Drowning Tucson (48 page)

She’d drunk vodka her entire walk and could barely stand by the time she arrived. The painkillers had kicked in and she stumbled onto the Mile just as the streetlights came on, stashing her vodka in a bush behind the Lone Star Lounge after taking one last swig, then making a drunken attempt to straighten her clothing and using all her concentration to go out onto the sidewalk, where she leaned against a streetlamp and tried to chat up men walking past. But no one responded. Every single person she propositioned ignored her. The streetlights made everything all smeary and distorted. The undercovers pretended they didn’t know her. She looks like shit, they told each other, which was a shame because it meant no more free ass since now no one would take a piece of her even if she gave it to them for free. Which was precisely
what she tried to do before the night was over, desperate for anyone to touch her, to tell her she was the hottest ass on the Mile. To call her beautiful or maybe just hold her and kiss her forehead. She managed to reach out and grab a man strolling past and told him just fuck me for free, and he looked at her, saw her bruises and her ill-fitting clothes and the cuts and stitches on her face, and a patch of hair shaved on the back of her head where a gash from the pipe had been sewn shut, and he told her you have to be kidding, right? You look like you were dragged through the desert by horses, and he squirmed out of her grasp and pushed her away from him and she collapsed on the ground and vomited onto the sidewalk, her body finally rejecting the mixture of painkillers and alcohol.

Everyone pretended not to see her. The other prostitutes couldn’t have been happier to see that Rainbow’s days on the Mile were obviously over, and they stepped over her as though she were a piece of dog shit and moved down the street in a group, away from the mess that was Rainbow, vomiting and crying on the sidewalk and begging for someone to just please fuck her, tugging at her pants, trying to take them off and just lie there with her legs spread so anyone who wanted a piece of her could come and take it. But no one stopped.

Finally Rainbow dragged herself back to her feet, then staggered to the Lone Star Lounge and retrieved her bottle, tipped it back and took a huge swig, then knelt down, her back against the dumpster, cradling her plastic jug on her lap and sipping for the rest of the night, whenever she remembered it was there.

By morning, when the Mile was quiet again and the jug was half gone, Rainbow realized she would be getting no business there, though she couldn’t exactly understand why people used to practically line up to have her and now no one would even talk to her, and so she gathered what little strength she had and decided to find a shady place to sleep. She walked slowly, sipping the vodka, which was getting harder and harder to lift to her lips. She stopped often, resting and getting out of the sun whenever she could. Each time she found a place that looked safe enough for sleeping she passed out for a few moments, only to wake shaking and clawing at the air and covered in sweat, dreaming the flood
more vividly and violently than ever before. After five attempts at sleep, each time having nightmares and grinding her teeth, she finally gave up and decided to keep drinking and walking. Something or someone would have to come along and save her. She just knew it.

It took her most of the day to make it to 4th Avenue, where she thought she might be able to beg some change or offer a homeless guy sex for a dollar or two. By the time she arrived most of the coffee shops and thrift stores were locking their doors and the bars and tattoo parlors were opening for the night’s business. She sat on the stoop of a women’s clothing boutique, her bottle between her legs, a solid buzz raging through her body, and looked at the beautiful dresses hanging in the window, wishing she could walk in and try one on, have the owner doting on her while trying desperately to make a sale. But the lights were off. The CLOSED sign was showing. And so she sat on the stoop, gazing at the colorful dresses and teetering back and forth. Smoking her last cigarettes. Waiting for the sun to go down. The red lights mocking her atop the tallest building downtown.

She ran out of cigarettes before midnight. Someone threw her the last of his own pack out of pity. Everyone else either laughed at her, collapsed there in the doorway of the boutique, in dumpy clothing, her eyes bloodshot and swollen, or they ignored her. She tried to talk, but nothing came out except for a grumbling hiccup. So she sat on the stoop, trying to focus on the dresses whose patterns were too complicated to make out because the vodka was swirling around in her empty stomach. She thought about food, but it didn’t interest her. The only thing she could concentrate on was the jug and how it took the pain away and set her atop a cloud that kept her safe from the world and the evil eyes blinking at her from downtown. She nodded off and dreamed of floods. Above it all the evil eyes blinked and watched her worthless life. She woke up.

The vodka disappeared as the sun began to rise. Rainbow held the plastic jug above her mouth, eking out the last few drops and wondering whether she could scrounge enough change to get more. She felt around for her pills, for anything to keep her buzz going, but they were gone. She had nothing. No money. No drink. No food. She needed to keep drinking. Anything to keep from sleeping because she simply
couldn’t take the nightmares anymore. And nothing was worse than seeing the flood and the lights and all the horrors of her Tucson nightmares, only to wake and have the first thing she saw be the red lights on the tower downtown. There was no escaping them. They were driving her insane.

