emphasis on food, considered it a much too important part of life. If she considered sex as important as eating and put as much effort into their lovemaking as she did deciding what she ate, they might still have a marriage.
Sex.
It had been what? A month? Two months? He wasn't sure. They hadn't done it in a while, that he knew.
He tried to remember the first girl he'd ever had.
What was her name? Dawn? Donna? Something like that. Strange that he couldn't recall. Weren't you always supposed to remember your first? She'd been poor and dirty. He remembered that much. And that had been part of the allure. She was not like the perfectly scrubbed examples of femininity that were invited over to the house; she was different, wild, and he had liked that. She'd made him do things to her that he hadn't even known about, and in that one summer he had learned everything about sex he had ever needed to know.
It had been all downhill from there.
He hadn't thought of that girl in a long time, and he tried to recall what had happened, why they had broken up. It had probably been after the fire, after they'd moved, but he couldn't remember for sure.
He sighed. It didn't matter. He pulled up in front of the house, parked next to the ocotillo on the edge of the driveway. He sat for a moment in the car, staring through the windshield at the darkened windows of the house, and not for the first time, he wished that he had never gotten married, that he had never met Roberta.
On Friday, as usual, he left the office early and went to The Hogan. It was a regular bar, not an artist's bar, and there were none of the phony Southwest accoutrements that supposedly lent ambience to Santa Fe's nipper hangouts and that he found so annoying and distracting.
Jimbowas working today, and Stormy asked for a Bud Liteand stood at the bar waiting for his order while the bartender moved to fill it. There were two guys halfway down the counter having a loud conversation, and Stormy tuned it in.
'Whatever happened to strongmen?' the guy closest to him was saying. 'Remember how we always called leaders of countries we didn't like 'Strongmen'? There was Panamanian Strongman Manuel Noriega, Libyan Strongman Mohammar Khadafi . We never used 'General,','President,' or whatever the hell their official title was. It was always 'Strongman.' Why don't we do that anymore?'
'You're drunk,' his companion said.
'Maybe so. But it's a legitimate question.'
'We only do that if we want to provoke a confrontation with them,' Stormy offered. 'We do it to teach our people that these are bad guys. It gets the public ready for war.'
The drunk looked up. 'Who are you, you anti-American son of a bitch?'
His friend put a restraining hand on his arm.
Stormy smiled apologetically. 'Sorry. Didn't mean to butt in.'
The drunk pointed. 'I know your mama. She was giving pony rides, handing out ass candy.'
Jimboarrived with his beer, and Stormy paid. 'Thanks.'
He headed over to a table next to the jukebox at the far end of the room.
'I'm talking to you!' the drunk yelled.
'Shut up!' his friend told him.
Stormy ignored the man, sipped his beer. It had been a good afternoon. Taos had taken the Hopi kid's film, and had not only put it in competition but had given it one of the coveted prime-time slots. To top it off, the straight-to-video Fat Lady, a horror sexploitation flick that he'd picked up after a minor studio had dropped it, had just gotten a rave review in Fangoria , the slice-and dice bible. Which meant that sales and rentals would probably go through the roof.
Sometimes life was good.
He looked at his watch. Four-ten. Ken was supposed to meet him here at four-fifteen, but his friend was chronically late and he was prepared to wait until four thirty. He took another sip of beer, a small one, trying to make it last.
To his surprise, Ken arrived on time for once. He flagged down Carlene, the waitress, ordered a Miller, and settled heavily into the chair opposite Stormy.
'Nice day at the office?'
'It's always a party when you work for a coroner. I
told you, anytime you want you can come on down and I'll give you a tour, let you see what it's like.'
'No thanks.'
'We had a cancer death today.'
'I take it that's worse than a regular death?'
'Looking at it's not that bad, but the smell . . .' Ken shook his head. 'When you pop someone open with colon cancer, that's a smell you won't forget.'
'This is really appetizing. Are we going to order some hors d'oeuvres?'
Ken grinned. 'Sure. Liver pate?'
'That's truly disgusting.'
'You're a wussboy .'
'And you're a senseless psycho who's completely inured to blood and guts.'
Ken shrugged. 'You get used to it. I mean, before AIDS, we used to buy our lunch at McDonald's and put the sacks on top of the open bodies and eat. Sometimes, if people came to visit, we'd intentionally gross them out and play catch with, like, a spleen. You know, just to freak them.' He laughed. 'But now everyone's pretty careful. AIDS and O.J., man. They've really put a damper on the body biz. Things just aren't as fun anymore.'
Carlene arrived with Ken's beer, and Stormy asked for another for himself.
'I'm telling you,' Ken said. 'You oughta put shit like that in a movie. Show'em what it's like in a real coroner's office. People'd love it.'
'I don't make movies, I distribute them. And aside from the Faces of Death crowd, I don't think there's a big market for stuff like that. There aren't as many weirdos in the world as you might think there are.'
'Speaking of weird, I was talking to Tom Utchaca yesterday about what's happening out by the reservation.'
'What is happening out by the reservation?'
'A lot of strange shit's been going down.'
Stormy leaned forward. This was getting interesting.
'You know Tom, right? He's not stupid and he's not superstitious.' Ken lowered his voice. 'He says his father's come back to the reservation.'
'I thought his father was dead.'
'He is.'
Stormy blinked, started to say something, closed his mouth.
'Said he saw him in back of his parents' old place.
The house is abandoned, I guess, and he was driving by on his way somewhere and saw his father standing there in the empty field. He stopped the car because he wanted to make sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing, and his father smiled and waved at him and started walking over.
'Tom took off.
'And he's not the only one. A lot of the people say their dead are coming back. Tom doesn't know what the hell to think, but he said the word going around the reservation is that the netherworld is full, that there's no more room for the dead and some of them are leaking out, coming back into our world.'
Against his will, Stormy felt a slight tingle pass down his spine. 'Are these supposed to be ghosts or actual resurrected bodies?'
'Bodies. Resurrected and restored. They're not rotting zombies, they're back and good as new. Tom said his father looked like he did in his prime.'
'You don't actually believe this shit, do you?'
'I've known Tom a long time, and I haven't seen anything myself yet but, yeah, I believe him.'
'You deal with dead bodies every day. How can you--?'
'How can I what?' He paused. 'You know, the more I learn, the more I realize how little I
know. It's a cliche , but I thought I knew everything when I got out of school, and when I first started this job I wouldn't have believed a story like that if Tom's father had walked into my bedroom and grabbed my dick. But I've
