For Cecily
O.K., there really was a witch in our closet.
Balanced on the crumbly bedrock cliff at the edge of the old V & T grade, Kathy wondered whether she really wanted to do it, and if so, whether this was really the way she wanted to do it. She took a deep breath, then another and another. The jagged rocks and the green valley far below flickered like an old-time movie. Dizzy, she backed up a step and forced herself to breathe more evenly. If she was going to do it, she wanted to do it on purpose-not just hyperventilate herself into unconsciousness and drop over the edge like a sack of potatoes.
The thin, sweet call of a mountain blue-bird drifted down to her from a nearby juniper.
The wild smells of sagebrush and pi?on pine and sun-warmed rocks rode on the back of the wind that came up the grade. She really wanted to do it. There was, after all, more to life than bluebirds and sagebrush. She stepped forward, closed her eyes, ducked her head, and stuck her arms out in front of her. The whole business would be much easier if she pretended she was jumping off the high dive at the municipal swimming pool. One, two, three. She bent her knees, considered holding her nose, then realized she didn't need to. Not this time.
Someone grabbed her by the shoulder. A resonant contralto poured through the high desert stillness. "Hey, cookie. For crissakes. Give us both a break. You don't really want to do that."
Kathy went rigid, opened her eyes, and silently mouthed the words, Hell, hell, hell.
Perhaps she had made a mistake. Perhaps she hadn't walked four hours to get to this place. Perhaps this wasn't really the summit of a road so dilapidated that only hikers, horses, and lunatics in jeeps dared traverse it. No. She was incapable of that particular mistake. She had lived down there in the frigging valley all her life. She knew nobody came to this place. The old-timers had forgotten about it, and the newcomers didn't care about good views unless they could see them from a living room window.
There were chinks in Kathy's black despair. And anger, like blasting powder, was packed inside them all. She curled her hands into hard, rock fists and turned around.
A small woman stood before her, slender hands settled on slender hips. The woman regarded Kathy with sunlit brown eyes and an infuriating half smile. She wore an embroidered cotton shirt like the ones Kathy had often admired in the window of Parker's Saddle Shop. But the flat-brimmed hat that rode far back among her short glossy curls looked South American, and the cut of her high-waisted denims marked her as a city jerk.
Kathy put on the sneer she used whenever she had to deal with unpleasant people-her drunken stepfather, the landlady's bitchy daughter, and lately Reese Vanderberg as well.
"Who the hell are you? Why don't you just mind your own damn business?" Kathy spit the words out like lit firecrackers.
The woman grinned. She had strong, white teeth. A network of spider-web laugh lines appeared at the corners of her eyes. She held out her left hand. A jagged, pale scar ran from the first joint of her index finger to the second.
Kathy knew the scar. She had one exactly like it on her own left index finger. She blinked, struggling to remember whether she had actually jumped off the cliff. Maybe she was dreaming this on the way to the ground. Or maybe she was already dead.
"Just call me Kate," said the woman. "Whether you like it or not, my own damn business includes yours."
"Huh?" said Kathy, scratching her nose. It burned. She'd been out in the sun too long.
"Sweetie, you don't have to understand it. Just believe it. I'm you. I'm the woman you're going to be twenty years from now. Look at me. Why are you trying to screw me up like this?"
Kathy squinted. Now that she thought of it, the woman did look a little familiar, in a middle-aged kind of way.
Kate took a cellophane-wrapped cigar out of her pocket. She offered it to Kathy. "No thanks," said Kathy. "They make me sick."
"Yeah, they used to make me sick, too." Chuckling, Kate peeled away the cellophane. "Ten years from now, you'll buy a sports car and take up smoking just because you like the idea of a woman driving fast cars and smoking good cigars."
"Oh yeah?" said Kathy. She was beginning to feel the way she had years ago after she had drunk a bottle of vanilla with a friend-a little queasy and not altogether certain about the line between what was real and what was not.
Kate stuck the cigar in her mouth and sucked on it, unlit. She took Kathy firmly by the arm and led her away from the precipice, back onto the road.
"So what's bothering you this time? I can't quite remember," she said, her words wet and pleasant.
"If you were really me, you'd remember," said Kathy.
Kate laughed and nipped the end off the cigar with her large, familiar teeth. "Sweetie, you're so dramatic. I admit you don't come this close very often, but you think about it all the time. How the hell am I supposed to keep one trauma separate from the next?"
"I don't think about it all the time!" said Kathy.
Kate snorted as she lit a wooden match and cupped it expertly away from the breeze. "Give me a break," she said, puffing until a cloud of white smoke rose from between her hands.
Kathy kicked a pebble. She listened as it rattled down the precipice, striking other rocks on its way to the ground. She shivered. "I got jilted."
