“Maybe in May,” she told him.
But, today, in the sun, she thought she could call him and tell him she was coming or, she smiled, tell him he should come here. He could come here and sit by the pool with the palm trees and the sound of people laughing.
The sun felt soft on her face.
“You like it here?” someone asked her.
“Sometimes,” she said, her eyes closed.
“God, I love it. It is so much better than where I came from. Do you know anything about Nebraska?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Well, if you did, you’d know what I’m talking about. Swimming in March. Who would believe it?” said the young woman’s voice.
“Boy, would I like to live here,” a male voice told her. “This is the life. Me and my wife are going to look at places this afternoon. I figure, what the hey. This is the place to be. This is the future. What do you do?” He stopped to breathe.
“I work in television.”
“Really? Could we see you on the tube? What do you do?”
“I do the news.” She opened her eyes and looked at him. “I’m a reporter.”
“No kidding?”
He was probably in his late forties. Black hair covered his chest and shoulders. He scratched at his belly.
“Me and the wife don’t like that Barbara Walters, you know?’
“Uh huh.”
“Nope, don’t like her at all. How much does a house cost out here?”
The sky was a sapphire blue and the breeze moved through the palms. Beyond the splashing of the swimmers she could hear that breeze.
It was perfect, like a beautiful resort where people lived and talked and moved at an easy pace. Maybe if she slowed down and took more time to sit by the pool and read in the sun, she would feel different about this place. Maybe she would see it like everyone else did.
She left in the afternoon, driving east on the broad avenue that ran along the side of the mountain. Old ranch-style houses sat at its base waiting for the developers to buy them up and knock them down. Dirt driveways led up the mountain to the memories of adobe hotels where dudes once warmed in the sun. Big new yellow-brown stucco houses with rust-red tile roofs flowed down from paved roads to the avenue below.
She turned north to the highway where the resorts came one after the other, surrounded by flowers and lawns and sprinklers shooting water diamonds into the sun. East again past the quiet streets of the desert homes with their lawns of manicured dust and cactus.
She reached the small community where houses clung to the desert and the sides of the small hills. She drove past the empty parking lot of the shopping mall that had never been built and past the pond with the fountain that sent up an hourly shaft of water high enough to be seen for miles. It held some title of being the tallest, the biggest, the everything fountain in the world. She made a half circle of the town and pulled back on the highway.
She crossed the small bridge over the river. She saw hints of green and felt the quiet of a good place to fish or sit or eat a picnic lunch. She stopped at the small store next to the road leading into the reservation. She bought a can of soda from the glass case. The Indian woman with the thick black hair smiled at her as she took her money.
“Can I drive in there?” she asked, gesturing in the direction of the reservation.
“What?”
“Can I drive onto the land, the nation’s land?” She was embarrassed by her words. The nation’s land, that sounded strange, uncomfortable.
“Sure, yes,” the woman looked confused.
“I can drive on it? No problem?”
“No, no problem,” she said and turned to wait on the tall Indian boy wearing a white cowboy hat with a single feather.
“Thank you,” she said.
The woman did not answer. She and the boy were laughing together.
Outside, she took a deep breath. The air smelled of trees and fields. It was so quiet, only the birds singing, only a car passing on the highway. She smiled. She was going to make it. Damn it. She was going to make it. She began the drive back.
The key was this land, this being out on the land, away from the city. That’s what she loved. Next week she would drive into the reservation, look at the small farms and the animals. Or, she would drive to the mountains, up to the small towns. She could stay in a little inn. She could do that. Yes, she could. She would be all right. She knew that now.
There would be no more doctor or group or drug addicts. Without all of that she would, for once, be fine. All of that craziness would be out of her life. She would clean it all out, get away from the bad things.
A car passed her, big, faded with the sun. It flew around her going seventy or eighty miles an hour. She thought the driver must be angry in his old rotting carcass of a car.
The job wasn’t bad, not really. She had to relax, not take it so seriously. Isn’t that what Jason told her, not to think so much about things? She could make sure to come out on the land, go to the mountains, get away from work every chance she got. That’s how you survived. Learn to love this place. It was a good place, warm and good. Everybody thought so.
The camper in front of her was going less than forty miles an hour. A Confederate flag covered the back window. She took a chance and pulled out. She saw him as she passed, an old man hunched over the steering wheel.
Maybe there was something else at the station she could do, another type of job. She gasped.
