Chapter 26 Luis
LUIS
THE DAY AFTER HE FINDS the women, he paces the boardwalk, up and down and up and down and up and down.
All the stores sell the same things—T-shirts printed with pictures of neon sunsets, wire cages filled with sad, slow hermit crabs whose shells are covered with glitter and painted designs: baseballs, moons.
But at one of the shops, above the crabs, a row of cameras hangs from plastic hooks, the disposable kind in a bright yellow wrapper—his grandfather used to bring them along on their crabbing trips, or take pictures of Luis and his grandmother on the porch, his grandmother giving him a silly poke in the cheek so that he would smile, and in a few days Luis could hold the glossy images, feeling like a piece of himself was now kept safely inside.
He chooses a camera from the display and brings it to the counter.
He tries to control the shaking in his hands when he passes his money to the clerk.
He know he’s taking a risk, knows what will happen if this goes wrong.
Men in black boots kicking down his door.
The cops who laughed at him, coming to pick him up, cuff him, haul him away.
He thinks of more words. WOMEN, HURT, KILLED.
They are the truth, but how little help they would provide him.
How little they convey. And still, he knows he needs to try.
The women are there every time he closes his eyes.
He jumps at every touch, every person who passes by a little too close, every bird that swoops above him on the boardwalk, flapping its wings in a craze.
He waits until he doesn’t have to go to work and leaves early in the morning, when the sun has just edged over the ocean and sits low in the sky.
The tips of the reeds are pale gold. He takes photos of the motel sign, the sunset that lights up one ray at a time, the parking lot to its right, the swath of marsh he cut through before.
He will have to photograph his path without capturing his footprints—he hopes the police will still be able to find the way. He hopes it will be enough.
His stomach starts to flutter and twist the farther in he steps.
In every breath he takes, he swears he smells it now, tastes it: The flesh.
The decay. It’s in his lungs, a part of him.
He covers his mouth with his shirt, takes a photo looking back toward the motel, to show its size in the distance.
He knows he must be close now. The mud has started to creep up his boots, sticky and thick.
He takes one more deep breath to prepare himself. Mud, bodies, grass, salt.
Will it be worse? he wonders, before he parts the segment of tall reeds that hid the clearing. Will it be worse, the second time, knowing what’s there?
It is. It is worse. What he sees makes him drop the camera, makes him run faster than before, as fast as he can.
Another girl. A fifth. Her eyes are still open. And they, too, are looking right at him.
This time, when he leaves, the rage takes over.
It has tightened around his brain. He feels it spread down his spine, pressing on every inch of his skin.
He kicks walls, dumpsters, cans. He buys another camera, but when he thinks about going back again he can’t, can’t face it, can’t get over his fear, his shame.
The plastic feels so small, like a toy, and he stomps the new camera under his feet, rips the film between his hands.
He feels, more than ever before, the limits of who he is like a cage, a shrinking room.
Though there is another way. He could draw it, he thinks.
The way his grandmother taught him before he started school.
He closes his eyes and wills himself, for a minute, to think about her patient hands, the way she guided him into making images of milk cartons, sandwiches, red apples, butterflies.
Innocent, simple, beautiful things. She always seemed so pleased by his work, kissing him on the head when he finished pictures of dinners he hoped to eat, pictures of places he thought she might like to go.
He had liked breaking down the world that way, into line and color and shade and feeling.
Pictures came easier than words, which always felt cold and barren no matter how many he learned.
He starts with the easier parts—the sign with its setting sun, the letters he remembers: the letters that could be the name of the place, VACA CY, the square building perched on the edge of the road.
Then, grass bending in the wind, the thick, dark mud.
He comforts himself by drawing a heron in flight, putting off the work he knows he has to do next.
That hair, tangled with muck. Those open, staring eyes.
He sketches the outlines of them first: their hands, their bare feet.
He knows it’s not important to the meaning of the drawing, but he feels he owes it to the women, to take the time to outline all fifty of their toes.
He hadn’t thought about what he might do with it, who he will show it to.
He won’t take it to the cops, who could easily choose to misunderstand.
Not his landlady, who had once been a friend of his grandmother’s—he could never show such a horror to her.
Not the girl with the red hair, who looked at him with such hatred, such fear.
Maybe at work, though, there is someone who will listen.
Not the girl with dark hair—he still wants to show her the note he wrote for her—I SEE—but this would only confuse her, get in the way.
Maybe the blonde woman who helps him with supplies, the one who everyone listens to.
He wonders what he will do if she gets angry, or sad, or afraid, or even calls the police.
But he thinks that, of anyone he knows, she might know what to do.
He folds the drawing until it’s small enough to fit in his pocket, next to his matches.
Another secret he’s forced to wear close to his skin.
THE BLONDE girl smiles at him when he comes in the next day, then points to places he needs to clean—dust on the counters, dirt on the floors.
He still feels that same buzz of energy and worry from everyone around him, everyone moving quickly, as though there is some emergency, something gone wrong.
He spends the first half of his shift performing his duties with more care and attention than ever before—he knows he needs to win her, to earn her trust, before he asks her to see, to know what he knows.
Sometimes the women creep into his mind, and he feels himself about to get sick again.
The water in the dirty mop bucket reminds him of the color of their skin and he runs to the bathroom and heaves.
He waits until she’s alone at the desk, one hand fiddling with the shining cross at her neck.
Her gesture reminds him of the women—their bracelets and necklaces flashing in the sun.
He takes the drawing from his pocket and unfolds it slowly, as though it could bite, and holds it in front of her.
She glances at it, then looks at his face, frowning.
He expects horror, anger, but she makes a face of disgust, like she stepped in a piece of dog shit.
She turns to watch a woman approach the door and widens her eyes at him, nods her head in the direction of the back hall.
No. He stands there, feeling injured, until the blonde points, her mouth making hard, angry shapes.
As he steps away, he crushes the paper back into his pocket, watches her switch on a smile for the woman who’s come in the door.
After that, his only comfort is the matchbook in his pocket.
A few times during his shift, he steps outside to strike a match, lets it burn down until he feels a sting on his fingers.
The craving for heat is huge, total. It fills him up, hollows out where other things used to be.
But every time he closes his eyes, he sees the women again.
Arranged, as though they are animals who have been hunted.
In the back hall he tears the drawing into strips, feeling a rack of guilt as he looks at the ruined picture, the tears like additional wounds to the women’s bodies.
He shoves the scraps into the garbage near the coffeemaker, pushes them below the wet coffee grounds and greasy napkins and orange peels.
There are two more hours left on his shift, but for the first time in his life, he cuts out of work early.
It shocks him, how easy it is. To simply walk across the parking lot behind the casino, past the dumpsters filled with the waste from the buffets: half-gnawed cobs of corns, the bones of rotting fish, a thousand crumpled paper napkins dark with grease.
Past the marina, a few motorboats tied up, bobbing alongside the docks, and the overgrown bushes near the valet.
The day feels both damned and filled with renewed potential.
He can’t save those women. Their open eyes will follow him wherever he goes.
But he can set a fire, a signal. Something larger, more ruinous than ever before, that will show everyone just how cruel, how ugly and wrong this city has become.