"Who said life is fair?"
He had her there.
They drove the next twenty miles in silence. Then Enoch spoke. He said, "Larry's not good enough for you." It annoyed Marilee the way he said this, as if he'd been thinking about it for years. As if this dwarf had a corner on her dreams.
"VACANCY," said the sign above the Trinity Motel, a crumbling, one-story adobe that squatted upon the earth like a venerable Indian. The mo
tel lay on the outskirts of Alamogordo, a few miles south of the city, near the base of the Sacramento Mountains. Trinity Site, according to Enoch, was actually northwest.
They sneaked into the motel courtyard through an unlocked wooden gate. The courtyard was centered around the pool, a kidney bean with a slide in the middle. No lights were on in the rooms. The moon hadn't risen, but the stars shone so brightly Marilee could see Enoch clearly.
He propped his crutches against the back of a plastic chaise. Then, as if no one else were around, he took off his clothes. Marilee could not tear her eyes away from his body. Deformed. Hunched. Contorted. One hip jutted out like a knot on a tree. His legs twisted at the knees. A concavity hollowed his chest as though he'd been punched in the sternum at birth. She'd had no idea. When he stripped off his undershorts, she saw that his genitals were the size of a full-grown man's; they looked huge by comparison. How, she wondered, could a person live in such a body?
Yet Enoch seemed unbothered by his nakedness. He walked without crutches to the edge of the pool, wobbled really, heeling to the left with every other step. On crutches he'd appeared less awkward, more in control of his ungainly self. Marilee watched as he lowered his body into the water. There, he swam with ease, as though he were at home in his element.
Enoch did not look at Marilee as she undressed. Or maybe he saw her out of the corner of his eye, she couldn't tell. She removed her jeans and cotton blouse and hung them over a chair. But starting for the pool, she hesitated at the sight of Enoch's twisted body floating on the water's surface. Open. Vulnerable. Unsuspecting. He looked more insect than human, with his large torso and disjointed limbs. A water bug. Easy prey. It seemed wrong, suddenly, to feel self-conscious in the presence of someone like Enoch. She unhooked her bra and stepped out of her underwear.
When she glanced up, she saw that Enoch was now watching her. This time he made no effort to turn away. She stood motionless by the edge of the pool and let him take in the sight of her. He stared shamelessly, as if he knew she wouldn't mind. As if he sensed this was exactly what she wanted. Her heart pounded. What would it be like, she wondered, to make love to a dwarf ?
She shook out her hair and stepped down into the cool water. Enoch studied her every move. It felt strange and wonderful swimming nude, a freedom she had never known. She dove beneath the surface and let the water caress her skin, fan her hair, swirl all around her. She made waves in the water, turned somersaults, rolled onto her back. Spread her legs wide open.
What would Larry think if he could see her now? She laughed out loud at the thought of it: Larry in his loafers and button-down collar pacing at pool's edge, hissing through clenched teeth so as not to wake the occupants. Larry tossing her his jacket, remembering too late the wallet in its pocket. Larry swearing at Enoch, ordering him out of the pool, fists clenched and lip curled— a smoldering absurdity.
And Enoch— how might he respond? Slither out of the pool, tail between legs? (If he had a tail, which wouldn't much surprise her.) More likely tell Larry to go fuck himself. Splash water on his loafers. Thumb through his wallet. She smiled, a sad smile. Larry was only three miles north, in Alamogordo, yet he seemed farther from her now than the stars in the sky.
Marilee glanced over to where Enoch floated on his back. She swam to the deep end and floated next to him. What would he do with her body so close? Look at her? Reach out and touch her skin? She arched her back so her breasts broke through the water's surface. If he touched her now, would she push away or roll into his arms?
But he didn't touch her. Nor did he look at her breasts. Rather, he seemed content to float next to her and stare up into the night. The Milky Way cut a brilliant swath across the sky's blackness. She had never seen so many stars. Thousands of stars. Millions. Stars in number beyond her comprehension. Marilee listened to the faint drone of traffic from a distant highway. She felt light-years from anything familiar.
"I read a story once," said Enoch. "Science fiction by Asimov, called, 'Nightfall.' About this planet with six suns, so there's always daylight. But every couple thousand years, an eclipse throws the planet into total darkness. And when all those stars come out— stars nobody knew were there— all the people go insane."
Marilee gazed up into the desert night— so many stars it would take a lifetime to count. She felt Enoch's gnarled body bobbing close to hers in the water. So close, yet separate. Different, and alone. A strange silence took hold of her. Night silence. Water silence. Star silence. She threw her head back and let the water wash over her face, fill her eyes, stream out the corners of her mouth. Liquid smooth as desert sand. Liquid cool as starlight. She felt intoxicated by the water, the darkness, the explosion of stars. This is crazy, she thought.
Crazy, and real.
EAST IS WEST
Her lipstick tasted like rhubarb. This was all Figman remembered of the woman, this small detail and a question she had asked: "Why is it people go to New York to be discovered? Shouldn't a place like that be where people go to disappear?" Figman smiled into the woman's soft shoulder; he was not a man to bed down with dummies. "If you want to be discovered," she said, "go to Idaho."
But he didn't go to Idaho; he went to New Mexico. One western state seemed as good a graveyard as the next, and New Mexico was where his Aion dropped its axle. In Artesia, to be exact— a nothing little town between Carlsbad and Roswell, two other nothing towns, only bigger. How he'd ended up here he couldn't figure, nor at what point his course had gone astray. Dying, thought Figman, must inspire wanderlust.
But wanderlust alone could not explain what had drawn Figman to this bleak outpost. Perhaps it was luck; more likely it was destiny. Figman questioned, at times, his belief in destiny, but of this one thing he was certain: Nothing ever happened without a reason. If his car had delivered him here, then here was where Figman was meant to be. At least until he had his new axle.
Figman ordered a taco at the Burrito Box and waited for Ewell P. Durham to fix his Aion. If Artesia held anything, it held possibility. He knew only one detail about this place: The Man Who Fell to Earth had been filmed here. Figman could see why. Its landscape was lunar: dust, oil fields, endless horizon. Some moon cows in the distance. Artesia. Its name implied water. He was a fan of irony.
Figman guessed he had a year or two at best before the sickness overtook him. Time would become more precious as his symptoms worsened, but a solid year of work could lead to fame, and fame (albeit posthumous) was what he'd come looking for. He finished his taco and ordered up another. It was good he still had an appetite.
He'd begin his painting as soon as his car ran well enough to get him to Dodge City. Or Amarillo. He felt confident he'd find someplace where the air was clean and the light shone just right on his easel. Durango, perhaps, or some little town on the outskirts of Abilene. Grease from his taco rolled into his shirt sleeve. Trucks rumbled by on the highway. Figman gazed down Artesia's dusty strip of asphalt and wondered where it would eventually lead him.
Louis T. Figman was a man who, like planets in retrograde, had to go east to find West. Born in San Fernando, he'd grown up in Sepulveda, a city of concrete and neon, rusted sheet metal and yellow-brown haze. Its heat and its noisy grind of traffic belied any hint that nature had ever visited the Valley; early in his life, Figman vowed he would someday leave it.
Some thirty years later, fate served up the opportunity. "On death's doorstep," he explained to his boss, flailing instantly in the backwash of his own pretension. Patterson chuckled, then handed him some papers and told him to go talk to Rosemary in Human Resources. The