Swallowtail: “In the East, adults fly primarily in late spring and summer, but this butterfly is more common in late summer and fall in the South and Southwest. Where lack of freezing temperatures permit, the female adult may fly continuously. In lowland tropical Mexico, they may be found in any month.” – Encarta
Emerging abruptly from a deep sleep to respond to the insistent tone of his phone, Michael heard, “I miss you, Michael. I’m lonely for you. I’m lonely for Moses.” Her voice, a low purr, curled into his ear and sent blue electric currents crackling through his body.
“No, Janie, not again,” Michael struggled to keep the groan out of his voice. He got up in the dark from the rumpled king-sized bed and walked into the living room, his phone to his ear. He couldn’t bear to have her in his bedroom again, even on the phone. He turned on the lamp and slumped onto the couch. The cat followed him, stretching and yawning.
“What? Not again, what?” she asked.
“Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“I don’t know what your clock says, but I know it’s time for me to hear your voice, smell your sweet sweat, touch your warm skin, and roll up next to you in bed.”
“It’s 5 AM.”
“I want you here with me. I need to be close to you. Everything is good, but with you it would be great.”
“Funny, Moses and I had a long talk just last Sunday, and we decided to move on. We took every trace of you to the dump.” He reached across the coffee table and turned her smiling photograph onto its face.
“We can start over. I’m ready now. I found the right place.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m in San Diego this week, but the place is Santa Lucia. It’s a few kilometers south of Puerto Vallarta.
“You must be some kind of witch. You call just when I’ve reclaimed my life; when I finally decided I can live without you.”
“Oh baby, that’s….”
“No, Janie, I mean it. I’m not following you anywhere again. You left Memphis for Canyon, Texas, and I followed. When you suddenly up and left Texas, I followed you to McCall. When the tall pines of the Idaho woods smothered you, you took off again. I followed you here to Tucson, and this is where I’m staying. Trying to keep hold of you is like trying to catch mercury between your fingers. It’s impossible not to mention dangerous. I’m done.”
“Do you still have my paintings?”
Michael looked to both sides of the new tin mirror at the intensely colored acrylics. One was of a woman looking through an archway toward distant purple and rose-colored hills, stroking a green cat. The other showed a naked woman with long black hair astride a vivid scarlet horse galloping across a field of bright orange and blue poppies.
“No,” Michael said. “I replaced them with seascapes, the calm of crashing blue and gray waves.”
“My pictures might be worth something someday. I wouldn’t throw them out just yet. I’m in California for a one-woman show at the Smithson gallery in La Jolla. I have an agent. I’m selling prints to tourists in Mexico. I mean, really selling. I finally found the place I imagined and have been painting since I was twelve.”
“You found the place with purple mountains, red horses, and green cats?”
“Don’t be obtuse. Mexico is bursting with colors. And smells and laughter and…I’m home now. This is what I’ve searched for. Now all I need is you. You and Moses.”
Michael looked down at the big gray-striped tomcat that had been weaving in and out of his legs. Moses sensed he was the topic and flopped down on the top of Michael’s bare feet, his white mittened paws around his ankle, looking up at Michael.
“Moses isn’t interested in more travel. He told me he likes Tucson. I like Tucson. I’ve got a good job here.”
“You’re a poet, Michael. You are a poet who writes stupid technical manuals for a company that produces war machines for an oversized, out-of-control fascist government.”
“How do you know I still work at Raytheon?”
“Did you quit?”
“No.”
“There. Come to Santa Lucia with me. Poetry will fair drip from your pen. It’s magical. It’s cheap to live. And I’m making money now. Bring the trailer down. We’ll park it on the beach. We’ll eat mangos and shrimp. We’ll make love on the beach in the afternoon. We’ll play in the surf. We will…”
A momentary image of Jane, naked on a beach, nearly scuttled his resolve. He pulled back with a snap. “I don’t live in the trailer anymore. I sold it. I live in a real house.”
