The Enigmatologist (14 page)

“Oh, God! Gross,” Rosa said, laughing. “Al’s…No.
Definitely no.”

“Okay. That’s good to know, ‘cause that guy…” John shook
his head. “But, you need to level with me. You could be in real danger here. I
can’t help you unless you talk to me.”

“John, you’re sweet.” She put her hand on his. “There’s
nothing to tell. It’s probably a case of mistaken identity. Lee will figure it
out tomorrow.”

Rosa was hiding a secret world from John, one involving
herself and
Leadbelly
and the Air Force. And John
knew it. But right then he didn’t care. He should have been worried,
suspicious, but he wasn’t. He was just happy to be with her, sitting next to
her, inhaling her intoxicating scent.

And as he breathed in, the smells of the street, the
cooling asphalt, the ashtray next to the bench disappeared. Even the sounds
coming from the bar faded away and John heard his breath and nothing else, like
a bubble had formed around them, isolating them from the evening. And all he
could smell was Rosa.

His mind became cloudy, unfocused. Everything blurred.
Images became soft shapes. Everything except Rosa. She glowed. A red aura
surrounded her perfect frame. For a second, John froze, staring at her, and
everything felt right. Then the moment passed. His vision returned. Suddenly he
didn’t care about
Leadbelly
, the Air Force, the bar
fight. He just wanted to be as close to Rosa as possible.

“Yeah, you’re probably right. What do you say we get a
couple more drinks?”

“I have a better idea.” She leaned closer to John, her
lips near his ear, and whispered, “What do you say we get out of here?”

* * * *

Rosa
took the key from John and opened the door. Pink and green lights from the
motel’s neon sign mingled and blended on the carpet, forming a new shade that
would exist until the door closed.

It could have been the alcohol, or the nerves, or
something showing them the humor in two people who just met stumbling into in a
motel late at night, but they laughed as Rosa led him into the room. She turned
her head to her shoulder, giving him a smile that made him want to grab her.
John had sobered up a little, but not enough to feel self-conscious, and he
kissed her.

Rosa tossed her jacket and scarf on a chair. She slipped
off her shoes without untying them, kicking them away. She wore black
stockings, but wiggled her toes, gripping the carpet, playing with its tight
pile of fibers, moving her toes between them. She reached behind her back and
unzipped her dress. It fell to the floor, landing gracefully around her ankles.
She slipped her thumbs into the elastic bands of her black, thigh-high
stockings and started rolling them down her legs, exposing her smooth skin and
defined calves. She tossed her stockings over her shoulder like a basketball
trick shot, and stood before John in a black bra and matching underwear.

John grinned and giggled. Seeing Rosa in her underwear, he
was tempted to raise his arms, jump up and down, but restrained himself. It was
something he’d thought about all day, the shape of her body under her dress,
the way her skin felt. He thought about what he’d have to say to get her into
his motel room and out of her clothes. He kept thinking about the things they’d
do, but more importantly, he thought about how it wouldn’t be like the people
he’d photographed, the cheating husbands. He’d try to make it special. He’d try
to make it mean something.

She stood in front of the bed, her hands on her hips,
waiting for him to undress.

He lifted his leg and grasped his shoe with both hands,
trying to pry it from his foot. John lost his balance, hit the table, and
collapsed against the window. The lamp on the table rattled and almost fell. He
pulled off one Chuck, then the other, bobbling it. His shoe slipped from hand
to hand like a fish fighting to return to the water, before it flopped to the
floor.

Rosa smiled and shook her head.

She lifted John’s shirt over his head and ran her fingers
over his chest. Her hands found their way to his pants and she kissed his chest
and neck while she unbuttoned them.

John grabbed his pants waist with both hands and tried to
take them off while standing. His left leg got caught in bunched denim and he
fell forward onto the bed.

