Quartzsite Lonely Hearts

Q U A R T Z S I T E  L O N E L Y  H E A R T S

Tad and Selina

   “I been thinking,” Selina said. She was tucked up comfortably in their
bed. Her husband Tad was just slipping into snore mode. He snorted and twitched and said “Wha’?”
   “Like I said I been thinking.”
    “Yeah? And?”
    “I been thinking that not everyone is as happy as us. There’s lots of people around who could use some company in their lives. I was thinking it would be nice to set up some kind of meet-up program......”
   “You mean like a dating service?”
   “Well like more just for company. Like for breakfast or lunch or whatever.”
    “Whatever sounds good. I don't know Lina. You get these ideas......”
   “Do me a favor. Forget the past. I learn by my mistakes.”
First thing she did was print up a flier. A picture of two fat faced kids huddling under an umbrella.
   “Could be a sun shade,” she said. COULD YOU USE SOME COMPANY? was centered under the two kids.
   “You should call it “Just Friends,” said Tad.
   “Good idea,” said Selina, wondering if it really was.
   She walked around the markets distributing the flier to anyone who would take it. She was a sweet faced woman in her sixties. A woman who inspired trust. She tucked the flier under wind shield wipers even though she knew that many of the cars parked on the street belonged to people passing through on the freeway. She set up a new email account.
   “You’ll get a ton of women and no men,” Tad said. He was right of course.
   “But there are lonely old men everywhere. Out in the BLM campgrounds there are way more men than women out there.”
   “Those guys are trying to stay away from company. They get their coffee at the QIA and that’s their limit on company for the day.”
   “We’ll see,” she said. She toured the BLM camps until a very nice host told her that she couldn’t do that. The host took one flier for herself though.
    “I’ll put it up in the office,” she said.
   “There’s Bible study ads up in there, so this should be OK.”
   It didn’t take long for the e-mails to come in. All women.
   “Well that’s OK,” said Lina, “it’s not meant to be a dating thing.
    “You may think that,” said Tad, “but those ladies all are looking for a man I’ll bet you.”
   “But there’s lonely old men everywhere. Why aren’t I hearing from them?”
   “Because they’re guys. Guys don’t like stuff like that.”
   Selina took Pooch for a walk and tried to come up with a different mode of attack. She stopped at the memorial to Hi Jolly, the Syrian camel man who came to the area when the Army had a Camel Corps. In his life time Hi Jolly worked as a guide, a water seller and a merchant.
He tried whatever would work for him. What would work for me? She asked Hi Jolly. The answer slipped into her mind.
   “Of course!” She said to Pooch.
Because she was a responsible person she took down all the signs she had so carefully put up before she created new ones. This time her headline was “The Nice Ladies of Quartzsite”. Yes. She would find a dozen nice ladies who would be happy to have tea and conversation with lonely men. No mention of romance. Just company. Alcohol free. Yes. And the nice ladies would be a club themselves, and get together to compare notes and may be do volunteer stuff like picking up trash.
She contacted the first twenty people who answered her earlier attempt. Some looked a little flaky so she dropped them right away.
   “You’re crazy.” Said Tad.
    “Leave me alone!” She answered.
   Six people got back to her. She had a meeting at her mobile home. Tad hid in the bedroom.
At first sight she was quietly horrified. Then she started to laugh and the six ladies also laughed though they weren’t quite sure why they were laughing.
   A very mixed group. The youngest might have been in her late forties. Well dressed and painted. The oldest was eighty at least and wore very old gray sweats.    Everyone got a paper name tag which they stuck on their bosoms.
   The talking began. Millie asked if they’d get paid.  No.  This was an informal group. She took no liability. Hopefully this would not come up. Connie asked if she would screen the gentlemen. Lina said that she would do her best but couldn’t guarantee. She would do a quick Facebook check.
All meetings should be at public places. That was the one rule that she really felt strongly about. Six heads nodded in agreement.
   “Romance not encouraged,” she said. “Romance and by that I mean sex isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I been alive a long time and that’s my take on it. Friendship lasts longer.” Quickly realizing her mistake she added  “Well of course we all fall in love from time to time and if this should happen, well good luck is all I can say!”
   Relieved laughter from all.
   The new poster used the same cute kids under an umbrella/ sunshade. The header said “Just Friends” and under that “It’s good to have someone to be with. We are nice ladies and we think there are shy people in Quartzsite who would enjoy conversation and just sitting around with someone. Call this number or send us an e-mail. We reply to all.”
   “Well,” said the painted lady whose name was Darla, “I think it sounds like we’d go out with gays.”
   “You’d be free to pick and choose if that bothers you,” said Selina.
   Uneasy glances. “That’s not our aim, but in this day and age we don’t discriminate if we can help. I don’t think it’s a problem.”
   “My son’s gay. Best man I know,” said Connie. She was in her sixties. A little on the heavy side and wearing forbidding spectacles.
   “We all know gays. Some we like and some we don’t. Like everyone else.” Selina felt a little weird. She sounded like a Unitarian.
  “So we’ll do a trial week and see what happens. OK? If you don’t wish to participate let me know. Remember you’ll be meeting more men in a nice situation so this is good for you too. Enjoy!”
   When the last lady had gone Tad crawled out of the bedroom.
   “Ain’t gonna work,” he said.
   “Yes it will. You wait and see.” Selina answered.

   Selina checked her email twice a day. She set up a Facebook account.    Nothing.  Four days after she put out the ad she got a single response.    Someone named Horace. No Facebook. Just a reference from a BLM camp host.  Connie said why not. I’ll give it a try.
   A few days later Connie reported that Horace was nice enough but she had told him he needed to take a shower when he did his laundry every week. This surprised him. He was offended. He told her that she needed better glasses. She got the glasses in Mexico and the caps on her teeth as well. There were glasses with nicer frames but they cost more and her caps were too white for a woman her age and he had mentioned that also.
   “Would you see him again?” Asked Selina.
   “Sure. We had a nice talk.”
   Responses were beginning to trickle in. A violinist who was a real estate agent and liked to speak in Middle English.
   A recently widowed wheat rancher. A Missouri hog farmer. A drifter on a bicycle who was working on a Saga of some sort.. An Englishman with a fancy accent. Hard to tell whether it was real or fake on the phone.

   Selina and Tad were sipping sweet wine and watching Downton Abbey. She had just given each woman a calendar to record their ‘dates’. She had an uneasy feeling that if her wonderful idea should become too popular she would lose control. The whole thing could spiral into scandal if she didn’t watch out. She decided not to expand the number of people involved, but now Tad was saying that she should have a group of men doing the same thing.
   “First you said it would never work and now I’ve proved you wrong you’re trying to push me into a further complication. No. At least not now.”
They had just had their second weekly meeting. Loretta chose the hog farmer
for her first date. Loretta was black and the hog farmer was from Missouri.
“You sure about that?” Selina asked.
“Sure I’m sure. Why not?”
“I was just thinking that he might be prejudiced you know?”
 “Sure I know. If I can’t charm him I’ll write it up to experience.”
“Not many black men in Quartzsite,” said Connie.
“No worry,” Loretta said.

Mary Ann was interested in Clive, “I like that English accent.”
“He looks very handsome,” said Selina, “he’s the only one that sent a photo.”
“Never trust a foreigner,” said Dixie.
“Never trust anyone!” Darla answered.
“it’s going to be fine, Lina. Stop worrying,” said Tad.
“Shut up, said Selina, “I’m trying to figure out what just happened.” She was lost in Downton Abby. Safe from the world.







Loretta and Horace











Loretta stared at herself in the mirror and wondered if she’d overdone the eye shadow. No. Leave it alone. I look good, she thought. She’d worked the early shift at the Shade Tree Cafe and now she was going back there to meet the hog farmer. She was regretting the whole idea of looking for a friend in Quartzsite. People were nice enough but no friendships had developed. She knew several customers
liked her because she was a dam good waitress and no one could deny her that, but they never wanted to see her off duty.
The hog farmer would be wearing a dark blue T shirt with Hog Wild printed large across his chest. And there he was at a window table. Loretta paused for a moment because she knew the hog farmer. He was a regular customer. He was Horace who had offended Connie with his criticisms.
“What a surprise!” Loretta smiled her best smile.
Horace actually stood up to shake hands with her. Warm dry hands. A firm handshake.
“Finally I get to meet you!” said Horace.
“Here I am without my cute apron. Coffee for me please”.
The waitress’ name was Sally.
 “Hey babe,” Sally said to Horace.
Loretta was jealous. Sally had only been working at the Shade Tree for a couple of
weeks and already her schedule had been cut back twice in the hopes that she’d quit without being fired. But here she was flirting with Horace like they were the best of friends.
Horace ordered iced tea no sugar and they agreed to split a cinnamon roll. He asked her where she was from and what brought her to Quartzsite. She told him that five years ago her car had broken down on her way to L.A. and she’d just stayed. She stayed through the summers too, though there was no work and she just hid in her little RV with the air conditioner running full blast. Couple of times a week she’d go to the Starbucks in Blythe and check her e-mail and shop on line once in a while. She had Netflix and she liked to watch TV and read and yes she made quilts and tried to sell them.
Horace was interested in the quilts. My wife made quilts too, he said, but she died right after he turned over the farm to his daughter Julie. Loretta said she was sorry and Horace said they hadn’t got along for years. Decades, he said. One day he might tell her why.
Loretta noticed that Horace had kind eyes. Blue. He wasn’t bad looking in a red neck kind of way. A lot older than her, that was for sure, but he didn’t look too bad. She shot him her most bewitching smile and he recoiled in fright. They attacked the cinnamon roll from opposite sides in silence.
“Good,” said Horace. “Best in town,” said Loretta.
Horace was stunned. This beautiful young woman had fallen into his lap and he had been looking at her for weeks without ever considering that she could have the slightest interest in him. If she was pleasant he knew that was to encourage a good tip, same as she did for everyone. Well of course he couldn’t exactly say she
had fallen into his lap. He was just looking for a friend to talk to and maybe eat out or take a walk with. Just a friend. And she was looking for a friend too.
“You ever marry?” He asked her.
 “Sure. Couple of times”
“You do it again?”
“Don’t think so.”
She laughed. “Mutual slavery,” she said.




Connie and Clive






Connie showed up at Quartzsite every November and she stayed until early March. She had a two room tent that became more of a challenge to erect every year. When she arrived she would scope out the BLM campgrounds to find a nice little place to be her temporary home.
Some campgrounds had water available, but people from all over would drive in to fill their tanks. They turned the place into a zoo so Connie did not look there. She liked to find a place near a grove of Palo Verde trees and secluded. Not too far from a decent track to an exit and not too far from a pit toilet. She had a foam pad to sleep on, a sleeping bag and a card table and a camp chair. That was about it except a plastic box with some personal stuff in it and a head light or two, a single burner propane stove and a small saucepan. She kept her clothes in the car.
She was always lonely but what’s new there? She was seventy-five years old and ugly as shit. Her hearing aid made everything sound weird and she needed to go to Mexico and get dentures but every year she put it off. She’d be dead soon so why bother? She was feeling down because Horace had dissed her. As she sat eating a peanut butter sandwich she imagined Horace and Loretta talking and laughing together. He wouldn’t tell her to get nicer glasses. Loretta always seemed to look good. Horace had taken Connie’s advice and paid closer attention to his personal hygiene. The thing was he was Connie’s age and there he was with a woman a lot younger. Men! What assholes! But good to be with no doubt about that.
She called Selina and they arranged a date with Clive. Clive the handsome Englishman. No hope there, but at least they’d share a little time together. That was the plan wasn’t it? To share company with another person? And Clive must want company too or he wouldn’t have contacted Selina. Selina matched up people randomly at first so that was good. No hopes, no dreams, but just an occasional half hour drinking coffee with another person. Connie had to think that way. She needed to work on it.
Clive showed up at the Shade Tree with a single rose. Connie was embarrassed. For Chrissake, she thought, that’s really laying it on with a shovel. What were his motives?
They both ordered coffee. Whenever she spoke Clive leaned across the table and turned his face a little as though straining to catch every nuance of her words. Probably not deaf because he always heard exactly what she said and made an intelligent and thoughtful comment.
“Wow! You really listen!” Connie blurted out and then turned red with embarrassment. “I’m sorry but you know sometimes I think I don’t exist because no one seems to hear me. Or see me for that matter.” Why was she saying this stuff to him? It would just increase his scorn and boredom. But she couldn’t help herself. He was all sympathy and understanding.
“Tell me about yourself,” she said.
“Not much to tell really. I was born in India actually but my parents moved back to England to my father’s ancestral home at a place called Newbiggin on Lune, believe it or not. Got sent off to St Pauls as a choir boy and ended up at the D’Oyley Carte as a tenor. Hopped over the water to Hollywood and did a few voice overs and had some small parts but never really made it so I became a script writer and in fact did quite well considering I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.”
What a charmer, thought Connie.
 “Why are you here in Quartzsite?”
“You know I find it quite beautiful. The
desert, the mountains, the wonderful skies and the Palo Verde trees that have a strangely English look you know. And Quartzsite. So American! There are fairs and bazaars all over the world and I have seen a few of them, but there is nothing on this earth like Quartzsite.”
“You should have seen it a few years
ago,” said Connie,”you could walk across town on the roofs of RVs at this time of year. There are empty stalls now, and you can get a good bargain to rent a stall and park your RV and sell whatever. You don’t notice it if you don’t know.”
“It’s a long way from dying from what I can see.”
“Oh it won’t die. It has sidewalks and landscaping and some nice municipal buildings now, and people are building real houses. It won’t die but it will change. Have you been to Slab City?”
“I saw a BBC program about it. Interesting.”
“It’s changing too. Like the Salton Sea that used to be the Red Neck Riviera. Everything changes.”
“Indeed,” said Clive and bestowed on her a tender and enigmatic look.
When they said good-bye Clive kissed her chastely on the cheek and delicately squeezed her hand. Neither said anything
about seeing one another again. Connie walked home feeling floaty and
strange.
After Connie walked away Clive went back into the restaurant, sat down at a booth and wrote a few words in a small mottled green note book that he carried in his pocket.
As the pretty black waitress approached he stood up, bowed slightly to her and left.






