The Juliet (23 page)

Tony said, “Wait a sec.”

She said, “Five hundred dollars?”

“Let’s make it a grand. I like even numbers.”

Dawn was delighted but Tony was alarmed. “What the hell just happened here?”

Scottie ignored his partner. “I’ll go get the cash.”

* * *

A line of cars was crawling into Centenary, so Nene and Baron bypassed the entrance to seek out the secret road, the one that led them to The Mystery House in the first place. They’d since learned it was called Apollo Camp Road or Goud’s Trail, and marked Class 2 or 4, depending on the map you bought. The woman at the museum gift shop told them that all the maps were true at one point or another, but the desert was so changeable it was hard to keep up. There were horror stories, she assured them, about the unreliability of the handheld global positioning devices some unlucky hikers swore by. “Best to think of any map as just a snapshot,” she said, and she managed to sell them two more to complement or complicate the one they already had.

As they pulled up, though, it appeared their secret was no secret at all. A long orange-striped barricade closed off vehicle entry, and at the bottom of the barricade were bouquets, wreaths, candles, and teddy bears in cowboy hats. Tributes for Rigg Dexon.

“Some other time, Dear. When we’re younger.”

So it was back to Centenary to join the party. They put on their wide-brimmed hats, grabbed some water, and let Missy drag them into the ghost town.

Baron had overstated the hippie part, but he could be forgiven seeing as he was in kindergarten when Bobby Kennedy was shot, and most of his memories of the era came from TV. There were a few dusty types in very expensive hiking sandals who looked the part from the ankles up. A group had staked out a picnic area that seemed to be on the verge of becoming a full-blown campsite, and not far off a young woman played guitar for no one except the pink wildflowers that surrounded her.

These young people were making an effort, but the columns of vans and SUVs hugging the edges of High Street spoiled it.

Nene said, “Seems like there are more cars than people.”

“Paradise needs more parking.”

Besides a scant handful of new age travelers, there were also retirees, frustrated kids, and entrepreneurs who’d set up camp tables and beach umbrellas to sell memorabilia, bottled water, and crafts. At the top of the street, a vendor in a truck with an awning sold posters, CDs, and tie-dyed scarves. He played music from a boom box: Marty Robbins’ greatest hits at the moment.

Nene was unimpressed. She stood still in the middle of it all, holding Missy’s leash. Missy was pulling, leaning, dancing, and doing everything she could to attract the attention of strangers.

Baron slipped away to speak to the man in the truck.

The tourists were doing what tourists usually do. They peered out over the edge of High Street to identify specific ruins or foundational markings below with the aid of their little Parks Service brochures. Or they blinked at the bluff on the far side, speculating about where The Mystery House might be. There were a couple of Parks Service representatives strolling around in their distinctive campaign hats, answering historical and geological questions, but whenever anyone asked about The Mystery House, they were quickly corrected.
Hogg’s House
, the bottle house, was privately owned. Not part of the park.

Nene also looked out over the edge of High Street, beyond Centenary’s edges, towards an apron of desert scrub that appeared infinite and unused. The view was praised over and over again, pronounced beautiful when it clearly wasn’t. Nene was tempted to tell anyone who came near her:
I staggered naked and raped across terrain like that with nothing but an expensive watch to mock my will to live.

She had expected something more from Centenary, nostalgia at least, but the promised celebration was shabby and small against a desert backdrop that was vast and threatening. A young woman walked by with dozens of plastic medallions hanging from cheap ribbon lanyards around her neck. Peace signs and ecology symbols. She was selling them for a dollar apiece. Robbins was still singing his tacky song, and more than one goofy-hearted dad was inspired to sing along: “One little kiss and Fe-li-na, goodbye.”

Nene wondered if there were more toy dinosaurs now than there had been real ones in the earth’s past. Everything majestic and terrifying would transform into a trifling version of itself, eventually. Except that there was also this matter of killing two men in the space of five days, and for an emerald with no significant intrinsic value. It was very Kimber of her. Over the top and not trifling at all.