"Oh yeah," said Kate. "I remember now. That golden-haired jerk. Reese what's-his-name."
"Reese Vanderberg is not a jerk. And how would you know? You can't even get his name right."
"Look. I can't get his name right because twenty years from now, you won't be able to get his name right. Twenty years from now, Reese Vanderberg will be an insurance salesman with a Lincoln Continental and two preppy jerk kids, whom he will have gotten from that blond airhead, Sally what's-her-name. Believe me, cookie, there are better things than that in store for you."
Kathy kicked another pebble. "Sally, huh? Yeah. Sally's a creep. And if Reese would rather have Sally, then he's a creep, too."
"Come on. It's not that he'd rather have Sally. And it's not as if you're up here getting ready to jump off a cliff just because Vanderberg jilted you. You say that to me because it's what you'd say to some stranger. But we both know there's more to it than that."
Kathy had sat awake in a chair all night, swept and tumbled by the old familiar river of dark thoughts. Reese had tried to make love to her, just as all the others had, and she had tried to let him, just as she always did. But her body had betrayed her, in the pattern that had grown smooth through repetition-smooth as a stone in a glacial creek. She had stiffened, pulled back. She felt the surprise in his hands, saw it flutter like the shadow of a luna moth across his face. She grabbed her clothes and ran. And Reese shouted after her, "Bitch! Prick-teasing bitch!" Just like they all did.
She hunched her shoulders and looked over at Kate. Kate wore the dusty hat as if it were a part of her, tipped back in an easy way to reveal damp curls just beginning to turn gray around her ears. Her whole body told a story of pleasure, in the swing of her shoulders as she walked, in the rise and fall of her small breasts as she tasted the sweet tobacco smoke. The lines around Kate's eyes and mouth looked custom made to mysterious specifications. Those lines cradled smiles, frowns, and dreams the way Kathy had always wanted to cradle a man. She was beautiful.
A dull red flower of grief blossomed, inside her. She could never be like that. Never. A tear splattered onto her boot. "Hell," said Kathy.
Kate shoved a handkerchief into Kathy's hand. Kathy scrubbed viciously at her eyes. The handkerchief was made of lavender silk and had a violet embroidered on it. It smelled like cigars. She wadded it into a wrinkled ball and flung it back at Kate. "Now I know you're not me," she said. "I wouldn't be caught dead carrying around a thing like that."
Kate stuck the handkerchief back in her pants pocket and gave Kathy a sidelong frown. She turned her gaze back to the rutted road and the junipers that clung to the hillside above it. "All right. You want to know why you're gonna be carrying silk handkerchiefs around someday? Because there's a man in your future who likes them."
Kathy shook her head. "There's no man in my future."
"Suit yourself," said Kate, shrugging.
Kathy wondered why she would want a man in her future anyway. She shoved her hands deep into the pockets of her wash-softened Levi's and found the arrowhead Reese had given her there. She rubbed her thumb hard along the sharp flint edge. She thought about the way her father had beaten her mother until she couldn't stand up anymore. She thought about her stepfather, who acted like a stud in rut every time he got drunk. Her heart kept telling her they weren't all like that. But her body just wouldn't believe it.
Kathy looked at Kate again. Kate smiled at her. Kate's face seemed so much at home with smiles. Was it true? Was it possible that Kathy's own face would someday look like that? In the desert sun, something sparkled on one of the fingers of Kate's left hand. A plain gold wedding ring. Kathy blinked, dazzled.
They had been walking as they talked, Kathy following the older woman down the rutted, white road, so preoccupied with her own pain that she paid no attention. Now they rounded a curve, and there, crouched like a steel tiger, sat a Jeep, almost brand-new, with all the extras, the kind Kathy had always wanted. A light coating of dust covered its deep burgundy paint. Kathy stared at it, dreaming of places a machine like that could take her, of hillsides and valleys and canyons a million miles away.
"Is that yours? Where'd you get it?"
Kate rubbed her neck slowly, gazing at the Jeep as if she herself found it somewhat mysterious. "Yeah. It's mine. I bought it about six months ago from a guy in Manhattan who told me it could take me places I'd never believe." She gave Kathy a little grin. "I guess he was right."
"Manhattan?" said Kathy.
"Yeah. Manhattan," said Kate, eyes sparkling. "Hop in."
Kathy climbed into the passenger seat, yelping as the heat from the sun-baked black Naugahyde crept through her thin shirt. Kate tossed her hat into the back, ran her fingers through her sweat-soaked hair. She winked.
"What do you think, sweetie? Isn't this better than some blond jerk's Lincoln Continental?"
Kathy grinned. "Could be," she said.
Kate caressed the gearshift lever and twisted the key in the ignition. "Put your seat belt on, cookie."
