home to come back to.

“Jed,” Jose said, knocking on the bedroom door across the
hall. “We need a ride.”

Jed opened the door. He was naked except for a pair of
mismatched tube socks and a brown baseball cap decorated to look like a
designer handbag. Marijuana leaves replaced the logo that dotted the cap. The
cap was turned backwards like he’d put it on right before answering the door
and reverse was its natural state.

“Damn, son. You got really fucked up last night, huh?”

“Huh? What?” Jed squinted. He rubbed his left eye and half
of his face with his hand. Someone moaned and tossed on the bed.

“Is that…Holy shit. You got Dawn in there? You better get
your ass to the free clinic, son. Get your shit tested out.”

“We don’t have time for this,” Rosa said.

The aroma of lavender and strong coffee hit Jed. He was
suddenly awake and aware of Rosa, his boss, standing in their living room. Jed
worked in the restaurant’s kitchen with Jose as a line cook. He was usually
late, and smoked weed on his breaks, but Rosa kept him around because he was
Jose’s friend. She knew Jed had a crush on her. He was barely able to get
through the job interview without blushing. And when he saw her standing in his
kitchen, his first thought was, ‘Oh crap, I’m naked. With Rosa here,’ and his
second thought was, ‘Damn, I hope I don’t pop a woody.’ He put his hand over his
crotch and slammed the door.

Almost immediately the door reopened. Jed was fully
dressed. Khaki pants, a short-sleeved, buttoned shirt,
untucked
,
with a clip-on tie. He stood stiff in the hallway.

“I’m sorry about that, Ms. Jimenez, you having to see me
all naked and shit,” Jed said, trying to sound professional, and not hung over.
He wished he had flowers.

“Don’t mention it,” Rosa said, crossing her arms, tapping
her foot on the bong-water, stained carpet.

“Dude, we need a ride,” Jose said. “We’re…”

“Taking a vacation.”

“Yeah, a vacation.”

“I thought you had to give, like, two weeks notice, or
some shit,” Jed said.

“I’m the boss’s brother, son,” Jose said, in a developed
bravado. “I don’t
gotta
do nothing. You know this.”

“Seriously?” Rosa said. “This is what you say when I’m not
around?”

“So, you
gonna
give us a ride or
what?”

“Uh, yeah, sure,” Jed said. “Where you going?”

“Just drop us off at the bus station,” Rosa said.