Mary Ann and Ken







Mary Ann didn’t live in Quartzsite. She had a comfortable motel room in Blythe with a small kitchen and wi-fi. Every morning she drove the twenty miles to
Quartzsite and set up her book table at Paul, the naked bookseller’s place. Paul allowed aspiring writers and artists to sell their wares in his parking lot during January and February.    Mary Ann usually arrived at Paul’s before the others and she would take the prime place near the entrance to the store so that she could greet customers with a cheery smile. Mary Ann’s books were non fiction. She had a mind like a steel trap. This enabled her to write DIY books on a multitude of subjects.
“Mastering Your Smart Phone” was her latest. “Bird Watching Around Quartzsite” sold quite well, and “Desert Wildflowers”. “Rockhound’s Guide to the Quartzsite Area”
was her mainstay. Mary Ann wrote smart phone apps for a
living. The Quartzsite interlude kept her out of the cold of Chicago and away from a miserable relationship with a married man that she needed to escape.
She had applied to be a Nice Lady for a lark, but now the idea of dating strange men was making her nervous. The world was full of weirdos and she did not wish to meet any.
Selina had lined her up with a man named Ken. She was sitting at the Shade Tree Cafe stirring her coffee. Waiting. If this Ken did not show up soon she would leave. Must be a loser if he couldn’t keep an appointment. When a wild looking man approached her table her heart took a dive. He was quite obviously unwashed. Youngish, maybe in his forties, and bald. Mary Ann was fifty-five and neat as a pin. With a visible effort she smiled and gestured to a chair,
“Ken?”
 “That’s me.”
 “Nice to meet you. Would you like coffee?” No, she thought, don’t suggest a burger or anything. He can’t afford a coffee by the looks of him. On the other hand......
“Are you hungry?”
“No thank you.”
 “So Ken, you look a little down on your luck.”
 “Yeah you could say that. Don’t get me wrong. I have a family out in the desert. Lost everything. I’m not looking for help. Just a moment with someone where I can get away from them. Don’t worry I’m not going to abandon them or anything like that. I will have that coffee.”
“So do you think I could tell you about myself?” Mary Ann asked. Ken looked surprised.
“That would be great,” he said insincerely .
“OK. I live in Chicago. I’m not married. I write software for a living and I make enough to keep me in the manner that I hoped to become accustomed to when I was much younger. I’m in love with a married man and have been for the last ten years. He tears me to shreds but I don’t leave him. Afraid of loneliness I guess. I was alone for seven years before I met him. Before that I was married. Had a couple of kids and all that.”
Ken looked alarmed when Mary Ann said she was being shredded. Then he realized she was talking metaphorically. He remembered that from high school.
“Kids are great,” he said.
“They grow up and leave you. Remember that. You sure you don’t want pie or a burger or something?”
“No. I’d just feel guilty.”
“So what did you do before you lost everything?”
“I was an actuary.”
“An actuary? How on earth did you get into such a mess?”
“There was a circumstance. OK I did a little embezzling and got caught. I didn’t even need the money. I just wanted a yacht and I wanted to set up funds for the kids’ college that no one could touch until the right time. I got caught and to be honest I’m on the run right now. Shouldn’t tell you this but you don’t have my right name so I don’t think it can hurt.”
Oh Lord, thought Mary Ann. A married felon on the run. Just my luck.
“You should turn yourself in,” she said, “at least then your wife and kids could access the cash you must have stashed somewhere and after a few years you’d be out. You didn’t kill anyone did you?”
“No. My wife’s retarded. She got hit on the head in a car wreck. She acts normal but she’s not.”
Oh God! Mary Ann thought.
“I can’t help you. There’s nothing I can do. I don’t know any lawyers. I bet your car’s broken down right?”
“Right. We’re living in the car.”
Mary Ann took Ken to Blythe and she bought him a load of imperishables and twenty gallons of water. She took him to her motel room for a shower and found out that he had a beautiful body and an acceptable face when the dirt was gone. It seemed only natural to lead him to her bed.
She drove him to his place in the desert and looked away from his pathetic family. After all was unloaded she drove away fast. When she got home she e-mailed Selina and told her that she did not want to see Ken again.




Millie and Clive





Millie was knitting another sweater It had been two weeks and Selena hadn’t contacted her.
“I’m too damned old for any feller,” she said to her cat Ferd.
Damned annoying. All those old grunts out there trolling for women half their age when they should be grateful to find anyone who would deal with all their damned infirmities.
“Makes you wonder,” she said to Ferd.
In a way it was a relief. Sure she was lonely but for God’s sake she did not want to find some old fart with prostate cancer and skin cancer and something wrong with his bowels and a bad temper and extreme politics and no tolerance for any race or creed except his own. She had been married to one of those. Never again. But for all that some sad little child within still believed that a lovely man was out there somewhere. A man with a sense of humor and as few ailments as was reasonable.
Next morning there was an e-mail from Selena. Clive, the Englishman would like to meet her! Selena warned that Clive had been out with all the ladies. Millie was the last.
Selina said that the whole idea of the Nice Ladies was to be impartial and pleasant and to have no expectations of anything more than simple friendship. And that went for both the Nice Ladies and their customers. Clive was apparently not looking for a relationship and that was good. The aim was not to be a dating service. Rather the idea had been a circle of friends. Millie snorted. You got your head up your ass girl. We all want something permanent even if we don’t admit it.
When Millie met Clive at the Shade Tree she was wearing spotless gray sweats as always, and she had a crisp hair do created by Hair Today. Her capacious black purse crouched on the table in front of her. Clive bowed and presented a single rose. Gimme a break, thought Millie. Clive reminded her of Uriah Heap. Horrid little man.
They ordered hot tea and some toast.
Clive listened attentively to Millie’s complaints about the service and agreed that it was somewhat lackadaisical.
“But the tea is really quite good,” he said.
Millie picked up a small rectangular plastic container with a picture of oranges on the top.
“Marmalade?” She offered Clive.
“My dear lady do not call it marmalade. The contents of that sad little pouch bear no resemblance to true marmalade. Dreadful stuff!”
Millie was impressed. She began to think that perhaps the little worm wasn’t as bad as she had thought. The little worm asked Millie about her life, the farm she had recently sold to a developer. Her family. And Millie talked much more than she normally would because she had not had a chance to talk for such a very long time.

The Nice Ladies were becoming a success. Selena recruited six more women. She felt bad because the men were requesting Darla, Loretta and Mary Ann. Almost no one wanted Millie. Even a ninety-two year old who spoke mostly in Swedish turned her down as too old. At first Lina had done random assignments, but after a few meetings most of the men had preferences. “Just like a brothel,” said Tad. Then Clive began seeing Millie two or three times a week. What was this?
“We just like to talk,” said Millie. Not quite true. She was doing the talking. She would try to get Clive to talk about his own life, but he would always turn the conversation back to her. And of course she liked that.
She found herself telling him about the monster babies, two of them, and the coldness that developed between her and her husband in the years after their births and deaths, which happened almost simultaneously. “Non viable,” the doctors said. She did not share with Clive the fact that the babies lived on in her heart with all their deformities. She held them in her arms before she slept. She drank coffee with both little bodies against her heart each morning. After the first baby was born the doctor had warned her that it could happen again. There was no way of knowing all those years ago. No fancy tests. And she had taken the risk and lost.
“Life is cheap,” her husband had said, “forget them.”
Easy for him to say.

“Tell me something,” said Clive, “I don’t want to embarrass you, but do you ever wear anything except gray sweats?”
“Is that your business?”
 “If I want to know you better I need to understand you more, so yes, in a way it is my business. I’m interested in you. I like you. I’d like to see you in blue or pink or green.”
“Sweats?”
“No. Not sweats.”
“That’s all I’ve got. Sweats for winter and scrub pants and T shirts in the summer time.”
The talk continued. The weather. Global warming. The best way to make onion soup.




Jason and Dixie



Jason had just completed an epic poem. Nearly two hundred pages of tightly written legal pad paper. It was a complex poem. The tale of a Pilgrim in time. He didn’t want to call it Pilgrim in Time because that was too sophomoric. The dog eared yellow papers were stuffed
into his saddle bags and had been rained on a few times when he forgot to cover them. He needed a computer. He needed to edit. He needed to present it in an acceptable format. Make a pdf so he could send it to publishers. He also had a dream of illustrating the poem. It could be so magnificent. A graphic poem! He wasn’t after fame but he would like to collect a cult following.
There was another way of course. Put it on YouTube one stanza at a time for the rest of his life. Or make an mp3 but that was all out of the question. Just getting it to a computer and onto a couple of flash drives was more than he could hope for. He could do that at a library, but he wasn’t sure about the flash drives and the library would cut him off after an hour. He needed to gain access to a computer. It would
take hundreds of hours to get it edited and
snug in a file. When he saw the little notice about Nice
Ladies at the laundromat he wondered if he could work something out. A chance. The trouble was that he didn’t really want to hang around Quartzsite. It wasn’t his place, but there again no place else was the place where he felt comfortable. He was most at home under the stars with his bike well hidden and a full stomach.
Jason had matted brown hair sun bleached to a rich, lusterless gold. His skin was leather dark and creased beyond his age of fifty. He had been on the road for twenty years, since he left Harvard in an intellectually battered condition. Harvard wasn’t battered, Jason was.    He’d written a book called ‘Fugue’ back in the day when Larissa was still with him, and he actually got it self published. Larissa had a small lap top and trust fund money so they could stay in motels, but Larissa had long given up on him. Some nights he’d stare up at the stars and wish she was still curled up against him, but she was gone decades ago. There had been few encounters with women since then. He decided to send an e-mail.
Selina read the e-mail and wondered. No address. A reference in New Hampshire. A poet on a bicycle. Interesting. She decided to meet him herself. She didn’t want any more homeless and hungry.
They met at the Shade Tree. Jason had been to the church shower facilities and done his laundry. He had to wait wrapped up in a towel for his clothes to dry. That was better than carrying extra clothes. He had books and papers that were much more important to him.
Selina looked into his clear eyed face and counted out booze and drugs. He spoke articulately. They had the Late Sleeper Special which was an egg, a slice of bacon and two big pancakes. Coffee included. Selina paid.
She explained the program. No money involved for anyone. Friendship. Conversation.
Jason was puzzled. How naive. How silly. How intriguing.
“Ideally you should pay for your own coffee or whatever you spend when you meet someone. Not a hard rule, but we like to encourage people to eat at at local restaurants. Most of the ladies like the Shade Tree here, but some people are meeting at Hot Cake Heaven or McDonalds”
Jason nodded seriously. Count me in, he said.
“Oh, one other thing. The ladies are all older. Youngest is forty eight but you have to do three random meetings before you can pick and choose. Some of our ladies are more popular than others and this is a bit of a problem.”
Jason nodded seriously.

