The flag of his and Verdie's mailbox had been lowered. Figman parked in front of his house and walked the short distance back to the highway. His boots crunched through the melting snow. Soon, he imagined, grass would be pushing up through the soil and the landscape would turn green.
Their mailbox held eight items: seven letters addressed to Verdie and a typewritten postcard from Figman's mother:
Dear Louis,
How's the new house? The new job? I'm so glad you've settled in somewhere and gotten away from that motel. Motel rooms can be so depressing.
I still can't believe you're not here anymore. New Mexico seems like such a lonely place, but if that's where the company needs you, I can understand your having to go. You've always been such a good employee. Virginia came to lunch yesterday and showed me pictures of her granddaughter. A real doll. And Dee called. Can I give her your address and phone number now? Running out of space. Send me a picture of your new home. I miss you oodles.
Love, Mother
He was glad to have intercepted the mail before Verdie got to it. Occasionally, his mother sent postcards; he would have to ask her not to do this anymore. Figman thumbed through Verdie's letters before placing them back in the mailbox. She'd received what seemed to be an awful lot of mail for a woman living alone. There were two envelopes he couldn't identify, an electric bill, a phone bill, a notice from the I.R.S., a statement from some doctor in Carlsbad, and a handwritten envelope addressed to Mrs. V. C. Hooks. Its postmark said Albuquerque.
"Anything for me?"
Figman jumped. He had neither seen nor heard his landlady approaching.
"Scared you, didn't I? Well, I'm sorry about that. How's the house? Find everything okay?"
"It's fine. Nice place," said Figman."The heater puts out a lot of heat."
"Lordy, yes," said Verdie, laughing."Ruby— she was one of them sisters I told you about— she used to say the heat from that heater made the back of her throat itch." Verdie's laugh was more like a cackle. She wore a pink-purple lipstick that exactly matched the color of her trailer.
"These are for you," said Figman. He handed over her assortment of mail.
"Thank you kindly," said Verdie. She had that west Texas accent that sounded like a coil wound tightly around a tomcat. Verdie tucked her mail up under her armpit and just stood there, squinting up at Figman, looking more turtle-like than he'd remembered.
"So," said Figman, starting down his driveway. "What's to do around here?"
Verdie followed him. "Well, I golf," she said.
That explained the problem with her skin.
"Then there's the caverns. Skiing up at Cloudcroft. Horse racing at Ruidoso, but they're closed all winter."
A semi whipped by them, heading north. As soon as it had passed, a chubby little boy about seven darted across the highway toward Verdie's ugly trailer. He carried a yellow bucket and a large metal spoon. Figman had first noticed the child the day he moved in. He'd been digging in the dirt out behind his kitchen window.
"Who's the kid?" asked Figman.
"Oh, that's Bobo. Rodriguez's boy." She nodded at the house across the highway, a white clapboard farmhouse with a side-yard clothesline. Figman knew the place. It was an eyesore, perfectly framed by his living room window.
"Don't his parents care if he crosses the highway?"
"New," said Verdie. "Bobo's got more sense than both folks put together. You want some help with them groceries?"
"Thanks, I can manage."
"Well, let me know if there's anything I can do for you," she said, continuing down the gravel driveway toward her trailer.
"Do you know how to fix okra?"
"Depends what's wrong with it," said Verdie.
Figman unpacked his groceries, then set about the heavy business of becoming famous. Figman liked fame. His brush with notoriety had been brief but gratifying beyond anything he'd previously known. He wanted more of it. And now that dying had proved more chronic than acute, Figman had to consider the possibility that fame might not come to him posthumously. Living in Artesia, with its good air and water, he would have more time to devote to his painting, more time to send his work out into the world, more time for the world to take notice. Dying was a time for fame. A time to make a name for himself. To do something to set himself apart from all the other Figmans of the world.
Months ago, in L.A., Figman had decided that what little time he had left would not be spent in courtrooms and hospitals. He would go somewhere obscure, not only to paint but to avoid being found in the meantime. He'd sold his house below market value. He'd sold his brand-new 2SXT. Then he'd bought a used Aion identical to the one he had totaled in his accident, a model known for its numerous mechanical defects. No one, he'd figured, would expect him to make the same mistake twice, even when that mistake was the reason he was still around to make it.
Figman had paid cash for the car and registered it in his mother's name. He'd told no one where he was headed (he himself had not known), and as soon as he'd settled on Artesia had informed only his mother. His goal was to become renowned while remaining anonymous, a concept whose irony was not entirely lost on him and whose prospect motivated him to assemble his easel.
An hour later, Figman had erected the contraption minus one bolt on its canvas holder that had been missing from its package of hardware. The art supply store in Roswell would be closed now. Figman constructed a makeshift fastener out of a large bobby pin he'd found under the toe kick in his bathroom, an implement sufficiently old and corroded to have belonged to Verdie and not one of the Pontelle sisters. He was handy with these things. He twisted the bobby pin and attached it to the canvas holder so that it held it to the upright without interfering with the support of the canvas.
After getting himself a beer, Figman returned to his living room to admire his work from all angles. It was a fine easel that would serve his art well. He moved it into the space beside his large front window. The light was best in his living room, both his bedroom and kitchen having northern exposures, and his spare room's windows being covered by tall hydrangeas. His living room's only drawback was that it looked directly at the Rodriguez house, a ramshackle structure whose paint peeled from its walls and whose front porch had slipped from its foundation. Figman eyed the house disparagingly between swallows of beer. Tires and rusty box springs leaned against its southernmost wall next to oil barrels, car doors, and assorted engine parts. Laundry sagged from its side-yard clothesline: old sheets and women's underwear, torn and starchless as overboiled zucchini. Birds nested beneath its eaves. Bobo, the family prodigy, squatted in its front yard, digging.
In college, Figman had been given an A in Watercolor. He'd received A's in most of his subjects, but the one in Watercolor had made him especially proud. He'd taken the class reluctantly because he'd needed an elective in the one-to-two-thirty time block on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Convinced he had no talent, Figman had entered the class believing he was, at best, destined for a C. But he'd received the best grade possible. The teacher had even told him he had promise.
In the fifteen years since, Figman had not lifted a paintbrush. Though it had been his intention to pursue painting as a hobby, L.A. afforded no time for hobbies, no time for anything but the bare necessities. His social life he considered a bare necessity, a pun that occurred to him one night while he was fondling the breasts of a woman named Renee.
It was hard for Figman to imagine how he could live without the breasts of a woman. There was nothing more comforting than the way the soft mound of flesh melted into the palm of his hand; few things more stimu lating than the response of a woman's nipple to the flick of his tongue. He wondered what Oma's breasts looked like beneath her shapeless uniform. Figman had forgotten to notice her breasts,