And Baron. Perhaps she’d known all along his capacity for violence, although she suspected that all nurses were killers inside. Why else would one choose a vocation of such filth and servitude? Watching people die must be one of the perks.

No, Nene Glatter did not feel nostalgic. Neither did Kimber Logue. Just as she was about to call for Baron to inform him that she was ready to get out of there, the Marty Robbins music stopped. It was replaced by an androgynous, ancient voice, singing over sickly sweet chords crafted to burn holes in the brain:

Ride your mystery horse to The Mystery House

There’s a wild woman there

Loves only you

Inside The Mystery House, up in that bad canyon

Up in that bad, bad canyon, waiting there forever

Noises of recognition fluttered through the crowd, and Nene spun in place. She must have pulled Missy unexpectedly because the dog yelped, and as she tried to calm her, she experienced a wave of paranoia.

Baron returned, grinning stupidly. He toted three Freeze Pops back to his wife and his dog. Nene tried to focus on him, but she felt dizzy, cold in her gut. What the hell was this? Baron chunked off pieces of red ice for Missy and barely noticed Nene’s distress.

The song ended. There was applause. The vendor played it again.

Nene couldn’t open her Freeze Pop. Her hands shook. Then, even when Baron did it for her, she didn’t seem to have the strength to squeeze the ice up out of its plastic jacket.

“You okay, babe?”

“No.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” She finally got the ice into her mouth. Lime. She spotted an old man leaning under the awning of the vendor’s truck to catch a little shade. He seemed to be staring at her.

They needed to leave.

“Anything else to see here, Baron?”

“Oh yeah. You’re not going to believe it. Come on.”

Baron hustled the three of them through the crowd that had gathered thick near the music. When the song ended again, there was more applause. The vendor played it a third time. Somewhere far off a man said, “Oh Jesus Christ!” but it was unclear whether he approved or disapproved.

People made a gap for the dog, and as they passed through, Nene saw that there was a little cul-de-sac of celebratory commerce on the other side. More vans and trucks had formed a makeshift bazaar, and all the bright colors and bright sounds created an oasis of crap in what should have been a crap-free zone. But people liked their crap, didn’t they? She was staring straight at a larger than life cardboard cutout of Rigg Dexon, gun drawn and pointed at her heart. Next to him were similar standups of Elvis and Frankenstein. An entire fat family—father, mother, and three little round kids—sat in folding chairs behind the goods they were selling off folding tables: boxes of movie and music memorabilia, new and old, and behind them their extension van was plastered with psychedelic posters and neon feather boas.

“That’s what you wanted to show me?”

Baron said, “Pull down your hat a little,” but he didn’t wait for Nene to comply. He reached out and tugged the brim until it touched her eyebrows.

Mercifully, “The Mystery House” ended for the third time and was not replayed. Instead, the truck-bound DJ switched to another period favorite: Eton Tramp.

Nene felt sick. It was as if he was trying to put together a soundtrack of her most terrible moments. Baron led her around the van to show her an impossible array of merchandise. How did the family fit themselves and all this junk into their vehicle?

She should have known what was coming next.

A diptych, puckered from moisture in a frame with metallic paint flaking off: The model had a man’s face, but she was completely nude so you could confirm her sex, no matter how aggressively she posed in that trash-strewn alley in New York City. Her body was oiled, so even in black and white every bone and muscle shone. Her pubic hair was massive and unruly while every other line was controlled, sleek, and almost manufactured in texture. In the background was a derelict, one eye open and focused on her backside, his hand thrust down his pants. Even more vulgar than that, she held a Ruger in her hand, carelessly. The second panel was the same pose, only she was dressed in an arrow-slim tuxedo, and the gun was gone. The bum was still in the background and if one looked very closely, the head of his penis was visible, looking like an olive in his grip.

The print was four feet tall, framed. The model was Kimber Logue.

Baron was proud and ignorant. He couldn’t know how Nene felt, what she remembered. Everyone at the shoot had been stoned, horribly stoned. They wanted Kimber to do the bum, who was all too real. He coughed up phlegm and blood when they approached him with a gift of vodka. The photographer, famous for his frightening eroticism, thought that was beautiful.