Dixie was worried about her weight. It seemed like people were getting slender all around her. Her best friend Natasha had gone from 175 to 120 in the last year. Natasha didn’t look that good, but maybe her skin would shrink back. Dixie was still hovering at 150. She had a big NO! pasted on the refrigerator door and she didn’t care who saw it. I gotta lose weight she told everyone and she didn’t care who knew. It helped if there were people around to stop her hand reaching for another cookie. She was a pretty woman with hazel eyes and perfect pale skin. You can’t have everything, Natasha told Dixie.
She met Jason at Hot Cake Heaven. “Just coffee” said Jason.
“Me too,” said Dixie with a sad look at the cinnamon rolls on the counter. “How did you end up here?” She asked Jason. “I hope I haven’t ended up here.” He smiled, “I have further plans.”
 “Sorry. Let me put it another way. Why are you here?” Jason allowed himself to feel a little
irritated.
 “Why are you here?”
 “Divorce.” Fucker’s a lawyer and he got everything. Got divorced in Oregon and he gets alimony of twelve thousand a year from me for the rest of his life. See I was the bread winner. That’s the way it goes in Oregon. You want to get divorced stay the hell away from Oregon!”
“Thanks. I’ll remember that.” Is that really true? he thought, that sounds punitive.
“So I have a nice little Bigfoot and I get by fine.
“So what did you do when you were working?” Jason asked.
“I was a cop out in the boonies. Made it to detective. Did a lot of undercover. The drugs go up that U.S. 97 you know. Up to Wenatchee, or that was the way it was when I retired a couple years ago. I gained a lot of weight since I retired. Trying to lose some.”
Jason looked at her with new respect. He had no problem with cops. Mostly.
He thought about bringing up the subject of a computer, but decided to wait on that. They parted amicably. Dixie watched him riding away and envied his butt.





Darla and Robert





Robert was poring over a new translation of the Canterbury Tales. As always he was almost brought to tears by the immediacy of that group of pilgrims. He could reach out and touch them,
unwashed and insect ridden as they were. He had learned Middle English to the point where he felt he could speak as well as anyone not actually born to it. To him it had a direct and gentle sound. He thought that a harshness had come into spoken English since Chaucer’s time, but real scholars with academic credentials always blew him off about that when he went to Chaucer conventions.
Robert sold commercial real estate and he was good at it. He was as ethical as most others in the business. Sales were slow in most parts of the country, but he came from North Dakota and North Dakota was booming. He hoped to retire in a year or so and devote his life to Chaucer.
Robert wasn’t gay, at least he didn’t think he was, but other people said he was repressed and he should just jump out of the closet and become his true self. I am my true self he would say.
But there was no question that he was lonely. He had never married. He became paralyzed by embarrassment when anyone smiled at him. He didn’t really want to marry or have a live-in relationship. His early mornings were sacred to silence. He would drink his coffee and sit perfectly still with Pumpkin the marmalade cat on his lap. He would roll luxuriantly in the lovely silence. If the cat started to purr it did not bother him. Some days he would get out his violin and serenade Pumpkin. The thought of another human scuffling about in the background and listening to Morning Edition and banging the coffee pot around gave him nightmares.
But still he was lonely. He had seen the Nice Ladies ad on the Community Notice Board at the grocery store and some voice inside told him to go for it. Now he was regretting it.    Selina had insisted that he meet with Darla.
“You have to take the plunge,” said Selina, “You signed up for this so you must be interested. You need to get over your shyness.”
Darla did not know the meaning of shyness. She was oblivious to other people. Their reactions to her were of no concern. She spent her working life in large department stores in the high end ladies’ clothing departments. She loved the work and now missed it. She enjoyed finding a perfect dress or coat or pair of pants for any woman. Fat, thin, rich, poor or even crippled. It annoyed her that so many people seemed to make no effort to look good in their clothes. They would pay big money for some pair of pants that accentuated every bulge, every hunch. Then they’d pair the pants with a jacket that hung funny in the back and away they’d go looking like something the cat drug in with six hundred dollars on her back.
Then there were the others who knew exactly what they were doing, and checked themselves from every angle, sitting and standing, before they made their purchase. They always looked good, but without the fluid elegance that the poor girls achieved when they shopped one floor down.
Darla liked to look nice too, even in Quartzsite where most people wore sweats this time of year. Sweats could look good if you got the fancy brands that weren’t cut so bulky and didn’t pill up so much.
Darla chose a dark teal tunic and pants set. She wished she could see her backside so she could be sure the pants didn’t give her a frog butt. The tunic would cover her ass, but you never know do you? She fluffed out her carefully streaked hair and put on waterproof mascara and a little eye liner. She used apricot colored lipstick topped up with clear gloss that was supposed to last but didn’t. It was time to go. She grabbed her Coach purse and slipped on her high heeled ankle boots and was out the trailer door. McDonalds was their meeting place. She did not see him at first because of his nuetral configuration. He did not exactly match the background, but somehow he became part of it.
Strange for a real estate guy. He already had his coffee. She stood in line for hers. She sat down opposite him, said hello then a ninety second silence ensued. They both fixed their eyes carefully away from each others’ faces.
“This is silly,” said Darla.
Robert blushed. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have done this.”
“Why ever not? It’s nice to get out and meet people when you’re feeling lonely. That’s why I do this. So I don’t sit by myself staring out the window watching the day go by. You must have wanted to spend some time with another person too. Nothing wrong with that. We can chat a bit then say good bye. Nothing ventured nothing gained, right?”
 “I sell commercial real estate. I like reading Chaucer and Middle English. I play the violin. I have a marmalade cat.”
“I used to be a manager at Carcassone department store.”
“Sounds like a dead body,” said Robert, attempting a joke. Darla didn’t get it.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
“Sorry. I was trying a joke. Sorry.” More silence. Darla left for the ladies’ room. Robert breathed a sigh of relief.
She must have gone. But no, her phone was sitting right there on the table. “Forgot my phone,” she said and
snatched it up. Robert stood up in a hurry and spilled his coffee. They both went to work on wiping up the mess.    Robert suddenly noticed Darla’s hands. They were lovely hands. They touched his heart.
“Please don’t leave yet,” he said. Darla sat down again.
“So tell me about Chaucer. Was he a president or what?”
Robert liked the idea of a captive audience.
He began a power point without a computer and Darla listened and saw the passion and wondered what it would be like to be so engulfed in anything. She found it frightening.



Ken and Connie




Ken was taking a crap in their shit pit. He was in full view to anyone, but no one was visible except his small family fifty yards away. It was nice to have toilet paper for a change. Mostly they used whatever plant they could find that wasn’t thorny, or discarded fast food bags. He could smell the coffee that his wife Cathy was boiling up on a small camp fire. Cathy was wiping Little Cath’s face. She checked out her daughter’s scalp and body for ticks though she had never found any. She came from Cambria on the California coast where ticks proliferated freely. Ken pulled up his pants and returned to camp. He pulled the boiling coffee off the fire. So good to have coffee, but this was the last of it. Cathy looked at him with quiet hatred. She said nothing. His younger daughter was stuffing small pebbles into her mouth. Ken was about to scoop them out but a whiff of feces off his fingers stopped him. He grabbed the damp cloth from Cathy and wiped his hands hard. Then he retrieved two small pebbles from the baby’s mouth and wondered how many more she had swallowed.
He had another date with a Nice Lady. He was looking forward to it more than should, he knew that. He didn’t know who the woman would be and that was exciting to him.    He would have to walk an hour to get to town. He worried about Cathy and the kids but it was all he could do that might help them.
“You could turn yourself in,” Cathy said. Easy for her to say. How could he do that? There was money. If he could access it he could pay a good lawyer. He’d still go to prison. Maybe one of those cushy Federal places in Florida where you get to play tennis. Maybe not.
If Cathy went on welfare she would be all right. If she was away from him perhaps she wouldn’t get those rages when he feared she could kill. He looked over at Cathy who was sipping coffee dregs.
“I have to give myself up.” Cathy said nothing.
“But not today. I’m going to see if I can get more help.”
He waved at the little girls and disappeared among the palo verdes.

Connie had done some listening before
she met Ken. She wondered why Selina hadn’t excluded him. Perhaps she didn’t know. What the hell she thought. Life is short however you slice it so take another step. It was warm in the sun and out of the wind so they sat outside at The Shade Tree. Connie’s idea. Ken was desperate to get inside and sit on a real chair at a real table and drink good coffee and use a clean rest room with hot water and nice smelling soap. But no, this old bird had a sceptical look in her eye. She must have heard about his adventure with Mary Ann.
“I thought if we sat out here we could talk without anyone hearing,” Connie said. Ken nodded and tried to look alert and interested. What a waste of time.
“What’s wrong with your car?” “Broken crankshaft.” Connie whistled. “How’d that happen?”
“Bin driving it rough I guess.” “Ain’t supposed to happen. What is it a
‘93 Chevy Caprice? That’s a fine engine in there. They still make that engine in Mexico but you’d be better off to junk it.”
“At least we can live in it. No choice.”
“Did you drive it until it didn’t move? Bad noises?”
“Yep.”
“You must have done a hell of a lot of damage. I could get it towed for you but it’s not worth it. I don’t know what to tell you.”
Ken stared out at a sea of tourists and tables covered with rocks. He felt like he was in a movie and something bad was about to happen. He could even hear the portentious sound track gearing up.
“Any ideas?”
“Yeah. Let’s go in and get something to eat and do some brainstorming.” Connie winked at Ken.
In the genial atmosphere of the Shade Tree Ken scooped up their famously good hash browns. He had smothered them in
salsa. He sucked down a cup of coffee and tookarefill. Conniewasdowntafew pounds and she’d be damned if she’d break the magic. She drank coffee straight and picked on a house salad no dressing.
“So if you are an actuary you must be an accountant, right?”
“Kind of.”
“Could you help people with their taxes?”
“I couldn’t sign the ‘preparer’ bit at the end of the form. I guess I could use a fake name. Can’t do much more harm.”
“Seems like you could help people without actually doing the writing. Advise.” Said Connie.
“No one’s doing there taxes yet. They may not have all their W2s. They all want them done the beginning of April. I can’t wait that long. My wife’s gone mad. My kids are hungry.”
“You already decided. Give yourself up. Where would you have to go?”
“Nowhere. You just call the county. Tell them where the car is. I’ll be there.”
Connie knew he wouldn’t be there. He’d be long gone leaving wife and kids behind.
“You have food left? And water? The stuff that Mary Ann gave you?”
“A couple days worth.”
“Then let’s just leave it at that. I’ll do some asking and see what can be done. OK?”
“Sure,” he said.
As Connie drove away she reminded herself to always always lock her car up tight. She often left a window cracked open for no reason. She kept most of her valuables in the trunk, under a six pack cooler and some extra blankets, but you could get at the trunk by pulling out the back passenger seat, or she thought you could.. She kept a small box of personal stuff by her bed in the tent. She put her coffee cup on the box in the mornings. It was always locked.





Selina and Tad






It had been a month since she began the Great Experiment. Tad was getting restive.
“March,” he said, “it has to be over by March. If we do it next year you better make it a business so at least we make some money out of the deal.
Selina was thinking that it would be nice to have a social club for the all year residents. Call it the Desert Rats or something like that.Might be fun. Oh. She was forgetting one little thing. She and Tad agreed that they would never again spend a summer in Quartzsite. An idea she would not pursue. You can push a person only so far.
“Well you know Tad I think it’s time we had a get together to share notes and stuff. See how the Nice Ladies feel about it all. May be this weekend. She wondered if she should serve wine. What wine? May be not. She’d pick the wrong wine and no one would drink it.
There were problems, she knew that. Nothing like a law suit or anything, but she had been getting little tendrils of concern from many people.
The get together was a success. Most of the Nice Ladies were very happy to have a chance to make new friends or at least enjoy a casual conversation. Millie thought it would be better if all the assignments were “blind” but most of the women had regular friends and love may have been germinating in their lives.
“If you have a relationship with a client you should step out of the Nice Ladies. When it falls apart you could re-enlist.”
Millie was a bit of a drag. She had a point though.
The other subject they discussed was more sinister.
Loretta said money was missing from her purse on a couple of occasions. Mary Ann couldn’t find a gold bracelet that she had left on her bathroom sink. Good reason not to invite clients home. Use your discretion, Selina said.
“Well it wasn’t Ken. Happened after Ken.”
Darla said she just got her credit card bill and there were cash advances on it that she hadn’t made. She was certain because she never made cash advances.
“I never look that close at my credit card bills,” someone said, and everyone nodded except Connie.
And then there was Clive. The Nice Ladies were very suspicious of Clive. No one could say for sure that he had spied on them or acted strangely, but somehow he
invited suspicion. He listened too intently, watched too closely. Charming but not normal.
Then there was Ken.
“I tried to help him but that man is up shit creek without a shovel,” said Connie.
“Take him off the list,” said Mary Ann. Silence.
“ He’s in too deep. We can’t save him. We could get busted for helping him.”
“ I brought some wine,” said Connie.
“And I have cookies. Homemade in my little tiny oven,” said Dixie.