Rainbow knew the owner of the beautiful dress store could show up anytime, so she gathered herself and went to the only place she thought she might get lucky and get a scrap to eat or a couple bucks for a drink—downtown.

The piercing Arizona sun made her sweat. She wanted to rip off her clothing and go for a dip in the fountain downtown, but people were arriving for work and there were more cops patrolling the business district, keeping the money flowing, making sure none of the homeless got out of hand or bothered the shoppers and working people.

Rainbow knew she probably looked like death walking and she could feel her injuries beginning to ache again now that the alcohol was wearing off. Inside the buildings people looked up from their desks or from behind their registers as she walked past in such bad condition they couldn’t believe she was capable of carrying her own weight, let alone managing to put one foot in front of the other. Her clothes were filthy, stained with vomit and dirt. At some point during her two-day binge she’d lost her shoes. To anyone who looked at her she seemed two or three times her age. Beaten, starving, half-drunk, Rainbow looked like she could go at any moment. Just fall over and expire right there on the sidewalk in front of them. That’s what each person who looked up thought, and they waited until she had passed, watching her slow progress, almost disappointed—though they’d never admit this, even to themselves—when she was safely gone from view.

Because she hadn’t had a drop since sunrise, when her jug had gone dry, Rainbow started to get desperate. She thought about going to the fountain and pulling out all the coins people threw in when casting for wishes. But the place was always being passed by cops on their way to the courthouse.

Opting not to bother with the fountain, Rainbow decided to relax on the grass of Veinte de Agosto Park. With all the other homeless there,
she would blend in easily and not be bothered while she tried to think of a way to drum up some money and keep her buzz going. It was so close to gone. A headache was starting to move in. She needed a fucking drink. Just one Cape Cod and I’ll be fine. Just pour the vodka right down my throat. Squirt some cranberry in there. No need to waste your glass.

Almost to the park, Rainbow passed the courthouse, where lawyers and jurors and the wives or mothers of men on trial avoided eye contact, walking an exaggerated arc around her, shaking their heads at her and elbowing each other and pointing with their heads at the waste of a human being right there, covered in puke and looking like some washed-up whore. Pathetic.

And that’s exactly how Rainbow felt. Pathetic. But she stopped off to rest on the freshly watered courthouse lawn, and it felt so soft and so cool. Far superior to the concrete tunnels or an alley on Miracle Mile or a doorway on 4th Avenue. She never wanted to get up. She wanted to lie there until she died, to just fall asleep and wait for the flood to finally come and bury her, but she heard the unmistakable thump of a cop slapping his nightstick on his palm, making his way toward the lawn to run off the vagrants, so she rose to her knees, blocking the glare of the sun with her hand, until she located the source of the sound. Sure enough a cop was making a beeline toward her and the other homeless people relaxing on the grass, taking a break from the sun for a couple minutes, so she stood and shook her head and said I’m leaving, I’m leaving, stumbling in the opposite direction.

She crossed the street toward the UniSource Tower, skirting around the front of the building where people lounged in front of the fountain smoking cigarettes and eating their lunches, gossiping and pointing at her, glad to have something different to talk about, tired of the whole day in day out routine of eating lunch with the same people, going back inside, pushing paper around, making phone calls, and earning a paycheck. The water fountain was a little too crowded, but she walked toward it anyway, dipping her hands into the square pool of water, resisting the overwhelming urge to dive in and retrieve the thousands of pennies and nickels and the occasional dime or quarter that littered the bottom of the fountain’s pool. Instead of diving in she dipped her hands
in the water again and ran them through her hair, brushing it away from her forehead and tucking it behind her ears.

She looked around at the businessmen milling about, wondering how many of them she’d been with. Or if any of them recognized her. Maybe she could get one of them to help her out. Tell him how she undercharged all those times and can you just throw me a couple bucks for a drink? She thought she recognized one standing with a few other guys, holding a briefcase and smoking a cigarette and discussing some merger or something, so she crept up to him and asked if he remembered her. You know me, I’m Rainbow. Remember? We went to the Congress a few times on your lunch break and had a good time. The pain in her swollen eye when she tried to give him her best sexy face made her wince. The men looked at one another, not even attempting to mask their disdain, and the man she’d talked to flicked his cigarette at her feet and said listen, bitch, I’ll be the first to admit I’ve fucked a hooker or two, even divorced one, hahaha, but you are one of the foulest women I’ve ever seen, and if you think I’d get anywhere near that bruised-up ass of yours, you have gone completely insane. Look in a mirror. I wouldn’t fuck you with Jared’s dick here—pointing at one of the guys, who started laughing uncontrollably then apologizing while he tried to get his laughter under control—would I, Jared? I’d rather fuck a pregnant black midget with one leg, videotape it, and show it at the office Christmas party than be caught dead with you. Now get the FUCK out of my face. All four men walked away, each of his friends slapping the loudmouth on the back.