The Jeep roared and leaped off in a cloud of sand and thunder. Kathy clung to the seat the way she had clung to Reese when he took her on the double Ferris wheel at the county fair.
Kate drove like a maniac, laughing as they fishtailed around curves and sailed airborne over chuckholes and washouts. The cigar jutted from the corner of her mouth, alternately emitting vast windblown clouds and waving as Kate chewed on it.
At the top of the V & T grade, Kate shifted down, and the Jeep's fat tires screamed as they grabbed the pavement of the main road to Silver City, the nearly abandoned mining town on the other side of the hills. They roared like a fire engine past the crumbling graveyard and the entrance to the old Fairman Tunnel. They sprayed dust at the Sutro Hotel and startled the mangy brown dog that lay in the sun on Main Street. When they skidded to a stop in front of Old Pete's Crystal Saloon, Kathy discovered that she was out of breath, and her fingers ached from hanging on so tightly. She wanted more.
"Come on. I'll buy you a drink," said Kate, clapping the flat-brimmed hat onto her head.
Kathy wobbled into the dark coolness of the saloon like a sailor who has just left his ship. Wooden ceiling fans stirred the dry air above her head. A row of slot machines stood against one wall. Shelves lined the other walls, crowded with bits of junk that Old Pete had collected-rocks with fool's gold embedded in them, broken arrowheads, rusty mill gears, and pieces of peeling harness. A jukebox played country music softly from a corner in the back. Kathy climbed onto a stool beside Kate at the massive oak bar.
"Afternoon, ladies. What'll it be?" said Old Pete, wiping his hands on his dirty white apron.
"Double bourbon, neat," said Kate.
"Uh…root beer," said Kathy.
Pete washed and dried two glasses. He smiled, revealing a mouth full of night, marred only by two brownish teeth. He contemplated Kate and Kathy with friendly eyes, which too many years of sun had made wet and milky. "Mother and daughter, right?" he said.
"Guess again," said Kate.
Pete puckered his thin, dry lips. "Sisters?"
"Yeah, something like that." She winked and picked up their drinks.
Kate led Kathy to a table where they could watch the wind blowing dust along the wooden sidewalks outside. Kathy gazed at her as she took off her hat and tossed it easily onto the seat of the nearest chair. Was it true? Kathy imagined two people standing in a mountain stream. Would water that had touched her ankles touch Kate's someday?
"Who are you…really?" she asked softly.
Kate rubbed her thumb across the ridges of the bourbon glass. In the dim light of the saloon, her eyes were black lakes. "I swear to you, this is the truth. This morning I woke up just after sunrise, and I got dressed, and I went for a walk in Central Park. I thought, I'm thirty-seven years old, and it's June twenty-first, and twenty years ago to the day, I almost jumped off a cliff. I would have done it. Except a woman named Kate stopped me."
She lifted the bourbon and took a long swallow. "I thought about how fine the morning sun always looks, whether I see it on a wild lake or a row of city windows. And I knew it was time to go back, time to find you. I just knew what to do. Someday you will, too."
Kathy sipped at her root beer. It was too sweet, and not very cold. But her throat cried out for something to soothe away the sudden dryness. "Central Park? That's in New York, isn't it?"
Kate smiled and nodded. She slipped her wedding ring off and slid it across the table to Kathy. Kathy picked it up. It felt heavy and warm and real. She closed her eyes and pressed the ring hard into her palm, trying to imagine a life that included things like Central Park and Manhattan and South American hats and a man who loved a woman who smoked cigars and carried a lavender silk handkerchief crumpled up in her pocket.
"Trust me, cookie," said Kate. "Your future is worth staying around for."
One tear, then another dropped onto the shining table-top between Kathy's hands. She slid the ring back to Kate. "Promise?" she whispered.
"I promise."
Kate finished her bourbon in a long, last swallow, stood up, and grinned. "People are waiting for me," she said. "Good-bye, cookie. Take care of yourself." She turned and walked through the saloon doors to the street.
Several seconds passed before Kathy realized that Kate had forgotten her hat. "Kate!" she shouted. "Wait a minute!"
She shoved her chair back, grabbed the hat, and ran outside. She squinted up and down the sun-bleached street. But the wooden sidewalks and the dilapidated buildings stood deserted in the dry wind. The old dog had not stirred from his place in the middle of the road. The Jeep had disappeared. And Kate was nowhere to be seen.
Kathy turned the hat over and over in her hands. It was made of heavy wool felt, flexible but sturdy. Grimy fingerprints darkened the brim where Kate had habitually touched it. Inside the crown she found a small leather sticker that said Producto de Buenos Aires in shiny gold letters.
Just for fun, she clapped the hat over her own short curls. It fit perfectly. It smelled like peanuts and cigars and sweet, green grass.
Kathy smiled and stuck her hands in her pockets, wondering how far away New York City was.