Bill and Loretta


 

Bill was having a hard time. He felt like he was living in the dark. He left Nebraska because he knew the winter would kill him.
His wife Betty had died three years earlier, and at first he managed quite well. He kept working the ranch until the stroke.
When that happened he leased out the farm and moved to town. His son was a health care executive making piles of money and had no interest in hard red winter wheat.
Bill liked Quartzsite. He liked the unpretentiousness. No fancy folks here. Well if there were they stayed in deep cover. He liked that. He even got a strange feeling he might actually find a woman to take care of him and iron his shirts.
He was a little suspicious of the Nice Ladies sign at first, but he was curious so he signed up with Selina.
And he met some very Nice Ladies and one of them even made him laugh, but that’s all they were. Nice Ladies.
He decided that he would not call Selina again but then changed his mind. One more time, he muttered to himself.
Maybe it was because Loretta was so young and so beautiful and still working. He liked all those things. They had driven to Starbucks in Blythe in her car. His truck was such a gas hog..
She talked about herself for a while. Not an easy life, he could tell, but she had emerged a competent and interesting woman and he kept liking her more. It was quite early and the sun poured into the cafe. They were sitting in comfy chairs all bathed in sunlight and the coffee was good and Loretta glowed like a godess in the sunlight.
“I lived a fool’s life,” he said. Loretta had been all fired up with another sentence, but she stopped short because she sensed that he wanted to tell her something that was important to him.
“I met a girl in high school. We started going steady from the beginning when we were only sophomores. We just assumed we’d be together forever and we were. She was a lovely girl, kind and pretty. She never set a foot wrong in her life but she kind of killed me after she was dead. See
when she first died I didn’t clean out her stuff. I just left everything as it was. But when I had the stroke I moved to town and I had to empty out the old house so I could rent it.
“Well I wasn’t going to look at any of her personal stuff but then I found a diary that dated back to her high school days and I started reading. It was all the usual stuff. Saying how much she loved me and how she hoped she could live up to my expectations.” Bill dabbed at his eyes with a paper napkin. In that moment he looked even older than he was. Loretta extended a hand to him. He did not touch it.
“Well after we graduated she took a job as a fire fighter up in Idaho for the summer. One of the first girl fire fighters up there. She was in great shape. Well when I kept on reading her diary I found out that she had fallen in love with a smoke jumper, a boy from a very wealthy family. Going to Yale or one of those fancy colleges back east.    From what she wrote it seemed he was in love with her too. Well at the end of the summer he asked her to come back east and meet his folks. Just one problem. back on graduation night we made love all the way for the very first time and we used no protection. She missed her period after that, and by the time this boy asked her to marry him she knew she was pregnant and the baby was mine, because she missed her period before she ever met the other fellow.” Bill reached for another napkin. People were watching. He was spoiling the atmosphere. He straightened his shoulders and tried to look normal.
“So she turned him down with no explanation and never saw him again. Broke her heart. It’s all in the diary. So you see I spent nearly my whole life believing that this woman loved me while she believed she was living out a penance. It’s hard to get over.” Loretta grabbed his old hand and noticed
that one of her coral, oval finger nails was chipped. She turned the finger a little so the chip didn’t show.
“My poor Bill,” she said softly. She wanted to kiss him because his story made a temporary crack in her own heart. Good people. They really injure themselves sometimes.
“You need to forget,” she said, “it’s all in the past. You have to forget. Life is good. The sun is shining and not too hot. You have friends. You do. No one ever says anything bad about you.”    Actually she couldn’t remember anyone’s saying anything about him.



Millie





Millie was smoking dope in her Bigfoot out in the desert. She had made a decision and it seemed to her a good one.
“Live a little die a little,” she sang to herself. She grabbed a couple of brownies and went to bed.
In the morning she drove all the way to Parker to visit her bank. After making perfectly sure that she was who she said she was, they allowed her to withdraw ten thousand dollars from her money market account.
When she got back to Quartzsite she went straight out to Ken’s squalid encampment.. She had the money in 100s in a large pizza box. She handed it to Ken.
“Enjoy!” She said. She did not smile at the slightly loathsome wife and kids, she just bumped away across the dry wash, causing her microwave to break but she did not know that until later. She was laughing.
“Done it!” She cried out the window. One thing she did have was a ton of money and not much to do with it.
“So I’m old and ugly,” she yelled at the sky. “At least I’m rich!” It felt so good.



Robert and Mary Ann






Robert and Mary Ann were wandering through the book store checking out old travel books. There weren’t many customers and Mary Ann was having a slow day. Robert had never been to the book store before so he was quite surprised when a man wearing a Peruvian hat and nothing else wandered past him on the way to the piano in back of the store. He placed his naked buttocks on the piano bench and began to roll out some uproarous stride. Robert did notice then that a thread around the piano player’s waist probably suspended a penis sheath of some sort.
“This is Paul,” Mary Ann said, “he lets a few of us sell our books out in the
parking area and he doesn’t charge rent.” Paul may have nodded at Robert or perhaps he was just nodding to his own music.
“He doesn’t have any clothes on!” Said Robert.
“You noticed! How perceptive of you!” Mary Ann was laughing at him.
“Is that legal?”
“He’s on his own property. When he rides around town on his trike he wears a coat.”
“Astonishing!” Said Robert.
Robert liked being with Mary Ann. She was a good friend, he thought. A good listener. A good talker as well. She laughed a lot and he liked hearing people laugh. It made him smile. He sat with Mary Ann at her table display and watched her converse with the midwestern farm couples who came to the store to take photos of each other standing with Paul. Then they more or less had to buy a book or two didn’t they?



Horace and Millie






Horace had always had the feeling that he and Millie had a lot in common. He figured out quickly that there was plenty of money there, and it was the same with him. You don’t advertise your money. Especially in a community where most people are struggling to keep up payments on their farms and equipment. Horace inherited the farm free and clear, and he had been either shrewd or lucky in his contracts most years. Oh there were bad years when the rains came at the wrong time or didn’t come at all. He knew his land. He knew the slopes that caught the cold and froze so deep that he got a very thin yield there year after year. He’d put in his grass waterways with a good, calculating eye. Yes. He was a good farmer. His luck with human beings was quite another thing. Or cows. He’d tried to set up a Jersey dairy and the hostility he saw in the eyes of one or two of his cows stopped him cold. You don’t expect a huge milk yield from Jerseys and he certainly didn’t get it. He sold off the herd and turned his pastures into an organic beef operation, but he had bad luck with that too. “Stick with what you know,” he would say to the adventurous young, but the young know nothing and they have to start somewhere.
And women. They were worse than Jersey cows with their reproachful eyes and wordless days. What did he do wrong? He never failed to do what was expected in bed. It wasn’t the best part of his day but no woman could complain that he didn’t come up to expectations.    He wasn’t good at tenderness. He just wasn’t into that kind of thing. He worked hard all day and wanted to sleep hard all night. Best part of any day for him, no matter what the
weather, was his drive around the property in his ‘64 Ford pick-up.    He’d have the radio on for grain prices and other news. He missed that, but the killer cold seeped into his old bones sometimes in the winter, and he would feel death tickling his neck with the point of that scythe. There was a scythe like the grim reaper’s in the barn. His grandfather had used it during the Depression when he couldn’t keep his draft horses or afford gasoline. Horace’s grandmother had scythed right along with the rest of the family and she died out there in the wheat when she had a miscarriage. His grandfather built a little stone memorial out there on prime wheat land but Horace ripped it out because it was in everyone’s way.
Horace and Millie had been sizing up each other like buyers at a beef auction. They both knew that there was no future in it but the idea of a little equal to equal friendship for a few weeks appealed. Millie even thought of confiding in Horace about the money for Ken. Perhaps not. That would be a confidence that he could and probably would use against her.
She didn’t regret it though. She had made a difference. Changed the course of life for Ken and his family. Ten thousand wasn’t much these days, but at least it would pull his feet out of the quagmire and give him a chance. She thought that she would go out and see if they were gone. She hoped so.





Jason and Clive






Jason and Clive knew about each other because the Nice Ladies liked to talk. Not gossip. Not really.
Jason was at the library frantically editing and revising his saga. It was both invigorating and exhausting to concentrate
so fiercely and work so fast. If there was no one waiting he sometimes spent two hours at this insane level of concentration, but even if no one was waiting he’d give up after two hours.
He was at one hour and forty-four minutes when he stopped work and re-read what he had accomplished. Missed letters, hitting the wrong key, not leaving a space between words, not correcting a word when he cut and pasted and worst of all when he left the curser in the wrong place and pasted something in where it didn’t belong. Occasionally these random errors produced a better product than his original. The problem was that his poem was supposed to be a linear tale plodding along doggedly, and not a random access event.
He looked up to heaven for inspiration and saw Clive.
“Hey, how you doing,” he said.
“I was going down to the tool places to see if I can find some needle nosed pliers,”
said Clive. “That should be easy. I think I have some in my tool kit if you just need it to fix something.”
“I could return them in a couple of days.”
“My bike is outside.”
Clive was a little nervous. This was something new for him. It was easy to pick up a few knick-knacks from bedrooms and living rooms, but cracking a lock was taking things one more step down the slippery path. Problem was, the rush of stealing was addictive and his tolerance was building up. Not that he needed the money. Not really. Of course having a few extra sheckels in the bank was gratifying.
He’d examined the lock already and he figured a stout nail file and some needle nosed pliers should suffice.
He knew Connie was gone to Lake Havasu for two or three days. The tent was wide open to anyone. Connie had shown him around on their second get together. The locked box was in a corner with a Falsa blanket draped over it. There had to be something valuable in it.
He dropped by Connie’s tent in the morning. Early but not too early. He approached casually and untied the door. Connie had tied a cunning knot but it didn’t take him a minute to decipher it. The tent was flawlessly neat. Flowers on the table even.    There was the box waiting under the striped blanket. Clive stepped forward and lifted his nail file just as Jason ducked through the doorway.
“Oh. Hi! Just checking on something for Connie.”
“Sure you were,” said Jason. “You got wi-fi on your computer Clive?”
“Yes. But there’s no service where I live.”
“That would be better than what I have now. I could take it to the library and not
have to ration time on their computers.”
 “You think I’d trust you with my computer. Don’t be absurd.”
 “Absurd. Now that is a fine word. Why don’t we use it more often? I’ll work it into my epic saga.”
Clive turned and attempted to walk away, but Jason stepped in front of the door.
“Tell you what, Clive. Hows about we open that box? Just out of curiosity mind. We could do it so she wouldn’t see a scratch.”
Jason did most of the work. He was neat and dexterous. When he lifted the lid they saw a small metal canister decorated with daisies and forget-me-nots. A photo of an old Border Collie.
“Aah! Old Shep,” said Clive.
Under Old Shep were vet records and under the vet records were some rings and a broken gold watch. Two old engagement rings and two wedding rings. One platinum worn to nothing and a heavier gold one.
“Leave it!” Said Jason. Clive smiled gently. Of course, he said. On the way out they looked in Connie’s ice box. The ice was not yet melted. Three apples and a tub of plain yogurt.
They each took an apple and left. “There was some kind of strange knot tying the door shut” said Clive.
 “Never mind that,” said Jason, “just tie it. So what about lending me the computer?”
“Let’s wait on that,” said Clive.
“I could tell on you. I could say I caught you lurking about by Connie’s tent which I did. Followed you in because I knew you had no business ....”
“And how would you explain your own presence at seven thirty in the morning way the hell out here?”
“I thought of that one. I was camping out here. There’s my bike see? I just
happened to be camping out here.”
 “You just happened to follow me?”
“I had a good idea you had some kind of plan. Guess where I really did camp last night? Practically on your doorstep. I figured you had something in mind. I followed you on my bike and let me tell you Clive you drive pretty damn fast. You could get a ticket.”
“Small pleasures. Said Clive “All I’m up to these days.  I’ll lend you my computer. For three days. That should give you time to complete your miserable document. You won’t need the internet. Just a place where you can keep the battery charged. I want it back in perfect condition. No viruses. Use it only for your document. I will check on you daily.” Clive felt a terrible dread that he might never see his Mac again, but Jason returned it as clean as when he took it. Thank god it didn’t rain, Clive thought.
He stopped at the Shade Tree for hot tea with milk and sugar. His comfort drink. Perhaps it was time to move on. But where? He couldn’t stand the cold and he was priced out of the better parts of Florida. The thought of returning to England was too horrible to tolerate. Since the internet had seeped into every crevice he no longer had much faith in his green card or he would slip down to Mexico for the rest of the winter. No. Quartzsite would be his home until the heat drove him north.
“Another tea bag?” The beautiful Loretta hovered over him, awaiting a response.
“You know I believe I will. And please pour boiling water on it in the cup. Could you do that?”
I can microwave the water then drop the tea bag in, but you will have to pick a tea bag.” She picked up the little basket of tea bags and read their contents. “This here is English Breakfast that’s what you just had, but see here’s Earl Grey and Chamomile there’s no caffeine in Chamomile and here’s orange mint I think that’s it.”
“A pity. I had a craving for Lapsang Souchong. You wouldn’t happen to have any would you?”
“That’s all we have sir.” Pompous ass, she thought.
“The English Breakfast will be fine. Oh and thank you so much for your time!” He smiled his most ingratiating smile and Loretta forgave him.