Rosa laughed and shrugged her shoulders as if to say,
‘That’s one way to do it.’ She tugged on John’s pant legs, helping him out of
them. She threw them behind her against the chair. John sat on the bed. His
feet didn’t dangle, but he shuffled them against the ground.

She reached for his boxer shorts, but started laughing at
the images of superheroes printed on them. Comic book characters flew into
action, looking for evil to thwart, damsels to save.

John told her they were his lucky boxers.

She agreed and straddled him.

He wrapped his arms around her, kissed her. He moved his
hands up her back, feeling for her bra clasp. He fumbled with it, trying to
remove the hook from the loop. It moved and folded and slipped from his
fingers, snapping against Rosa’s back. He apologized as she brushed his hands
away. She unhooked her bra on the first try. The straps slipped from her
shoulders and her bra dropped to the floor, getting lost with the rest of her
clothes.

Her breasts were everything John expected them to be.
Perfect. They were just the right size, not too big, not too small. One didn’t
hang lower than the other. The nipples weren’t pointing in divergent directions
or at odd angles. Stray hairs weren’t growing around her areolas. John’s eyes
grew wide and he smiled like a little kid getting his first bike at Christmas.

His hands moved toward them on their own, free of his
control, like hands were just drawn to breasts and must squeeze them in order
to fulfill something embedded deep in their genetic code.

Seeing John’s hands trapped in slow motion, Rosa laughed
at the power breasts have over men.

John wrapped his arms around her and rolled her onto the
bed, onto her back. Rosa stopped laughing.

He kissed her neck and she moaned. John felt her moving
underneath him. She battled with his superhero underwear, like she was trying
to uncover his secret identity, but struggled to pull them to his knees, and
John kicked them free. He took off her underwear, black and lacey, and gently
tossed it to the floor.

John slid himself inside Rosa. They moved together, almost
naturally, like they’d been together for years and instinctively knew the
rhythm of each other’s bodies.

When they were finished, he lifted the covers over them.
She faced him, smiling, and John scooted nearer and wrapped his arms around
her.

His first year in the dorms, the other guys talked about
sex in the fanciful notions of teenage boys, spoken in horny breaths in
whitewashed, cinderblock rooms, untenanted by mother and father. The dreams
accompanying a year’s supply of condoms, ribbed for her pleasure. Then he had
sex, once during his sophomore year, and then with a different girl on
graduation night, and it wasn’t what his friends said it would be. There was
the shame and guilt that came from a random hookup, the fear that he was bad in
the sack, that he wasn’t big enough, that she didn’t enjoy the awkward thrashings
of his skinny frame on top of her, but mostly he was afraid that these two
emotionless nights were changing him in some way, turning him into someone
distant and unrecognizable, the type of person who gave high-fives when he came
home Saturday morning wearing the same clothes he wore Friday night, bragging
about what he’d done to women, using terms found exclusively on the internet,
too raunchy for cable TV.

Lying next to Rosa, he heard those voices. But something
was different.

He didn’t feel the shame or guilt or fear. He felt peace.
Holding Rosa, her naked body pressed against his, John felt a level of comfort
and joy he’d never experienced before. It felt perfect, the skin of his legs
and feet touching hers, bellies brushing, arms wrapped around shoulders,
dangling across and gripping torsos, like pressing against each other under
low-thread-count, cotton sheets was the secret purpose of two naked bodies.

He held her tighter, feeling her heart beat against his
chest, her rib cage expand then contract. He kissed her forehead and she
sighed, nestling her head into his shoulder. Her body twitched, the involuntary
muscle spasm of sleep. She woke up for a second, lifting her head. John brushed
her hair with his fingers, lightly scratching her temple. Rosa, her eyes
closed, smiled and dropped onto her pillow.

He didn’t question why this time was different, what it
was about Rosa that made him feel this way. He just accepted it. And closed his
eyes, matched his breath with hers, and fell asleep, thinking he must be in
love.

* * * *

John
woke the next morning to the sound of someone pounding on the door, followed by
a pounding in his head.