Nene couldn’t remember. Had she finished the old boy off? With her mouth, even. That was possible, it seemed like a real memory except that the pictures in her head, her recollections, weren’t photographs like they should be. They were cartoons.

“So beautiful,” Baron whispered.

She remembered that when it was all over, they did something awful to that homeless man. Something so awful that she threw her shoes away, even though they’d cost two thousand dollars. With the money the photographer gave her she bought a lavender snakeskin suit, so it all worked out.

“You like this picture,” Nene said. She could hear the overture to
Kumquat
, Eton Tramp’s rock opera, limping along like a brain-damaged army, never reaching its epic promise. That had been Kimber’s idea. She’d been hanging around the studio serving as a muse of depression. She called her notion musical resistance, a critique of form. It was a bad idea, but Eton Tramp embraced it. The album was a colossal failure, so it wasn’t surprising that there were so many pristine copies on the collectors’ market.

“Can I buy it?” The tag on the diptych said $100.

Nene felt like throwing up. “It’s pornography.”

The old man who had been staring at her earlier popped up again. Sitting on a Parks Department bench, smiling at her. Smiling at her like the bum in the picture.

Who. The fuck.

“Bar’, someone’s recognized me.” She knew that wasn’t true, but it was more efficient to lie than to admit she was having some sort of flashback.

“Damn it, really? Let’s go back to camp.” Baron took Missy’s leash and draped his arm over Nene’s shoulders, as if he wanted to press her down, down, down.

A teenaged girl and boy wearing ragged clothes were coming up the road, smiling. They could have been twins, and they were sunburnt from hitchhiking, genuinely filthy, unlike most of the other young people who’d come out to Centenary. It was obvious they were selling something they shouldn’t; they both carried colorful Guatemalan bags over their shoulders, bulky with merchandise. When the girl came close she came
very
close, dancing lightly into the Glatters’ personal space. She spoke like a doll, in bubbles, hiccups of words: “You looking for The Juliet?” Then she tipped her bag forward so they could see inside it. Stacks of folded green paper, sliding around. “Dollar a map, grab bag style. Come on.”

The boy skipped to catch up to the girl, jamming a handful of what looked like popcorn in his mouth. He chewed it down and reached in his bag for another. The top of a box of Nuggetz was visible. He probably had three or four boxes in there.

“No thanks,” Baron said.

Nene’s heart pounded in her throat. Maybe this was what an anxiety attack was like. She tugged on Baron to keep going.

They passed a cluster of bodies surrounding a Rigg Dexon look-alike. He was wearing clothing that could kill him in the heat: chaps, a black and white horsehair vest, boots—the whole deal. Nene jolted when she saw him, but then she laughed, making a sound like rattling silver. The look-alike posed for pictures, which made a little sense, and signed autographs, which made no sense at all. Someone had hung one of those plastic peace signs around his neck. Nene looked at the faker, and the faker looked right back at her.

His smile disappeared and so did hers. At any moment, the dead would rise, crawling up out of the hard ground.

“We have to leave Death Valley,” Nene said.

“Come Sunday, we will.”

* * *

Centenary was overrun with new visitors, and Willie took Scottie’s truck out to check on the house to make sure no one was messing around up there. But also, she needed to get away from
people
. Returning the bag to Carter hadn’t solved any problems, and it even made things worse.

The sadness was especially tough. At first she’d been afraid, but when that dissipated there was all this sadness underneath. And guilt. One plus the other was grief.

At the head of Goud’s Trail, she saw the toys and flowers and dead balloons strewn across the entrance to the road. There was a barricade off to the side, knocked over. Her former colleagues in the Parks Service had put it up as a courtesy, but there was no legal way to keep people from traveling a public road. Resigned, she turned the wheel hard and accelerated, driving over teddy bears and fond farewells.

It was a different trip in the daytime, and in many ways more nerve-wracking. Goud’s Trail looked like an old piece of pastry, cracked and crumbling, too soft as it coiled up into the canyon.

“Thank you Rigg Dexon,” she said out loud, and it hurt.