Dixie and Robert






Dixie was down to 143. Less than she’d weighed in months.    She just had to hold on. She hated starving herself. It gave her bad breath. She could taste it. Once Bill actually reared away from her and she was
so shamed that she said she had a migraine coming on and went home and gargled mouth wash and cleaned her teeth with peroxide and swallowed three sugar free Altoids.. She wasn’t on any special diet, she just ate half what she wanted. Always. No excuses and no back sliding. Before when she was on a diet she would lie to herself. I didn’t eat that much, she would say after a Christmas party. But she knew she lied.
She had also taken up running. She ran two miles a day. OK so she was lying again. She ran or walked two miles a day. She’d walk to the book shop and hang out with Mary Ann or if Mary Ann wasn’t there she would visit with the Old Cowboys who sold their humorous stories and told tall tales to all and sundry. Both Old Cowboys really were old cowboys and both were long legged and skinny as snakes.
Dixie volunteered at a church where people could get a shower and a meal. She
didn’t belong to that or any church but they needed help and she didn’t have to talk redemption to the customers.
She’d seen Jason a number of times and she liked his face. He looked you straight in the eye and that was a winner for sure.
The Ken person was something else. He came in and ate but he didn’t bring his wife and kids and Dixie knew from Connie that he had a family living in a car out in the desert.
He was quite handsome except for his nose, but he avoided looking anywhere near another person. His gaze would slide over heads and shoulders and out windows and to the ceiling or into his lap or at his own fingers but no he would not look straight at a fellow human being. Looking people in the eye is an insult in some societies Dixie had been told in her police days, but Ken did not belong to any of those groups. He looked pretty Anglo or maybe a little mixed. Like most people.
Robert and Dixie were sitting outside at a little beer garden. It was early and they had the place to themselves. Selina had said something about staying alcohol free but she hadn’t pushed it. Besides, Dixie knew all too well how many calories a can of Bud Lite delivered.
Robert was beginning to emerge from his terminal shyness. He could be quite boring when he launched into his analysis of financing for new industrial construction. Or the role of the miller’s wife in Canterbury Tales
“So what’s the name of your cat?” Dixie asked.
“Pumpkin.”
“Why?’
“Because he is pumpkin color.. Do you have a cat?”
“No. We had a drug sniffing dog in the department for a while. Name of Diablo. You could wrap a coca leaf round a pebble and drop it in a fifty-five gallon drum full of water and he’d find it.. Some fucker shot him dead. At least he wasn’t poisoned. You’d think they’d train dogs to sniff out poison and treat it like a drug. I thought of him as my best friend so you know I was pretty much alone at that time.”
“It’s the meat they wrap it in. Greed over caution.”
Robert did not wish to hear Dixie’s self pity. He wanted to think of her as beyond such things.
Early the next morning two French children were playing in the desert. They had found a playa with mysterious designs worked in pebbles all over it. They were flinging the pebbles at each other and shrieking Gallic insults when a change in the wind brought a faint, sweet sound to their sharp young ears.
They followed the sound until they saw a man playing a violin to the rising sun.    The kids ran back to their parents. The women were wearing thin silk renditions of a Moorish veil. they were holding the brilliantly patterned silk above their heads to shade their eyes and the silk streamed out behind them. They looked like the rulers of some barbaric kingdom. When they heard Robert’s violin and saw the early sun behind him they both took out their video cameras yes real ones not smart phones and they captured Robert’s music for a few minutes without his knowing. Then they took their children and slipped away.    Robert didn’t notice and wouldn’t have cared anyway.




Connie







If there was one thing the Deputy hated it was a body.  Especially in a concrete vault septic tank being installed at a BLM campground. The BLM dreamed of clearing out the campgrounds around Quartzsite, but that was a pipe dream.
The Deputy thought the Feds would have to handle it but that didn’t get the county off the hook. They’d strung yellow ribbon around everything and now they were waiting for the experts to come in with their cameras and hazmat suits if necessary .
Selina usually heard from Connie pretty much every day. They had become friends. She hadn’t heard from her for nearly a week, but she knew she had gone to Lake Havasu for a couple of days so she didn’t worry until she realized that after the first few days she hadn’t received a text or a call or an e-mail. She had a bad feeling, but she got those quite often so she didn’t worry until she saw the story on the news.
It seemed they would never have found the body if the crane operator hadn’t
decided it was quitting time the day before when he set the concrete lid on the vault a little sideways. He didn’t want to start manouvering again when it was past quitting time and getting too dark to see.
When Selina saw the news story and heard Connie’s name she went into the bathroom and threw up a fine Mexican dinner and a glass of Pinot Noir. Not a bad one.
Tad was there for her as he always was. Connie had no Tad. No one there for her. Never had, as far as Selena knew. Connie had once told Lina about her only husband. A dedicated omni-sexual who came home in the small hours stinking of unimaginable things. Selina clung tight to Tad. He kissed the top of her head. Get over it! He whispered.





Millie and Jason






 It was Rock Show season. Quartzsite was packed with rock hounds. People sang around camp fires far into the night. Beer bottles were hurled about at random. Millie loved the crowds. The crazed old men and women with unkempt beards and the gleam of madness in their desert burned eyes. Half of them would take you, for a considerable sum, to a place where there was gold to be found without digging or panning. If you took them up on it they would load you into a filthy old pick-up truck and warn you that there was no guarantee and they would drive all day swearing and muttering and spitting tobacco until they would stop in a dry wash and say well here we are. The wash drains off them mountains over there and there’s sometimes nuggets washed out in a flash flood and the water slows right here where the land flattens out and I can tell you just last week a lady from Houston found a nugget size of your thunb nail I swear to you I have picture somewheres.
Millie had a polished slice of a thunder egg. A tourist thing, but a treasure because sometimes she’d see on the shining surface an image of the Dalai Lama and sometimes the virgin Mary or the face of a guinea pig she had as a child. She never knew what would show up as long as she didn’t look too often.
She was drying out to Ken’s place. She was pretty sure he was gone, but she just wanted to make sure because she thought it would be better for him to be gone with all the cops sniffing around.
Their camp site was occupied by rock hounds, a young couple from Michigan.
“They had their car packed up and were leaving when we showed up,” the woman said, “They left it all clean and their garbage was still burning. They told us where their shit pit was. They’d filled it all up so we dug another one.”
“Was their car running good?”
“Seemed to be. An old Chevy. Seemed to run all right.”
Well I’ll be, Millie thought. Broken crankshaft my ass. She should have looked but dammit she believed him. Now what? Tell or no tell?
Millie texted Jason. “Coffee?”
“SPST?  Same place same time that is.  ;-)" So they met at the Shade Tree. Loretta
was on late shift so they didn’t see her.
“So Jason what do you think? Do you think any of us could have anything to do with what happened to Connie?”
“Not likely. We’re all nice people aren’t we?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” said Millie.
 “Did you know about Ken’s wife?”
 “No. What about Ken’s wife?”
“Robert said he was out in the desert beyond the last campground playing his violin like he always does I guess. Anyway he saw Ken’s wife Cathy driving their old Chevy across the desert throwing hundred dollar bills out the car window and screaming her head off.”
Millie felt a wave of vertigo come and go.
“Holy shit,” she said.
 “Robert says she stopped throwing the bills when she saw him and she turned back the way she came. What do you make of that?”
“No clue,” said Millie. "Did Robert pick up the bills?”
“Many as he could. Said it was the most he ever got paid for playing his music. I went out there myself but I wasn’t exactly sure where it was and I didn’t find any.”
“Clive is the strange one,” said Millie. “We’re all strange” Jason answered. “How’s the epic poem? Did you get it all written and corrected?”    Jason might have blushed. Millie thought she saw a blush.
“Yeah. Got it all finished and corrected and I printed out a pdf but you know what?
It’s a load of tripe. It’s garbage. Any twelve year old could come up with better. I burned it.”
“You destroyed it?”
“No. Just the printed version. The rest lives on like evil on a couple of flash drives.”
“Wait a few days. I bet you can fix it. Make it better.”
“Well I had always thought I might illustrate it. I do pretty nice line drawings.”
“Did you ever think of re-writing it as a video game?”
“If I knew how I might but I don’t know how you write those things.
“They have video game conventions. You should get on your bike. Go to one and see what you can find.”
Jason didn’t answer. What an idea. He wanted it to be his, not Millie’s. Then he imagined himself being awarded an Oscar or something for his brilliant video game, and he could see himself saying I could not have done this without the advice of my dear friend Millie who sadly passed away a year ago. It was her brilliant mind that came up with the idea. Casting his eyes down and lowering his voice he would continue. Millie, I am profoundly grateful. Love you. Applause like you wouldn’t believe.
“Are you OK?” asked Millie.



Selina and the Nice Ladies.








Selina called an emergency meeting of the Nice Ladies.
“We have a problem,” she said. Nods all around.
“First a moment of silence for Connie.” For 120 seconds stomachs growled and
throats cleared surreptitiously. Toward the end a long suppressed fart squeaked its way to freedom.
“What we really have to get in the open is if any of you know anything that might affect this case. If you know some of Connie’s secrets and you don’t think they have a thing to do with the investigation we don’t need to hear it. If you know something that might be of help to the cops we should probably know. Or else you should take it on yourself to tell them.”
“Connie was nervous about Clive,” someone said.
“We all were. We all are but we don’t have any good reason -- or do we?” Selena looked around the crowded little room.
“I thought he might have stolen my bracelet but it showed up between the back of the sink and the wall.”
“I thought I had money missing from my purse. I left it on the table when I went to the bath room at Hot Cake Heaven, but now I’m not so sure.”
“Well those cash withdrawals on my credit card were real,” said Loretta.
“Seems to me we don’t have anything on Clive that makes him a murderer,” said Selina, they may want to interview us. Honesty is the only option. I got some cake and fizzy white wine. Let us        celebrate Connie’s life. They did.




Clive and Loretta




Clive took Loretta to the Hot Cake Heaven so she coulld check out the competition.
“Soggy hash browns,” she said. “Slimy salsa. Way too mild.”
Clive said “I rather like the pancakes. Syrup’s that dreadful flavored stuff but you have to go to Vermont to get the real thing.”
Loretta nodded. “They’d have to charge ten bucks a pancake if they let you pour on real maple syrup like you do the fake stuff,” she said.
“I like sweet things.” Clive smiled and winked at Loretta.
“Don’t do that Clive. That winking thing. We don’t do that in America.”
“Really? I’ve been here decades and I’ve always winked.”
“Well that may be why you are here in Quartzsite talking up a waitress in a lousy cafe that serves fake maple syrup.”
Her smile was barbed, and Clive pulled it from his heart without a murmur.
“I suppose you know we are all to be interviewed? The Nice Ladies and anyone - - I think all male -- who availed himself of your services.”
“You make us sound like hookers Clive. We weren’t hookers. Selena had a good idea with the Nice Ladies. I’ll bet you none of us had a thing to do with Connie’s death.”
“I most certainly hope you’re right,” said Clive.
Clive was a little worried. What should
he say to the cops? Would they have noticed the scratches on the lock? Would they find finger prints or even DNA? And what about Jason? He had avoided the topic when he saw Jason, but really they should clear up what they’d say. Probably the cops wouldn’t have any suspicions about the tent, but if anyone saw them entering it they would have to have a good story. Or would they? Being a petty thief was a long way away from being a murderer. He needed to talk with Jason.
Loretta thought Clive was off his rail a little. Nervous? Perhaps she was imagining it.




Jason and Clive





“We gotta go in there and wipe everything off.” Jason was freaking out.
“No!” Clive almost shouted. “There are people all around her tent. It’s yellow taped. There’s probably a camera. People that knew her and liked her are all around there. They’d see us.”
“We could go at night. We have to Clive. If we don’t they’ll make us suspects. We could end up convicted and executed. Stuff like that happens!”
“No. We did a little thieving. What did we take in the end? Two apples? In the highly unlikely event that they were to identify our finger prints we would still not become prime suspects. Get over it." He wasn’t quite sure that was true, but never mind.
“Do what you like Clive, but I’m going back there.”
Clive took a sweet little Derringer out of his pocket. Practically a toy.
“No Jason you will not.” he said. “Let sleeping dogs lie, Jason. That’s an order.” Clive put the Derringer back in his pocket. He hadn’t actually pointed it at Jason. There were people around. But Jason got the message.
Clive was feeling uneasy. He could not think about the money that passed through his hands in the last fifty years. He bought houses in Florida and California and walked away from them when he got bored. He always used cash so that was no problem. He just stopped paying property taxes and even the water and electricity bills because he never bothered to get things disconnected.
Not to mention the furniture. Magnificent carpets that he bought in great smoky warehouses in Waziristan.  Meissen and Wedgewood and a Roman head of a young girl nose only slightly damaged. And so much more.
Gone gone gone having never left as the Buddhists say.
Clive had been a Buddhist once. The problem was that he was now not
only old and almost penniless, but he was also an illegal alien. When he went through the Border Patrol stops he simply nodded yes American citizen. They believed him automatically. He had a California driver’s license and a fake green card that worked well in the past but wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny he was sure. He didn’t think he could have lost his British citizenship because he’d been told it was impossible to lose. But he was born in India. Did that matter? British India. The Westminster Act might have changed things. He didn’t know.
He had pretty much decided that his best bet was to show up at the British Consulate in San Francisco and explain his plight and see if he could get a British Passport. He could go back to Britain, enter the U.S. legally and find a U.S. woman to marry him. Home free and clear. Except of course for certain law suits and the hit and run he ran from. No one killed but a kid
lost his legs. But he did not want to die under a freeway overpass. Alone. Prison might be better than that.