“John! John! It’s Lee. Open up. C’mon, John! Open the
goddamn door!”

“Hold your horses!” John shouted, sitting up. He rubbed
his eyes with his palms, trying to wake up. Next to him, Rosa lay on her side,
the sheet barely covering her back. She grumbled something and rolled over,
draped her arm around John’s waist.

“Tell him to go away. Let’s just spend the day in bed,”
she mumbled.

“
Goddamnit
, John! Open the
door!”

“Let me see what he wants,” John said.

John grabbed his jeans and slipped them on. The chain had
been repaired while he was out and John opened the door as far as the new,
thin, aluminum security chain would let him. “Jesus Christ, what’s so fucking
important?”

“It’s
Leadbelly
. He’s been
murdered.”

A
thin sliver of Sheriff
Masters’s
cracked, leathery
face, highlighted by morning sun, anxiously peered through the opening of the
chain latched door.

“What do you mean
Leadbelly’s
been murdered?” John asked, groggy from sleep and a hangover. “We just saw him
yesterday.”

“John, just let me in,” the sheriff said.

Rosa scooped her clothes off the floor. John turned to
warn her about the sheriff, but smiled, her naked back disappearing as she
closed the bathroom door.

“Hold on. I
gotta
put some
clothes on.”

He grabbed a wrinkled t-shirt, unfastened the door chain.
The sheriff rushed past him, a dust devil depositing earth in carpet.

“Oh shit, John! I went by…What the hell happened here?”
The comforter and sheets were
pretzeled
on the floor,
kicked off and twisted together during the night. A tall floor lamp leaned
against the window. John’s hoodie was half-draped over the barrel-shaped paper
shade. Clothes lounged across the floor. The sheriff bent down at the foot of
the bed. He picked up one of Rosa’s green Chucks, laughed, asked, “Aren’t these
a little small for you?”

“What’s up with Al?” Rosa poked her head out of the
bathroom door.

John remembered her moving above him, her hair dangling in
her face. She flips it aside and smiles, almost laughs, before rolling over and
pulling him on top of her. That look in her eyes that is both remote and
immediate.

Rosa floated from the bathroom, tying her hair back. John
put his hands in his jean pockets, smiled and sighed.

“Oh, morning, Rosa.” Sheriff Masters touched the front of
his Stetson, a Western gentleman. “Don’t you worry about it none. We’ll figure
it out. I just need to borrow John from you.”

“Well, then I should definitely be going, let you two get
to work.”

“Wait? Going?” John hoped they’d get breakfast somewhere,
that she’d take him to her favorite diner and they’d get to laugh at how
awkward they felt as they ate their hash browns, eventually discussing how to
extend what they started last night.

“Yeah, John, some of us actually have jobs to get to.”

John narrowed his eyes, a little startled by her coldness.

Rosa put one hand on her hip, the other outstretched,
saying to the sheriff, “May I have my shoe, please?”

“Oh, yeah, sorry,” Sheriff Masters said. “Here you go.”

Sitting on the bed, Rosa tied her shoes, the final act of
dressing, transforming back into a cook. She wadded her stockings and scarf
into her jacket pockets.

“Sheriff, it was good to see you.” She glided over to
John. “John.”

“Let me walk you to your car,” John said, wanting a final
moment with Rosa. He hoped that the reason for her change in attitude was
because of Sheriff Masters and his news about
Leadbelly
,
and not something he had done.

“Sorry about the sheriff,” he said. Sheriff Masters stood
in the doorway, pretending not to watch.

“That’s alright, John. I understand. I need to get ready
for work anyway.”

They stood by Rosa’s car. The hot air dried the inside of
John’s mouth and he wished for something to drink and instantly remembered all
the beer he drank the day before and his head ached and stomach turned. The
taste of a bad hangover coated his mouth. And there was the guilt.

