you believe are the facts. Your belief in a fact does not make your belief factual.”
He could feel Sylvia about to Sylvia him, tie him in knots with his own rope. Sometimes he liked trying to escape but today he was not in the mood. Today he just wanted to find a safe place to sleep.
“So you still plan to go it alone?” she said. Sylvia had earned a doctorate in bullshit from years of bartending and she could read his mind about eighty percent of the time. “Then talk to Rudy Hefner. Him and his new girlfriend were in yesterday. They found a two-bedroom in Vegas, nine hundred square feet, only four hundred a month—and she’s paying half.”
Sylvia’s expression remained neutral, but it was not hard to imagine what she thought of that plan. Hefner was a big-bearded blowhard. His appearance at the Day Center meant his Gold’s Gym Groupon had expired and he needed a shower. He claimed to live off a trust account he’d set up with his earnings from an Alaskan fishing boat. It paid him enough never to work again, provided he found a woman with low self-esteem who would put him up when the weather turned cold. Spring through fall he retired to a box canyon hideout that everyone except Hefner called The Mansion. The Mansion was concealed amid rock fall on Park Service land and had somehow evaded detection by the rangers, which Hefner took as confirmation of his superiority and the general incompetence of the feds.
Isaac said he would think about it. He would rather find the place on his own.
He checked his mail on the way out. A Social Security form letter. A fundraising appeal from the hospital foundation. A cable company promotional mailing. A standard postcard stamped in red: Please Forward. If undeliverable or unclaimed after 60 days, return to sender. His mother had actually made a stamp so the forwarding looked official. Her handwritten message on the other side was invariably the same: Pray you are well. M
He signed for each piece and dropped them in the trash.
Despite so many homes on the market, buyers can’t find what they want.
—“Home” with Meg Mogrin, Grand Junction Style
A text buzzed in from Eve Winslow:
So sorry to stand you up. Coffee? Stop by shop at 10AM.
Meg arrived at ten knowing the shop might not yet be open. Mariposa, like everything in Eve’s life except the start of City Council meetings, operated on Winslow Standard Time. She would say, I’m a bird not a plane. In other words, clock time was an imposition upon natural forces like Eve Winslow.
Meg waited on an outdoor bench for the bird to land. The morning was pleasant, the street too quiet for shopkeeper comfort. A fountain splashed on the corner, and the trees along the promenade rippled with a promising breeze. A man with a covered cup of coffee came out of the bagel shop across Main and circled the patio, testing the metal chairs for stability, adjusting the umbrellas, sitting, rising, moving from table to table, finally selecting a seat. Slim and tan, with slicked-back hair tucked behind his ears, he might have passed as a beach bum if he were not so overdressed in a wool shirt, lined windbreaker and topcoat. He extracted a book from his daypack and dropped a fistful of sugar packets on the table.
Eve burst out with a bright blue Mariposa shopping bag in hand. Pressing fifty, Eve shared the high end of a decade with Meg but passed for a woman of the next generation. Too plump to dress from her own shop, she wore its finer accessories. Her short feathered and frosted hair made grey seem her lifelong color.
“God, I heard you were down there. You must be out of your mind! Amy Hostetter’s in a coma. The best I can say is, the police have two suspects. It doesn’t matter who they are. The headline’s Woman cop assaulted by bums in city park. My voicemail is already full of calls screaming bloody murder, demanding we drag every vagrant out of town or shoot them on the spot. How’s the house tour coming?”
They crossed the street to the bagel shop and passed the beachcomber, who was marking pages in a thick red notebook with empty sugar packets. A blue yoga mat jutted from the pack between his feet, which were clad in immaculate white leather sneakers that seemed sizes too large for his thin frame. His eyes, striking against his mahogany skin, were nearly the same Caribbean color as the mat. Catching Meg looking, Eve rolled her eyes.
“What have you got against Yoga Man?” Meg asked when they were inside.
“Yoga? Honey, please tell me you’re kidding. You’ve been on the Homeless Coalition for months.”
Yes, and she was in sales, after all, supposed to be able to read people, but she had been practicing trying not to judge.
The bagel shop had absorbed adjoining buildings as its success grew, while it retained features from previous incarnations. Furniture was mismatched, the walls decorated with a combination of local art, antique kitchen utensils and unplayable stringed instruments. It felt like a place where patrons could donate a beloved but runaway houseplant, and it hummed with the prospect of running into someone you knew.
Eve chose a table in the corner with a clear view of the entry. “Where do I even start? This attack came at a very bad time. The town is already up in arms about the parks being taken over. I’ve got council members who believe parks themselves are a drain on the city—property permanently off the tax rolls, ongoing maintenance costs, serving only a handful of citizens, most of them hippies and derelicts.”
“Hippies?”
“Not my word. Anyone who hangs out, throws a Frisbee. You know, people who like to walk. Anyway, it’s not as if our long-range plan for Las Colonias has gone anywhere. The city’ll spend dribs and drabs, but not enough. Funding to make it a true community asset has to come from outside—state gaming funds, tourism grants, environmental dollars—none of which goes to projects people are fighting over.”
Eve snapped a biscotti and dunked a half in her Americano. “Zack Nicolai was with you yesterday, wasn’t he?”
“Zack was fine. A big help, actually.”
“All he cares about is attention. The very last thing we need right now is to become mired in poverty politics with protests and lawsuits over squatters’ rights. The Betterment project is not going to look favorably at a city with an intractable vagrancy problem.”
“Betterment?” It sounded like a company run by the Quakers.
Eve lowered her voice. “You know we have interest from a company about relocating here, yes? It’s time you knew the rest. A Michigan company called Betterment Health is looking for a new headquarters site, but they have even bigger plans. I’m not going into it all here, and you should keep this to yourself until we announce. This is for you.” She took the Mariposa bag from the chair next to her and set it on the table.
“This town is stuck between the people who think economic development is putting out milk and cookies for Santa and the ones with long memories. Some never learn and others never forget. Remember how Sundstrand was going to revitalize the economy with its aerospace manufacturing? We’ve still got a damn street at the airport with their name on it ten years after they pulled out! But we can’t let naysayers stop us. Betterment’s project will be the biggest chance in our lifetimes to make a difference. I’m talking about you and me, homegirl, people with some vision. I’ve got enough trouble with the Tea Partiers. I don’t want to have to fight through commie piss ants like Zack Nicolai, too.”
Meg’s coffee tasted scorched. Had they given her the dark roast by mistake? “I can’t be your spy on Zack.”