She stood sobbing in front of the fountain, realizing that she’d never again feel the touch of a man, paid for or otherwise. If she was so hideous, what was the point? All she had ever had that made people want to be with her were her looks and her ability to drive men crazy. With all that gone there would be no money. There would be no food. There would be no more alcohol to make her pain go away. Her life had been rendered completely hopeless overnight, even more hopeless than before. She desperately wanted someone to call her his little pomegranate.

Any man would do, Rainbow thought, so when she walked across the street to Veinte de Agosto Park and saw the statue of Pancho Villa
on his horse, looking grizzled and strong, she climbed the statue, collapsing when she reached the top and slid into the saddle, her head against Villa’s back. She thought fuck it. I’m finished. They think I’m crazy. Let the cops come and take me away. I deserve to be locked up. There’s nothing more I can do. Let them pull me down and drag me to jail forever.

When she saw the lightning break across the sky, all the childhood lessons about staying away from trees and metal objects came rushing back to her. And there she was, sitting atop a bronze statue, in the middle of a park, just waiting to get struck down.

Rainbow lifted her face and watched the lightning splay its ragged fingers across the afternoon sky. She looked for clouds. She turned in the saddle, first one way, then the other. But nothing. Not a cloud. Just heat lightning. Nothing out of the ordinary. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, needing that freshly washed smell that sweeps in just before and right after a storm. The smell of cleansed air. The smell of new beginnings.

Rainbow waited. She sat behind Pancho Villa, admiring the handiwork of the sculptor who, despite the fact that normally no one would ever view Pancho Villa’s back, and certainly never his sombrero or his hair peeking above his shirt collar, had gone through the painstaking effort of carving each individual hair, hair that looked so real Rainbow couldn’t help but reach up and try to run her fingers through it. She stood up in the saddle and ran her fingers over the brim of Villa’s sombrero, feeling the superb craftsmanship of the weave. A fine, quality hat. One fit for a warrior. And the bullets on his belt, they looked like perfect replicas of the six-shooter bullets that had tamed the Southwest, the same bullets Pancho Villa and his men used in their countryside uprising. She rubbed the bullets with her fingertips. So real. She could pull one out if she wanted to. Borrow Pancho Villa’s weapon—I’ll bring it right back, I promise—and walk around town shooting the gun up in the air. No, she could ride the horse through the streets of Tucson, shooting off the pistol and forcing people to love her, why didn’t she think of that earlier? For the briefest moment, Rainbow knew what it would have been like be on the other end of the
rape. The one forcing someone to have sex with her at gunpoint. She felt a puff of power fill her chest like the first breath of the day, that first beautiful breath that you breathe when you realize that you’ve woken and lived through the night, another glorious day outside waiting to meet you. Yes, she could have been powerful with a gun, forcing people to realize how attractive she was. She and Pancho Villa could ride together, starting right here where El Hoyo had once been, and working their way west, shooting off their pistols and galloping through the streets, the sun on their backs and the wind blowing dirt from their faces and their tangled hair, until they reached the ranches lying west of the city, and then they could turn south and head toward the mission, galloping up to people and forcing them to love her right there beneath the shadow of the cross, then returning to the streets of Tucson, the very streets the horse’s shoes were tearing up beneath them, the same streets that would soon be overrun with rushing water and screaming people when the flood finally came and battered the city, chipping the plaster from the thousands of adobe homes dotting the cityscape, rain falling with such ferocity it whipped palm tree fronds down the street like clusters of plucked chicken feathers, the fountain overflowing and expelling the countless wishes cast into it in the form of pennies and nickels and dimes and quarters that spilled into the streets unnoticed by the people running in all directions seeking shelter from the storm, the sheets falling so thickly that people racing to safety would be nothing more than gray blurs passing at random, crashing into each other, tripping and splaying out on the sidewalks and being swept away from where they had fallen until they managed to grab onto a lamppost or a newspaper stand or a tree trunk or the bumper of a parked car, only to right themselves and then struggle against the wind and the rain even more, because in that brief amount of time it had grown even more powerful, thundering against the windows of Tucson’s skyscrapers, seeping beneath doors that opened constantly, spewing forth more and more refugees who entered businesses shivering and shaking, some crying, but most angry that they would have to wait in a steamy room full of strangers until the storm cleared, Rainbow could ride past it all, shooting off her gun and never looking
back at Tucson and those poor idiots, cowering beneath the dim lights of downtown lobbies, trapped by the flood and clutching at the arms of complete strangers for comfort, shivering and clustered in a mass of wet bodies and wide eyes trained on the river running through the streets.