Each one is a gem, and as the editor of the collection, it’s gratifying to offer them to you. I hope you enjoy.
Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
March 2021
Part I
Strangers in the Night
Sunrise
by Janet Fitch
South Palm Canyon
I like cactus. Cactus and old people, old places, things that survive. Quiet mornings. Water soaking into sandy soil before the heat. That’s what I was doing at Morston’s that morning — watering, raking, feeding the tortoises, watering the doves — white doves, like the ones magicians conjure out of thin air. A nice buzz on, just about perfect.
I was pretty much done, taking a drink from the hose, that coppery taste of summertime. Time go home, clean up, feed Mr. Frenchy, get ready for the day. The first customers were arriving.
What made me look up? The cigar. I hate cigars, they remind me of someone I’d like to forget. I staggered too close to a prickly pear, but I hardly felt it as it caught my arm. I recognized that tall trim form, long-legged in jeans, cowboy boots, shaking a match. Even with his bald head covered with a baseball cap and his eyes hidden behind aviator sunglasses, I knew him.
I watched him buy tickets, him and the girl, a pretty redhead in a hat and yellow sundress.
Look at him, laughing.
The LAPD said there was no such person as Jack West. The detective we hired came up empty. Sorry, kids, but you’re never going to see that money again.
His hand rested on the girl’s slim shoulder, a tall man’s ease, her arm around his waist. Christ, he was old enough to be her grandfather. We thought he’d taken off to Venezuela. Mathilde, Matilda... he take the money and run Venezuela. Or Bogotá, that’s where the wife was from, a former Miss Colombia, or so he said.
I found a bit of crumpled Kleenex in my pocket to dab at the blood seeping through my shirt as I watched them move through the ecosystems — all the varieties of cactus, some thirty feet high, others no bigger than your thumb. I could shove him into a patch of ocotillo, leave him crucified, like a bird I’d seen once, impaled on a thorn by the wind.
The girl screamed and batted at her flowered hat, knocking it to the ground. A hummingbird darted away, offended. Jack laughed, settling the fallen hat back on her head. So graceful, so easy. That gold watch, the only sign of his taste for fancy cars and expensive women, rented yachts, larceny.
We’d never seen that kind of flash, Gil and me. Box seats at the Bowl, house in Beverly Hills, boat at the marina, the white Rolls. By the time we knew what had hit us, he was gone. Along with everything we’d ever owned, ever made of ourselves, vanished. Like a magic act in which it was the magician, and not the doves, who appeared and then disappeared.
Had to suck it up. Our credit busted. Gil’s brother doling out a grand or two like he was the Sun King.
Then came the dark days. The shit condo in Reseda, Gil on the couch playing solitaire on a TV tray, watching detective shows... There are things in life you didn’t survive, and we didn’t survive our encounter with Jack West.
You’re young. Get on with your lives, the detective had said. Chalk it up to experience.
I sprayed water on things that didn’t need it, cholla and prickly pear, watched Jack and his date make the circuit and return to the tables of souvenir cactus and succulents. I coiled the hose and slipped out to my car across the street, an Audi from the eighties that’d once belonged to my mother.
Come on, you son of a bitch.
Here they came. Walked down to a silver-bullet Porsche. He folded himself in, leaving the girl to manage for herself. Clearly he was past trying to impress. I hoped they were staying locally; I didn’t have much gas. But I wasn’t going to let him get away. Not even if I had to follow him to LA or San Diego. It was a sign. The universe was giving me a second chance.
I tailed him down South Palm Canyon, past the Palm Canyon Mobil Club where I lived in my grandmother’s old trailer, as far as Coyote Hills Drive, where he turned and climbed. A white brick wall and a gate of frosted glass and black metal shuddering open for a quick glimpse at the house — a modernist platter with what looked like a 270-degree view over the valley. I kept going, found a place to turn around, and parked in the shade of someone’s olive tree.
Jack sure had improved his taste. The man I’d known favored mirrored tiles and round Hollywood beds. That bed... back then, that and Sarita’s lace stockings were the most elegant things I’d ever seen. What a kid I’d been.
Where the jutting roofline permitted, I could see the house’s patio, an angular blue pool, the concrete limited by glorious big boulders. That was my money. Mine and Gil’s, the money he’d stolen from us. A neighbor came onto his front patio and glared at me. Fuck you, sir. Unless he called the cops, I was staying right here.
But the gate was opening again.
I shadowed him back through town, to a sleek modern building with aqua-tinted windows. It housed a Coldwell Banker, a medi spa, and on the second floor — Thompson + Price Design/Build. Jack climbed out of that Porsche like he was Steve McQueen. He had to be fifty by now, maybe even older. I was thirty-six, but I felt sixty. Eight years since he’d killed me. I was a ghost, and he hadn’t aged a day.
Ten a.m. and my shirt was sweated through. My pierced arm throbbed. I ran the AC, listening to Rat Pack radio: Fly me to the moon — hey! I would wait. I was the soul of patience. I was a hawk waiting on a lamppost, a scorpion under a rock. I had nothing but time.
Meanwhile, Mauricio texted me. Echale un vistazo, jefe. It was our joke. Mauricio was my boss. I met him when I’d first landed here — bottomed out, tapped out, living in my grandmother’s trailer. Newly widowed, having a beer and a taco and a good cry. Back when I still cried. My Spanish was pretty good — my only good subject at Birmingham High — and he seemed sympathetic. I told him my sad story.
He too had a problem, he said. He ran a landscaping crew. Recently, the California governor had announced they were going to pay people to take out their lawns and put in plantas tolerantes a la sequía, cactus and natives. It was the future. He was a good gardener, not an idiot with a rake. But owners didn’t think Mexicans could do anything but wave a leaf blower. What he needed was una gringa bien hablada para conseguir nuevos clientes, ¿comprende? An ambitious guy. He wanted that business. I would be the boss, get the gig, then he’d take over. He’d give me 10 percent.
We came up with a name — Xterra Gardens. Gays y hipsters were the likeliest clients, new owners. This being Palm Springs, there was always somebody dying or moving away. I kept my white-lady wardrobe neatly together at one end of my closet — white jeans, canvas shoes, a clean straw hat. El jefe.
Mauricio’s lead was in Cathedral City, el profesor, could I drop by?