Selina





Selena was surprised to find out that the Nice Ladies had become a drugs and prostitution gang.
When local public television did an interview with Millie the story became even more sensational. The Nice Granny Club was born and went viral.
Terry Gross did an interview with an emeritus professor about sex and the old. There was tweeting and texting around the world but it soon died away. No old person could stand comparison with the billions of young in the world whose images celebrate sex and beauty everywhere.
But the Sex Grannies still appeared from
time to time as the case of Connie’s murder became sensationalized.
Selina didn’t feel too bad. Of course she mourned poor Connie but one thing Selina remembered was that Connie often said that she wouldn’t live long. Apart from her advanced age, how had she known that? Was that something to mention to the cops? She didn’t think so.





Darla and Lance






Darla took a walk to Connie’s tent. She was more affected by Connie’s death than the others seemed to be. She didn’t know why. The tent was still there with yellow tape fluttering gaily around it. Many of Connie’s neighbors had moved away because of the stream of curious people who meandered about the place.
A mini s.u.v. was parked near the tent. A middle aged man was sitting in the driver’s seat. His left arm hung out the window, a cigarette in his hand.
Darla smiled at him. “You a cop or a guard or something?”
“I’m a guard. No one else is guarding it. I’m her son. I’ll bet a bunch of people have been in there going through her stuff.”
“They should have a guard.”
“Yeah well finances and all that.” He got out of the car and they walked around Connie’s tent together.
“You know Connie very well?”
“No. I just feel more badly about it. More than the others. Don’t know why.”
“Thanks. I’m glad somebody cares.”
“Oh don’t get me wrong. We all care. And the guys who went out with her too.”
“You know those guys?”
“Yes of course. We were all friends. It wasn’t like you may think. We were mostly just friends. What do you expect? Things may have happened once in a while, but that wasn’t the plan. There’s a lot of lonely people in Quartzsite. That includes me.”
“Sure. Mind if I tell you something? I might want you to share it. It’s up to you.”
“Go ahead.”
“The reason I don’t want to get involved is because I am happily married. My partner and I have two beautiful kids who I love more than life itself. I don’t want to get involved so I’m telling you Connie used to work up at Havasu in the casinos. Not out in public but in vault basements where the money is counted. I’m not saying she did anything but I think she knew stuff. If you could drop that in a detective’s ear may be they’d concentrate more on Havasu than Quartzsite. Havasu and Vegas too.”
“Havasu and Vegas too? Sounds like a song.” Darla started doing Zumba moves
and chanting Havasu and Vegas too. Lance watched her with extreme distaste.
“You realize how serious this could be for you and the others? For god’s sake use caution if you spread this around!”
Darla stopped moving and gave Lance a scornful look. “And what makes you think that I believe you? May be you’re trying to erase the trail that could lead to you. Don’t think I’m stupid. Big mistake if you do.”
“Get out of here, said Lance. I told you what I told you. Do what you like with it.” He turned toward his car.
“No. Wait a minute. I kind of believe you and I kind of don’t. OK? I need to think on it. Thanks for telling me. OK?”
“OK.” Said Lance as he drove away.
Darla walked up to a woman balancing a coffee pot on a small camp fire.
“You seen that guy in the s.u.v. before?”
“Sure. He’s here every day. He’s got a contract with the cops to guard the place. That’s what he told me anyway. He must have gone for lunch. He usually stays all day. And night sometimes.”




Selena and Darla




Darla went straight to Selena. “They must be looking at Havasu,”  Selena said. “She was going there wasn’t she? Do you know if she told anyone why she was going to Havasu?”
“All she said to me was she had business up there.”
“She told Horace that she had a friend in the hospital.”
“Well those both could be true. I think our best bet is to say nothing to anyone. If they start leaning on any one of us then we should spill the beans.”
“Spill the beans?”
“Yes. Spill the beans. You never heard that? It means talk. Do you believe the guy? Connie’s son supposedly? Does he look like her?”
“Not that I noticed. I’m not sure if I believe him. I’m pretty easy to fool. I try not to be though.”
Selina confided in Tad as she always did.
Stay away from it, said Tad. Stay away from those guys. Absolutely.
“Let’s hope Darla does. She’s not the brightest bird in the cage.”
“She’s not the dumbest either.”
Tad was looking at his map of Western States.
“So where shall we go this summer? I’m looking at Northern California. Tour the wine country and end up on the coast. Might even take a host job at one of those Redwood campgrounds.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Selina.



Mary Ann and Bill




Bill was feeling the darkness again. He knew that his life had been a good one. He knew that for all those years he had never thought that he had anything but all his beautiful wife’s love. What more could you ask? A fool’s paradise sure but still a paradise. Better than what most people had. And he wasn’t a fool anyway and his wife was not a fool either. She just did what was right and in those days it was her only option. Even today it would be a trick to sneak an abortion in under the nose of the man she loved. And who knows, perhaps she was just hypnotized by the thought of wealth and security. Perhaps that marriage would not have worked out.
Of course their marriage had been great for him. She never complained when he drank too much which he did quite often. Tolerated his anger and obstinacies. He had to stop thinking. Really. He had to stop thinking. He called Mary Ann.
“Come on over.” She said.
 “What do you mean come on over.  You’re miles away.”
“So?”
“So that’s a long ways to drive.”
 ”I do it all the time.”
“That’s your choice and you sell stuff here.”
“So it’s not your choice to drive here to Blythe?”
“I guess not.” Horace turned off the phone. In a moment it rang. Mary Ann.
“Hi Mary Ann.”
“Tomorrow? I’ll be in Quartzsite all day. I’ll pack up at Paul’s around four. Last day he has the parking lot available for us.”
“Meet you there?”
 “Four o’clock. Sure.”
 When he got there Paul was buying some of Mary Ann’s books. Bill stood back diplomatically. Mary Ann beckoned him.
“Take our picture would you?” She handed him her smart phone.
Bill got a nice picture. There was a large cat in the back ground. He hadn’t notice until he looked at the picture.
“I’m all packed up,” Mary Ann told him as she settled into the car.
“My car’s parked in the alley so we don’t have to be back before Paul closes the gates.”
Bill didn’t know that Quartzsite had alleys. He’d never noticed them. Like the cat. He hadn’t seen the enormous cat curled up in a box among the books and right in front of him. He thought that was because he was trying very hard not to focus on anything. He did not want to look as though he might be sneaking a peak at Paul.
He felt very silly.
Mary Ann looked good. She was happy to be leaving. She had a life. Bill felt worse than ever.
“I’ll miss you,” he said
“No you won’t,” said Mary Ann.
“You think you will but you won’t. I’ll melt like summer snow.”
Bill thought that she was probably right.
“We’ll all be gone soon. Off to our summer places. Just like the rich.”
“I’m going home,” said Mary Ann. “I’m looking forward to the drive. Did that detective say anything to you?”
“No. Just asked a few questions and said thank you. Seemed nice enough.”
“I keep thinking about Connie. I wonder if it could have been an accident. She might have been mistaken for someone else.”
“I heard she was mixed up in gambling,” said Bill.
“We’ll never know I guess.”
Bill was discovering that he had never really looked at Mary Ann. He just thought she was cute, perky, smart, independent. He’d never thought about her as a human being with an emotional life.
“Do you work by yourself at home?”
“No. I rent office space at a sort of communal office facility. There’s everything there and everything works and I get wi-fi and copiers and even fax and phones and it’s bright and clean and there are cool people all around. It’s hard to work at home. I do work at home two days a week because that place is a little expensive so I just get sixteen days a month. That’s cool.”
“Did you marry?” He had never asked her. Never wondered. They’d had coffee and a walk or two several times and he had ranted on and on about his own life and never thought that the woman at his side was any more than a doll hopping alongside him. Slightly annoying when she tried to say anything and spoil his line of talk.
“I met a man.”
 “ And?”
 “Not good.”
 “Not good why?”
“Aids. He gave it to me. I’m doing OK. I just don’t ever plan to get close to another human being. Not just the Aids but because humans all seem bent on hurting one another.”
“My wife didn’t want to hurt a soul but she ended up hurting me and the man she turned down too I suppose. I told you, right?”
“Well that’s what I mean, even when you don’t mean to hurt you still do. Yes I heard your story Bill. We all did.”
Bill sensed exasperation. He pulled into the new fancy place by the freeway.
“Let’s eat,” he said.



Ken




 Ken’s wife Cathy was wallowing naked in a hot spring. She was talking to a professor from the University of Manitoba. They were arguing politics in a most civilized way. Cathiy’s kids were watching a pair of mules grazing nonchalently by the road. Cathy was happy.
Ken had climbed to the top of the multicolored man-made Salvation Mountain. He looked down at the desert and the tourists and the brilliant panorama below. He felt a hallucination coming on so he turned away and walked toward two immense tanks a quarter mile away. Not many people were over there. He could be alone there and that would help his mind.
As he got nearer to the tanks he could see that the bright designs on the first one represented the Circle of Kama, or so it was written. Ken was shocked. Was he still hallucinating? No. He didn’t hallucinate such erotic beauty. His hallucinations were of violence and death. He walked slowly all around the Circle of Kama and marvelled at the grace of the creatures depicted in the most interesting and improbable positions. He started to laugh. The laugh was like clear water in his mind. He felt so much better.
But then he walked to the other tank. Not as beautiful. Not beautiful at all. Ken’s nightmares in paint. A visual diatribe against militarism and capitolism. Ken wanted to vomit. There was a small tent pitched by the tank. A hairy old man sitting in the entrance offered him a joint. No mention of money. Money was not allowed in Slab City. Ken took the joint and his mind slowed down enough for him to be as rational as necessary
“Nice day,” said Ken.
“Always a nice day in Slab City,” The old man said. His voice was high and small.
Cathy still had the money. What was left of it after she went on her spree in the
desert. He hadn’t touched her in months but he knew she had two quart size ziplocs duct taped round her waist. She said she was going skinny dipping. Someone might take watever she had on her. No. She was too clever to let that happen. Throw it away by the handful sure but have it stolen from her? No.
He hitched a ride toward Mecca but dropped off at Bombay Beach and walked among the ruined boats, the remains of docks and piled up memories of a lost era.
He lay down in a listing old luxury hulk. He found a little plastic glass with a narrow waist..
“Copa Di Vino” it said, “Moscato.” A single serve container. Ken tried to imagine the person who drank from it. He couldn’t.

In the morning he waded out through tilapia skeletons and the dry remnants of barnacles brought in by amphibian manouvres in a long ago war. As he plowed into the water an indignation of pelicans rose up around him and stealthed away in a silent, undulating line. He swam, fully clothed for a few minutes, then dragged himself to the shore.
A woman with a dog was walking along the beach. Her dog ran free and seemed to be eating the dry bodies of the dead tilapia.
“There’s showers up there. You need to shower. That water got so much salt in it you’ll turn to a pillar of salt. Like that guy in the bible.”
“So where’s the shower?”
“See down that way? There’s a campground. There’s a shower put there for boaters but there’s no boats just one old sail boat I ever see. The rangers take people out for kayak trips once in a while. Anyway you’ll see the shower place up there at the end.” Her face was screwed up against the wind. She appeared to have no hair.
“Thanks,” he said.
Cathy said a hungry good-bye to the Canadian. The kids were gone. So were the mules. She sat in the car and waited. She resisted the temptation to make sure her cash was safe. Anyone could see her. The Canadian drove away without a wave. Then the mules reappeared with her children riding. A man with a painted face was leading them. She took a twenty from her jeans pocket.
“My name is Cielo,” he said as he took the twenty. He sensed more where that came from but he wasn’t the kind of man who could ingratiate himself. He had thick black lines painted under his eyes, and under the lines a row of dots. His jeans were wrapped half way down with colored rags. His boots were an abomination.
“For the mules,” she said. The mules looked healthy and not too thin.    Cielo bowed.
“You living here?”
 “Just passing through.”
“May black stars protect you,” he said.
When Ken returned, his hair and clothes were white and stiff with Salton Sea.
 “But I took a shower,” he said.
“You need a laundromat,” said Cathy.
“There’s one in Nyland.”
 “There’s a sign saying no people in washers.” Cathy remembered why she’d loved him
and gave him a kick.
“I may have killed Connie.”
 “Don’t ever say that again,” said Cathy.