“Rosa, I
kinda
want to apologize
for last night.” John adjusted his glasses.

“For what?”

“Well, I’m leaving town soon and I feel like…”

“You don’t need to say anything.”

“I just wish things were different. That we were, I don’t
know…”

“John, it’s fine.” She wrapped her hand around his elbow,
started to massage his bicep, then turned toward her car. Her windows were down
a few inches, mitigating the morning sun.

John sniffed the air around her. He couldn’t help it. It
was his second favorite part about last night, becoming intoxicated by her
aroma. John hoped it would send him to some wonderland where he’d forget about
Leadbelly
and puzzles and would only think about being with
Rosa. But her scent was different, like their damp bodies, resting adjacent,
had diluted her aroma. Standing next to Rosa, John stuck to the asphalt parking
lot and suffered the heat from the sun, the responsibility to his job, the
conflicted dedication to his craft, and his desire to be with her.

“Maybe I could come visit you sometime. I could come down
on the weekends.” His hand twitched, about to reach for hers, but he suddenly
felt self-conscious and stuffed it in his pocket.

“You really are a sweet one, aren’t you? I made a good
choice with you. What happened last night was wonderful. So, stop worrying.”

“But what about us?”

“What about us? We’re both adults. Last night was
something we both wanted. Anyway, I need to go home before the big lunch rush.
Have fun playing with the sheriff,” Rosa said, tapping him on the chest with
the palm of her hand.

“Rosa, wait. I still feel like…”

Rosa clenched John’s shirt and kissed him. It was soft and
tender, reminiscent of the way she kissed last night. He felt eighteen years of
anxiety and frustration over empty puzzles, an absent father, and his stuttered
life melt away. Her kiss, the earnestness of it, made him feel like she was the
only thing that mattered. He melted into her, and wanted to be with her again.

She lingered for a moment, her face near his, lips
slightly parted with an almost imperceptible tremble. She released him, turning
her head and exhaling, her hand skimming his shirt.

She got in her car, rolled down the window, and said, as
if reading his thoughts, “Stop worrying, John. Besides, who says I didn’t take
advantage of you?”

As Rosa drove down the street, John touched his mouth,
rubbed his fingers together, awakening the memory of their night, the places
their bodies had pressed together, where he’d held her as they fell asleep, her
body twitching as she dreamed.

He’d probably never understand her sudden change. Maybe
that was just the way she was, passionate when it suited her, and distant the
rest of the time. But it didn’t matter. They had one wonderful night together,
one John would always remember. And suddenly the day seemed tolerable.

“John, you old dog, you!”

“What did you hear?” he asked, turning.

“Not much, but I saw her plant that number on you. I ain’t
never seen Rosa act like that towards a man.”

“Really?” John said, unable to hide his excitement.

“Yeah, really.
Lotsa
fellas
tried asking her out, but she turned them all down. You
shoulda
seen Jimmy tripping all over himself when she first came to town. So, tell me,
how was it?” Suddenly, John was back in the college dorms and his friends were
asking him for details, wanting to imagine themselves in his experiences.

“What? It was…I
dunno
,” he said,
walking back into the room, replaying his night and questioning his morning.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means what it means.”

He wanted to say it was one of the most amazing nights
he’d ever had, that he understood terms like ‘the one’, and thought Rosa might
be ‘it’, that he understood every love song ever written, especially the ones
from the seventies, played on late night radio shows
,
and how he might
call one of these shows and dedicate a song to her. He wanted to say that he
felt empty and agitated now that she’d left, and that he was worried that he
wouldn’t see her again and that his half-drunk memories of their night might
fade. He silently stared at the spot where she’d slipped off her shoes,
thinking that the sheriff didn’t want to hear how he felt, that he was only
interested in the explicit details.

“You’re not
gonna
say anything
about it, are you?”

“Nope,” John said.

“Well, just don’t go breaking her heart,” Sheriff Masters
said.