“You bought a house?”
“Well…lease-purchase.” He squinted out the window to the backyard, where dawn was beginning to streak the sky with pink and gray. “I have a yard, a saguaro, a lemon tree, and a brick wall.”
“Brick walls enclose tiny brick minds.”
Michael cringed a little. “If just once you had told me you wanted to move, we could have discussed it.”
“I didn’t need a discussion. I needed to leave. You would have planned and plotted. You are so anal. No sense of adventure. That’s what’s wrong with your poetry, too. You need Santa Lucia. It will break down all that shit in you and set you free. I was suffocating. By the time you made an analysis of our situation, I would have been dead. I didn’t know where I wanted to go…just away. It took me a while to find Santa Lucia.”
“Two years. Why did you call now?”
“It’s not two years.”
“Yes, Janie, it is. You left three Augusts ago, and it’s now September.”
“Clocks and calendars, calendars and clocks, tick tock, tick tock,” she chanted.
“Real world stuff,” he replied.
“Please, please come see me in San Diego, just for a day or two. I’ll be here this whole week and next weekend. It’s only a few hours’ drive, or I could pick you up at the airport.”
“Are you still living in the goddess-mobile?”
“Umm-hmm, mostly. But I have a studio on the second floor of a building in Santa Lucia. Its balcony overlooks the street, and I can see the ocean. Some days I paint outside, sometimes inside, depending on the light. I walk everywhere, so my rig stays parked by the beach. I’m sorry you sold the trailer. It worked so well in my daydream. We won’t both fit in the goddess-mobile long-term. We need more room than that. There’s a house not far up the beach from where I park that’s for sale. I’ll look into it.”
“Don’t bother. I’m not coming to Mexico.”
“I think you’re being too hasty. You should at least come for a visit. A teeny short visit. Then if you loathe it, you…”
“Hear me out. I’m not going to Mexico for a week, a day, or a minute. You can sell any dream to me if I give you enough time. Your time is up. I’m staying here. I’m happy, even proud, that you are selling your paintings. But you broke that last little piece of my heart when you left this time. I don’t have one to give you anymore.”
“There’s a marina too. We could buy another sailboat like we had on Payette Lake. Only we’d be warm all the time and could sail every day.”
“You’re not listening. I don’t care how beautiful it is. I don’t care how much you want to be with me. I don’t want to be with you anymore. I’ve broken the habit.”
“What happened to soulmates and undying love?” Jane asked. “You promised me you would forever be my family. Remember all those nights when I had the nightmares without end about when my parents died. You held me and told me you would never turn away.”
“You left me, remember? More than once.” Michael started to pace the kitchen, dining room, and living room with the phone to his ear.
“I didn’t leave you. I went looking for me, and unfortunately, I was always out of town,” Jane said. “But now I’m found. I promise I can stay put now.”
“Your promises aren’t worth much anymore. You promised that the desert would be your eternal home when you came to Tucson. Now you’re by the ocean for Christ’s sake,” Michael paused. “And I don’t speak Spanish.”
“You’ll pick it up. I did. It’s so musical, it’s easy.”
“The answer is still no,” Michael said. “I’m going to hang up now. Please don’t call me again. Have a nice life and congratulations on your success.”
Michael ended the call. He didn’t want it to ring again and, in his heart, prayed it would.
He couldn’t go back to sleep. It was Saturday, and he planned to play golf with Keith at 10:00. He fed Moses and let him out for his morning prowl. He shaved, got into the shower, and washed his hair. As hot water ran full force over his scalp down his back and legs, he let himself imagine lying beside Jane in the warm white sand with salty waves lapping over them, making love to her in the sunshine. He thought he heard the phone ring but when he turned off the water, he heard silence.
“Get yourself together, man,” he said aloud. She’s a figment of your imagination, a phantom. Just when you think she’s there, she’s gone again. It’s never going to work out.
wonkagranny 