Millie and Robert





Millie was knitting a pair of socks for Robert. She had knitted socks for Loretta and Connie. She just liked to keep herself busy. Sometimes reading books from the library got tiresome. She knew that
Loretta couldn’t wait to take the socks to Goodwill. They were nice socks. Bright red with black dots. Dots are not that easy to do on a sock. Someone would appreciate them.    Millie wondered if she could get back the pair she gave Connie. Selina would like them possibly.
Robert really needed the socks. She made sure of that.
She was sitting outside her Bigfoot in the shade of a palo verde. tree. The shade was lacy and shimmering and Millie was happy.
Robert was playing his violin. A Smetena tone poem. The one where the women of the forest lure men to them then tie them to trees and kill them. An old Check folk tale.
“That’s very nice.” Said Millie. “One of my favorites.” They took a walk around the
campground.
 “I got lost out here once,” said Robert.
 “If you always keep in mind which way is north you won’t get lost,” said Millie.
 “Thanks. I’ll remember that.”
 “So when are you leaving?” Millie asked.
“Next week. There’s some business on hold that I need to work on. I lose business every winter when I come out here. A lot of stuff you can do on line, but some things require a presence.”
“Oh god I never thought I’d hear you talk like that.!”
“You don’t know me babe.”
Millie was silenced. Babe? He was calling her a babe? Was he morphing into a midwestern businessman before her very eyes?
“Come and visit,” Robert said. “I play with the Sticks and Stones Symphony. I could teach you real estate. You’d do well in family residences.”
“Fuck that.” Said Millie. Then she added “You never know. I might take you up on it.”




Loretta and Clive




Clive fell down in the middle of the intersection of U.S.93 and the business loop. He was running to make it across before the light changed and he damn near got hit by a truck full of microwave ovens coming up from Mexico. A truck full of EMTs swarmed over him and an ambulance with sirens going full blast roared up, disrupting traffic. Two police cars stopped one lane each way.
“I’m quite all right!” Clive protested as the blood ran down his face.
Someone was bellowing at him. Sir, sir do you understand what I’m saying? Quite, said Clive and that caused concern. Someone shone a light in his eyes. Eventually the paramedics grew bored with him and left the scene. The ambulance and police cars retreated reluctantly.
Clive had a large band aid on his forehead and two smaller ones on his knees. The band aids showed beneath his baggy shorts, He hoped he wouldn’t get a bill, but he had no mailing address so they couldn’t really do that could they?
Clive was living in his car. He tried to keep quiet about it. He wasn’t very handy and he didn’t want the bother of all the bits and pieces he’d have to contend with even with a van. The car was bad enough. He wasn’t very tall so he slept quite comfortably across the back seat. He was told that he couldn’t charge his computer from the cigarette lighter on his dash but he did. Seemed to work.
Jason left a copy of his Saga on the computer. just in case he lost his flash drives. Clive read it and was surprised to find that it wasn’t as dreadful as he had anticipated. He gave Jason a few names. People who still might be around. Might point him in the right direction. A computer game. People have to start somewhere. Or else fail and sink into the sludge of oblivion without even a chance.
Clive was writing a book about Hollywood in the sixties. He didn’t have much hope for it. Who cared about the sixties? The sludge of oblivion was sucking him down.
Loretta came by after work. “You fixing to leave soon?”
 “Can’t stay here much longer. Too hot in the car.”
 “That’s for sure. You could stay with me if you want. I keep the cooler on all the time in the summer.”
“I don’t know how you do it. I couldn’t stand it. Thanks for the offer.”
“Well you can leave cracker crumbs in my bed any time you want. Bear that in mind.”
Clive nearly fainted. He knew he looked pretty good for his age but Loretta was an
angel of surpassing beauty.
 “You are so beautiful,” he said, “you must have people everywhere who would love that invitation. I’m very tired. I fell, you know, this morning. Nearly got run over by a truck.”
“Holy shit are you OK?”
“Actually no. I feel a little odd. I think I want to get in touch with the British consulate and see if I can get myself home to England after all these years.”
Loretta took Clive home with her. She gave him hot tea with milk and sugar and he felt a little better. After an hour or so of kindness and concern he felt completely himself again.
“You are so kind,” he said.
“If there wasn’t kindness in the world I’d be dead long ago,” said Loretta.
“I have to go,” Clive looked out the window at the darkness. Cold out there.
“You can’t be blundering around out there in the dark. You’d get lost in the
desert and the Camel Corps might come by and pound you to mud out there.”
Clive raised an inquiring eye brow.
“You don’t believe me? There’s people have seen them. Smelled their dust. Heard their feet pounding across the desert. You don’t want to be out there alone when the Camel Corps go by.”
“Don’t worry, said Clive, “Hi Jolly will protect me. He’s a friend of mine. I speak Arabic you see so I converse with him quite often. At night. He has a very quiet camel and he controls it magnificently. It’s the Confederates on horse back you want to look out for. Up from Mexico with treasure in their saddle bags and guns a- blazin'. “
“Don’t make fun of me Clive. I don’t like it.” But she was laughing.
“Hi Jolly,” said Clive, “that’s from his real name. Haji Ali. It means he’d made the pilgrimage to Mecca. Not Mecca California. I make pilgrimages to Mecca California because there’s a great panaderia there in a convenience store gas station. He would have gone to Mecca to reserve a space in paradise.
They told each other tall tales until the Camel Corps had returned to quarters and the sun was stretching itself behind the mountains to the east.



Jason and Darla




Jason found a few of the names Clive gave him in Facebook. He decided to contact them one at a time, to stretch out his hopes a little longer.
He sent a few stanzas to a literary agent who didn’t even bother to acknowledge him. He wondered about Paris Review but the submission requirements were daunting and designed to discourage the un-connected hopeful.
He knew about self publishing. Too expensive for any hope of profit.
His default plan was to get the Saga printed on both sides of the paper and bound with a good looking cover. He could wander about trying to sell copies for a few bucks. He remembered when he was a child in Redding that there was an old man who came door to door with his poems which he had printed. He sold them for fifty cents a piece. His mom would buy them and use them to light the stove.
Darla read some of the Saga and was silent.
“What do you think?” Jason asked.
“I think it is awful,” said Darla, “but remember I’m female. Most females don’t like this stuff. You’re right though, it might make a good video game.”
“Well I’ll tell you a secret Darla, I think it’s crap too. I don’t know what I was thinking when I wrote it, but then again I look at other people’s stuff that gets reviewed on NPR or whatever and it’s a heap of garbage too.”
“Luck.” Said Darla.
“What really pisses me off is all the people that tell you they’re writing a book. When you ask them it turns out they’re just thinking about writing a book and if they do it will be a masterpiece. People have told them it would be a masterpiece. Morons!”
Darla said “Clive told me there are people who buy up screen plays and even books so they won’t get sued if they use your ideas but don’t acknowledge you. Like no ‘ original screen play by Jason whatever  in the credits.”
“We’re all scum bags,” said Jason.
“We all got masterpieces curled up in our minds,” said Darla.
“So who killed Connie, do you know?”
“If I knew I’d have told the cops. Wouldn’t you?”
“Well if I’d seen it happen and I knew for sure, then I would. If I just suspected I’d keep it to myself.”
“I suspect different people on different days.” Said Darla.
“Will you be leaving soon?” Jason asked.
“No. I got good a.c. I’ll stay a while. What about you?”
“My ex says I can live in the apartment above her garage in Denver if I don’t bother her or the kids. Probably she plans on fuming me but I’ll keep the windows open no matter what. I might just stay on my bike and head north with the good weather.”
“I got a pension and I’ll get a nice chunk of Social Security in a few years if I take it early.” I worked forty years for it. Forty years on my feet being nice to old wrecks in dangerous heels and keeping my smile rivetted on to my face all day. I kinda liked it though.”
“You sold your soul to the company store.” Said Jason.
 “Right.” Said Darla.




Horace and Millie




Most mornings Horace and Millie liked to have coffee together at Millie’s RV. They’d listen to the news and talk and even argue because politics definitely divided them. Then they would walk together among the stalls. Horace would evaluate tools while Millie looked for antique kitchen equipment. They didn’t buy much. Sometimes they would go out into the desert and walk for hours.
It was Horace who saw the ziploc with a note book sealed up in it peaking out from under Connie’s tent. It had been windy the night before, and the tent pins on one side
had loosened and the floor had lifted or the book would not have been visible. The yellow tape had shredded and flew tattered in the wind.
“Looks like Connie’s diary.” Bill had not hesitated to open the bag and take out the diary.
"Let’s take a look," said Millie.
They went back to Millie’s place, had another cup and read out loud to each other.
“I’m bloody invisible I fucking don’t exist”  Connie wrote.
“She had a point,” said Millie. “With that quiet little voice you couldn’t hear her very well.”
“She told me to take a bath once a week,” said Horace. “And she was right. That was the first meeting Selina set up for me. I told Connie her glasses were ugly and her teeth were too white for her face.”
“That wasn’t very nice of you!” Said Millie. “People don’t like being criticized, especially if they don’t get compliments to balance it out. Now me, I don’t give a shit, but Connie was different.”
“Well she couldn’t have killed herself by jumping into a 1500 gallon concrete tank. Might have broke a leg.”
“Let me read it through, Horace. I think I’d catch things that you might miss. I’ll bring it back tomorrow and we can stick it back under the tent. Don’t be offended.”
“I reserve my right to read it after you. Who knows you might miss something.”
“Done.”
Millie took the diary home and settled down for a good read.
In the morning Millie called Horace. “I’m done.”
 “Find anything?”
 “Just a lot of self pity. You should take a look. The one strange thing is that at the end of the diary she’s talking about getting more exercise and practicing being alone and enjoying it. She wrote out a kind of plan. Long walks. Healthy food. Good books. Not stuff you’d do if you were planning suicide.”
They slipped the diary under the tent floor without trying to conceal what they were doing.
 “No one cares.” Said Horace.
 “You sound like Connie.” Said Millie.
Millie had made copies of the last twenty pages of Connie’s journal. It was so boring that she kept finding herself skimming. She did this with steamy romance novels. Skim the dull stuff until the heavy duty sex scenes. She didn’t tell Horace that she had made the copies. She spent the rest of the morning reading the diary again. There were a few odd little sentences. “I hope this works out,” wrote Connie.
 “What, Connie, what?” Millie asked out loud.




Bill and Loretta




Bill wasn’t leaving Quartzsite for another month. He preferred the growing heat to the lingering cold of home.
Selina’s project had been a godsend to him. He had friends now. Several of them were still around. He had acquired a new skill. Listening. Not just to women but to anyone. He now enjoyed getting into the heads of other people. He knew that he wasn’t really knowing them any better than he would have before this revelation, but it did moderate his self obsession. And there was Loretta. He had no hopes for any permanent relationship but he wanted to spend a little more time with her. They walked together nearly every day. Sometimes he would actually feel tears well up when he looked at her. Silly.
The sewage tank had been completed. No more yellow ribbon. A neat new toilet now crowned it.
“Let’s baptize it,” said Loretta. She looked around at the abandoned campfires. No one around. She pulled Bill in to the insect free interior.
“You are a sweet old man,” Loretta said as they continued their walk.
“Heard any more about the Connie thing?” Bill asked as they wandered on.
“Well I heard a Deputy say something. I was pretending not to listen but I kept on wiping off a table near them.
“Well what did you hear?”
“Not much. Just that there were no more leads to follow.”
“Case closed?”
“I wouldn’t think so. It hasn’t been that long has it?”



Lance




Lance was sitting in his s.u.v. It was getting hot. He got out of the car and one more time went into Connie’s tent. They’d towed her car. That annoyed him. He wanted that car.
The tent was hot inside. Connie had bought a quality tent. He sat down on Connie’s bed. Just a foam pad covered with a sheet. A sleeping bag on top. Lance lay down on the sleeping bag, smelled Connie’s slight perfume and fell asleep.
When he awoke he was sweaty and angry, Damn! He hated doing that. He wished he had better memories of Connie, but she had lost custody of him when he was two. His dad was a good father. Didn’t get angry, never left him alone in the house. Helped him get through college. He didn’t see Connie often so it was always a treat to be put on the plane to visit her. He was bored when he got there. Not allowed outside while she was working. A hug when he got there and a hug when he left a week later. One dinner out and two movies. A trip to the roller rink. Then home. Who was Connie? He wanted to ask his dad but his dad died of a heart attack years ago.
He thought she must have had money. She worked fifty years didn’t she? There must be money. Some lawyer must have all her papers like tax records and bank statements. The cops were no help. They didn’t believe he was Connie’s son.
Loretta and Bill were standing in a patch of shade made by a small trailer parked across a dry wash from Connie’s tent.
“Morning!” They called in unison and waved at Lance who was crouching in a rather undignified way as he came out of Connie’s tent. He growled at them. He had his head down and that was why he saw the diary in its ziploc bag. He picked it up and went back to his car. Something for the garbage no doubt.
Back in his motel he opened the bag and took out the diary. He was holding it upside down and he opened it from the back and found what Millie had missed. Another diary. Sort of a prose poem. Thoughts of death. Connie’s obsession. Badly written and heart breaking to Lance. He was not an intellectual but he recognized the darkness that consumed Connie.
“How can I leave when I was never here?” She wrote.
“To beyond the other shore never having left.”
“I am the sky there is no blue.”
“The wind does not see me. It cannot touch me.”
“Tomorrow never is and yesterday never was.”
“Today is an illusion.”
“Love is emptiness. A shadow on the bedroom wall.”
“Leaving leaves nothing.”
 “My tears are God’s joke.”
“Holy shit,” said Lance. He wept a little.
“Bye, Mom,” he said as he tossed the diary into the garbage. For some good reason he felt free. He turned on the TV and watched a little porn.
Tomorrow home to Alec and the kids and his dog Muttleigh who had a growth on his shoulder. He would have to see to that.