John smiled and looked away. The sheriff didn’t care about
the different positions they tried or whether or not John ‘hit it right’. He
only wanted Rosa to be happy.

But Rosa had left abruptly, like she’d realized sleeping
with John was a mistake.

“Might be the other way around,” John said. The bed where
they had slept was vacated, the sheets were wrinkled. “So, are you
gonna
tell me about
Leadbelly
or
not?”

“Oh, yeah,
Leadbelly
. Well, I
drove by his place this morning, just to make sure he’d high-tailed it outta
town. I saw his truck was parked out front. So, I walked up to his front door,
started knocking. As soon I hit his door, it went flying open. I started
calling, but nobody answered. It was all dark inside, so I turned on a light
and almost had a heart attack. Goddamn place was covered in blood. It was
everywhere, the walls, floor, everywhere. I ran back to my car, called Jimmy.
Told him to come out, secure the crime scene, that I was coming out here to
find you. This might have something to do with your dead kid.”

John didn’t want to get involved. Rosa was gone. He’d
never see her again. She only wanted to be with him for one night, nothing
long-term. He didn’t have any reason to stick around. As far as he was
concerned, the case was over. He just wanted to go home and work on his
puzzles.

“This probably has something to do with the two guys from
last night. The reporter was probably getting close to finding out something
about
Leadbelly
they didn’t want him to know, so they
killed him. Go talk to them.”

“Alright, let’s go talk to them.”

“Sheriff, I’d love to help, but I
gotta
get back to Denver, check in with Roof, file my expense report, do some other
things.” John pictured himself at his kitchen table, designing a crossword
about heartbreak, listening to songs about the emptiness of life.

“Now, look, I’ve been mighty kind to you, driving you
around and whatnot, treating you like a real high-flyer…”

“Sheriff, I appreciate that, but…”

“Let me finish.” Sheriff Masters stepped forward,
straightened himself, his presence filling the motel room. “Now, you caused
quite a commotion in my town, scaring
Leadbelly
,
putting that fella in the hospital. Now
Leadbelly’s
dead. Whether you like it or not, you got some responsibilities here. You got a
mess to clean up. Now, I can’t force you to stay. But this is one a those
moments, John. My dad used to call them character moments, where we get to see
what
kinda
man you really are.”

“What do you expect me to do? I just take pictures.”

“I expect you to put on your goddamn shoes and get in the
car,” Sheriff Masters said, pointing toward the open door, his car parked
outside.

When
Leadbelly
sped away from
the lumberyard, John assumed it was to a gentleman’s club in another part of
New Mexico, and John could go back to Denver, to his mom’s apartment, and build
puzzles at her kitchen table, ignoring her theories about his dad’s
disappearance. But someone had murdered
Leadbelly
.
And now the sheriff stood in John’s motel room, the scene of the best night of
his life, asking him to stay and help. He didn’t want to admit it, but part of
him was curious, and part of him was terrified. This wasn’t a video game or a
movie, the places where he’d encountered violence in the past. It wasn’t
entertainment. The violence was real. The two men last night had proven that.
And it scared him. He wanted to run back to the safety of his old life, to the
comfort of his routines and frustrations. It was one of the major patterns of
his life. He ran to puzzles when his dad left, he ran back home after college,
living with his mom, working for Rooftop, instead of penciling out his own
path, and now he wanted to run back to Denver. Aware of the urge to return to
someplace comfortable and easy whenever he became overwhelmed by the prospects
of hardship and growth, John made it item number seven on the list of things he
chided himself for during late-night reflective moments. However, since
checking into the Sagittarius Inn, something had shifted in him. He noticed it
just before the bar fight, and when Colonel Hollister had restrained him in his
motel room, the itch to act. Now he was feeling this impulse again, compelling
him to investigate
Leadbelly’s
murder. Besides,
Sheriff Masters was right. It was his mess, partly. John ran his hand through
his hair, groaned at being forced to grow up.