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By chris Date: 2007 Feb 18 Comment on this Work [[2007.02.18.23.37.2759]] |
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In the arms of this man, as the Tucson monsoon raged outside the motel window, she forgave everyone everything. She forgave the bitch who took off with her ex-husband twelve years ago. She forgave that same ex-husband for asking her, when she came to visit him in the hospital after he took too many Tylenol PMs, if she thought that selfsame woman maybe cared about him now? She forgave the President for Iraq. She forgave the Myspace-addled, oversexed and undersupervised sixteen year-old chica loca at the Taco Cabana who left the green chile off her nachos and gave her the wrong change. The desert rain cleansed everything. She was safe and dry - but she could feel it cleanse her nonetheless. And she forgave. Over and over. "You saved me," she said. The man stirred. "Who?" "You. What's your name? I don't even know your name." The many tattoos on his strong arms - the Virgin of Guadalupe, others - looked black in natural late-afternoon light coming through the window. He laughed, as if realizing that for the first time too. But he didn't tell her his name. Later, she knew, she would weep over this. Alone. Where no one could hear her. Maybe her kids would be at school and she would tell her friends she had a salon appointment. Maybe she'd go out in the desert. Maybe at night when the coyotes would be howling and it would sound nothing like in the movies but like women sobbing. She would grow apart from her husband in a matter of weeks in ways that would have taken years. It would get bad and it would stay bad - before it got good again. She would almost forget that, once, she had been saved. |