Selina and Tad




Selina had taken up Zumba. There was a group of ladies who tied silvery trinkets round their hips and practiced every week day. It was Zumba for Seniors, true, but you could really get your booty shaking and Selina liked that. She tried to get Tad to come to class but he wouldn’t. There were no men in sight when they danced and Selina thought that was what made it so fun. No one to laugh at a bunch of mostly over weight older ladies shaking their butts and shoulders and shrieking. She hoped they would find a Zumba class on the Northern California coast. That would be good. She bought herself black stretch capris and a long T shirt with a giant Zumba logo and some glitter. The shoes were too expensive. She would stick with her running shoes. She never ran in them anyway.

Tad couldn’t wait to leave. The rig was checked out and ready. He wanted to get up in the woods where he could do some hiking and may be some trail work for the Forest Service. He loved the summer scent of Doug firs and even Redwoods. Perhaps Lina would use up her energy hiking with him instead of all that silly prancing about. She had a DVD she played sometimes and she would really shake the RV when she started jumping around to the music. He liked the music. Mostly Latin with a little hip-hop thrown in.
He’d have to capture her with a butterfly net, tranquilize her and take off fast to get her away from Zumba.
The good thing was that she had pretty much abandoned the Nice Ladies idea. The Nice Ladies had abandoned her too. There was no good-bye party, and Lina had been looking forward to having one. People just left or else became couples. Lina had wanted to make a year book of people’s stories, but Connie’s death stopped that.
A detective came by and told her that they were closing the case. He said they had reason to believe that Connie was suicidal. There were no drugs in her except a little alcohol and no bullet or knife wounds. The bruises could have happened when she dropped into the tank. If she hadn’t died quickly they could have developed. The only strange thing was that the concrete lid was crookedly in place when she must have fallen, and the space she would have fallen through was not very big, a couple of feet or less.
Tad thought that the real strange thing was that Connie should have been walking after dark a long way from her tent and that she should have chosen to jump into a toilet vault to kill herself. She only fell about 10 feet. Would that be enough to kill?    He wondered what the autopsy had shown.
Nothing conclusive he supposed. Selina walked through the door with a grocery bag. She dumped the heavy bag on the counter.
“You know how lucky we are?” Tad asked.
“I know how lucky we are. Help me put this stuff away.”



Dixie and Clive and Millie.




Clive took his car to the shop for a check up before he headed for the consulate in San Francisco.    He was disconcerted to find that he needed two sets of wheel bearings. The estimate was six hundred dollars. How could that be? It’s a big deal, said the mechanic, but you got a thousand miles at most on those bearings. You could seize up everything if you’re on a long drive.
“They gotta be pressed in. Otherwise I could do it,” said Dixie, “I done it before, but I had help.”
Clive took the hint. He did not show up in Dixie’s ‘ help ‘ category. He texted Millie.
“I was just leaving,” said Millie, you caught me just in time.”
Dixie and Clive ordered the new bearings.
“Tomorrow morning early they’ll be in” the parts store girl said.
The first one went in pretty easily. Millie and Dixie were a born team. Millie’s strength and Dixie’s knowledge. Clive felt wistful. Why had he never been the least bit interested in cars?
The second one was a bear. There was a lot of corrosion to be removed and Dixie coild not get the bearing to align right. In the end it was Millie who managed to get it pressed and aligned.
Clive took them to lunch. Millie left for Yuma.    Clive wanted to cry.
“Stay in touch!” He said.
Clive and Dixie took the car for a test run. They took it out on the freeway and drove five miles.
“Let’s run away together, Dixie. Let’s keep driving west until we hit the ocean. Let’s just drive for ever.”
“For ever.” Dixie said. She looked serious. “Life is such shit.”
“What ever makes you say that?” Clive was driving and he turned to look at Dixie and the car was suddenly on the shoulder.
“Watch it Clive! The wheel bearings held up though. Did you hear anything?”
“I never did hear anything. What do you mean life is shit?”
“No one should be a cop for more than twenty years. You lose all your feelings. You just don’t care any more. Not even about family or tiny children trapped in burning cars. Then you start hating yourself. Like when Connie died. Was she killed? Was it an accident? Did she do suicide? Does it matter?”
“It matters because if someone killed her that person should be punished. If it doesn’t matter then why do we have police? You hold chaos at bay, Dixie, we do not want chaos.”
Dixie was looking at an exit sign. “Yeah right. Let’s turn around here. The car is fine.”
Clive kissed Dixie good-bye. He felt her warmth, so beautifully alive. “Stay in touch,” he said. She reached up and pulled his ear lobe.    “Sure.”



Ken and Cathy




Ken and Cathy had been camping at Slab City for two weeks. Each day the high temperature inched up. They would leave soon. They were sitting at a cable spool table outside the solar powered free internet cafe sipping free Nescafe no sugar no white. A donation jar sat on the table.
The kids were harassing a man playing guitar (sort of) in the shade.
“I’m asking you one last time and I want an honest answer. Did you kill Connie?”
Ken flinched and stared like a crazy man straight at the sun for three seconds. He looked back at Cathy, now just a blue star in his vision.
“And I’m telling you honestly I do not know. I will tell you for the record in your mind that I did not kill her. I will continue to say that from now on. I did not kill Connie.”
“I’m supposed to live with that?”
“You live with lies every day of your life like we all do. This may not be a lie.”
Cathy turned to yell at the kids. She looked back at Ken.
“My dad used to mow the lawn and wash the car on Saturday mornings.” She said.
Ken shrugged. “You’re safer with me than with one of them.”
“Baby the Rain Must Fall,” said Cathy.
“A movie. Lee Remmick. Steve McQueen.”
“You ain’t no Lee Remmick,” he said.
“You’re as crazy as Steve McQueen in the movie.”
“What the fuck. Let’s pack up the car.”
They filled in their shit pit. They burned their garbage. The kids folded the blankets which had been sterilizing themselves in the sun all day. The tent was folded and rolled up tight. They had no cooking equipment. Ate cold. Had few clothes.
As the sun fell earthward Cathy pulled the old Caprice away from their heaven and headed for Los Angeles.
Somewhere near Palm Springs They passed someone on a bicycle riding the far edge of the shoulder without lights.    They did not recognize Jason with banners of hope flying behind him. In his jeans pocket he had two phone numbers and one address. High hopes and the night his only
protection.



Dixie and Clive




The pain had been around for months. She didn’t take it seriously until around Christmas, when she realized it was always there. By the end of February she knew she had a problem.    After saying good-bye to Clive she headed for the hospital at El Cajon. It didn’t take long for her to find out that she had a big problem. A biopsy was scheduled but there was no doubt. Things could be done, money could be spent, but the prognosis was poor.
She sat in her van parked on the street.
“It isn’t fair,” she said to a street light that peered in at her.
“It just isn’t fair. All those years I worked so damned hard. Nights and holidays and storms and floods I was always there.” Talking down ten year olds with guns pointed at her gut. Murderous husbands holding screaming wives like shields. She’d done it all and done it well and who in hell cared?
“Why?” She shouted at God who was hiding behind the street light.
“Shit happens,” the street light answered.
She tried to think of someone she could call. Sympathy. She needed sympathy. Her sister? No. Her step-sister? No. Her estranged son? No. Clive? Why Clive? Because he was kind and could make a joke of anything.
Perhaps she would call Clive. Perhaps she would not. With a little luck for him, Clive would soon be winging his way back to England to become a legal person.
Dixie crawled into the back of the van, made a cup of coffee and curled up on her cramped bed. She knew that some time in the night a cop would knock on the window and tell her to move on.

Clive had pulled off Interstate Five at Kettleman City. He was looking for coffee. He couldn’t find any. No one spoke English. He ended up drinking some stuff that tasted like the chocolate blancmange he remembered from school in England.
He didn’t take much notice of his phone. He usually left it on the charger on vibrate and ignored it, but he felt a little lonely so he checked and found a message. Dixie. She didn’t sound very bright. She had called two days earlier when he was staying a night at Blythe. Now he was hundreds of miles down the road. He called back.
“You don’t need to go to San Francisco,” Dixie said. “I’ll marry you. Won’t you be legal if I marry you?”
“With a work visa that lapsed forty years ago? I don’t know, Dixie, but we could find out. If not I’ll just stay another forty years!”
 “No,” said Dixie. “You go to San Francisco. Don’t worry. I’ll be OK.” She ended the call.
“Now what?” She thought. "I called for help. I didn’t get it. Should have known.”
She was not being fair. He would have dropped everything and come to her if she’d played it right. What a fool she was. She’d find a trailer park that would accept the van and she’d look around for a hospice. She had her pension, had money saved. She’d be fine.
Clive drove fast on the freeway. He was looking forward to driving over the new Bay Bridge. He would find out what he could from the consulate and get back to Dixie. He wished he still had his U.K. passport even though it had lapsed in 1985. Surely they would have a record. Dixie needed him. When was the last time a living soul had needed him? The more he thought about marrying Dixie the more it seemed like the right thing to do. Surely they don’t ask for proof of citizenship when you marry? Perhaps they did. How confusing. Perhaps his fake green card would fool a county clerk in some valley town.



Bill and Loretta




   Bill and Loretta were looking at Hi Jolly’s monument. A pyramid with a camel on the top. No likeness of Hi Jolly.
   “Wonder what he’d think if he came back today.” Said Bill.
   “He’d do all right, don’t you think? Looks like he could turn his mind to anything he could to survive. Water carrier, guide, scout, miner, whatever.” Said Loretta.
Bill was so much in love with Loretta he was going crazy. He knew it was almost comic that he should dare to be so entranced. He knew that there was no way that she could live in Nebraska with him. His friends and neighbors were decent people but he feared that accepting Loretta into their grim little church and grange hall would be impossible. Or was he mis- judging them?
In the past few weeks he had practiced his listening skills asiduously. He was empathetic. He had become a nicer person. He also made certain that he took a shower every Wednesday while he did his laundry. When Loretta shared her bed with him he always showered before and after. Very short showers so as to conserve water.
The trouble was that he was almost certain that Loretta had no long term interest in him. He would have to leave. She would kiss him good-bye and forget him.    He wished he could help her get a better job. Go back to college. She was smart. But when he brought it up she just laughed.
“You don’t understand do you? I’m happy with my life. May not seem much to you I know.    Why don’t you stay down here? You could get an apartment and enjoy the summer. We could have fun.”
Bill looked up at the camel on its pyramid.
He looked at Loretta’s lovely face and out of nowhere the cold little hands of winter started pulling at him. He was seeing the fields in the winter light. The cold that would kill you for a dime. The electric cords hanging from car radiators.
The terror of the cold. If he left soon he could still catch the winter. Be there when the ice started cracking on the lake. See the first haze of green on the cottonwoods along the creek. He had to go.



Clive and Dixie




Clive held Dixie in his arms. She was frail as a blade of grass now. Clive had never been quite comfortable with women. Their odor bothered him. Their high voices. Their crevices and bulges. Their unfortunate mood swings and dreadful menstruation. And Dixie had odd aromas about her. Her breath was bad sometimes. She was aware of this and Clive bought her Altoids to suck on. He knew she was decomposing in his presence and he kept on loving her.
They found a traffic court judge in one of the desert towns who agreed to marry them without a murmur. He didn’t charge them anything either. Seemed to think it a bit of a joke but the papers were legal so who cared? Dixie wore the palest green. Her skin was golden because her liver was
involved but she certainly looked lovely. Clive couldn’t really help himself. He always looked good.
When they drove away from town Clive was telling an outrageous tale and Dixie was trying hard to laugh.



Loretta




Loretta stood out in the road with her hands shading her eyes. Bill’s little RV was heading north.
The last of them gone. She waved Bill out of sight and turned away. Her shift at the Shade Tree started in half an hour.




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