The Road to San Francisco

It was understood from the start that the marriages were never to be consummated. That was the whole point, really. All the same, four months ago, on a cold November day, I walked into my lover's apartment to find her making love to her husband on the kitchen table. Adam's a botanist, so every room of his place looks like a rainforest, and on the table between the pots of orchids, and under the verbena and fuchsia and God-knows-what hanging above, they were fucking.

He was on top and I could see his pale pink ass heave between her legs with every thrust. Red fingernail tracks criss-crossed his back like a city map. Lillian's cries stopped, and I thought she had spotted me.

Instead, she was launching into an orgasm. Just before Lil orgasms, she goes silent and her whole body clenches up against you, until she starts shaking like she's being ripped apart, screams your name in your ear, and comes. It scared the hell out of me the first time it happened. She had always told me that I was the only one who could do that to her.

I didn't want to make any noise at first, just to withdraw and rethink, and more than anything, cry. I felt like I could cry for a hundred years. But actually seeing them was too much. I had been holding groceries, a surprise lunch for Lil, stuffed shells with a tomato and olive sauce. The steel cans hit the tile floor and Adam jumped like I had shot my pistol over his head. Too far gone to stop, Lillian came, screaming his name. Adam pulled out and spun to face me. Lillian took a moment longer to catch up, but even without her glasses, her eyes could focus enough to make me out. She sat bolt upright, horror spreading across her sweaty face. For a long moment, the only movement was the wobbling of Adam's erect penis. It would have been funny, if you saw it from outside and weren't in love with anyone in the room. He wasn't wearing a condom, and was slick with Lillian's juices.

'Bitch,' I said, and she must have seen it in my eyes, because she yelled, 'Wait, Anne, stop!' even before I moved for the Colt. It jumped from my holster to my hand like it was spring-loaded. They weren't kidding at the Academy when they said that we were getting reflexes for a lifetime. Adam's eyes bugged, the closest I've ever seen to his calm cracking, but a .45 caliber pistol has that effect on people. I looked him right in the eye for a moment, then popped the clip, sending it skittering across the tiles. I worked the action to show them that the chamber was empty and put the gun on the counter next to me. 'So I don't get tempted,' I said. Lillian's eyes circled the kitchen for something to cover herself with, but there wasn't anything except plants. Their clothes were all behind me. Her hands fidgeted helplessly around her glistening pubic hair.

Adam didn't even have the decency to look embarrassed.

'Ok, Anne, just calm down and let's talk,' he said, taking a step forward. For a man with his cock waving in front of him, he summoned an impressive dignity. I took the riot baton out of my pocket, snapping my wrist so that it telescoped out to full length. Adam put his hand out. 'No, I'm keeping this,' I said. I swung blindly to the right. A clay pot shattered like a grenade, red petals splashing over the counter like blood. Adam winced and closed his eyes, but then Lillian was between us. 'It was me,' she said, still panting.

'It was both of us,' he said behind her, but she ignored him, staring deep into my face. Her cheeks were flushed and sweat had mussed her hair out into a dark halo. 'It was me,' she repeated. She had forgotten her nudity now, or at least was ready to use it to her advantage. She's the glamorous one, four inches taller than me, and when she stepped forward her body filled my vision. 'It was a slip, a stupid slip, and it won't happen again, and I love you.' She took another step forward and her long fingers closed over my biceps, and even though I could no longer see it, I was achingly aware of her wet vagina across from mine. I had to fight back the urge to take her in my arms. I looked away, angry and embarrassed for all three of us. 'For God's sake,' I said, 'cover yourself.' I pulled away and handed her a flowerpot.

* * *

The whole time I've been writing this, Frank's been tossing and turning, and he just made a big show of coughing. I guess the light's bothering him. He can go to hell.

Tonight's motel room looks identical to the last, leaving me with the disturbing feeling that I haven't moved at all. I'm lying here on faded, stained red carpet staring at a print above a bolted-down television. It's a landscape, a couple of wooded hills, a clumsy attempt at impressionism that just makes the picture look out of focus. I think the same print was hanging in the last room, but I'm not sure. Maybe there's a company that sells these to motels in bulk. The carpet looks the same as last night's, too, but I could be remembering wrong. Last night, I had the bed. Twelve hours of driving, and only as far as Toledo. Highway travel goes a lot slower when you can't afford to be noticed. Not that there's likely to be an APB out for us, but why take stupid chances? Frank never got an American driver's license, so it's just me behind the wheel.

I haven't been on a road trip this long since before the marriages, when Lillian and I went to that conference in Florida. Though my ex-colleagues would be more likely to call this a 'flight to evade prosecution' than a 'road trip.' Lillian presented her paper 'Ducking the Death Camps: The Quiet Lesbian Renaissance of Wartime Germany,' the same one she got published later that year, the one that made us think that she'd be able to work her way into a permanent position after all. When she got back from her talk she told me that none of the other professors' papers sounded interesting and that we might as well spend the last four days on the beach. We walked along the ocean every night ('the ocean I crossed to be with you,' she'd say), letting the surf run up over our feet. One night, I felt something hard move under the ball of my foot and pain slicing across my toes. I hopped backwards on one foot, swearing, and in the moonlight could just make out the big pancake of a crab scuttling back to the ocean. I dropped hard into the wet sand, pulling Lil down with me. 'Hey!' she protested, rolling over on top of me so we were face to face. Her hair fell around me in a black curtain of moonlight, her breasts dangling just above mine. Then in a whisper, 'Hey you.'

'Crab got me,' I said. She shook her head, brown eyes wide with pity behind the thin black frames of her glasses. Still up on her hands, she slid backwards, slowly, letting her breasts brush down the length of my body through their thin covering of lycra.

'I'll check it out.' Nothing's sexier than an English accent speaking to you that close, that quiet. I trembled and dug my fingers down into the wet sand.

'It's not bad,' she reported from my feet. 'I don't think it's bleeding.' She lifted the foot in one soft hand, wiped the grit off with the other, and touched her lips against the raw wound.

And now I'm crying.

I should have known better at that first dinner, should have spit out the cheap spaghetti and walked away from the table. But I didn't. If Frank ever makes a good impression, it's his first. Polite, always smiling, and above all, handsome. Classic 'Latin lover' looks, but big, with the kind of muscles normally reserved for Greek statuary. Not that I've ever touched them, or even really been tempted to, except maybe out of spite. But some kinds of beauty transcend orientation. Frank's got all of them. Adam, on the other hand, is pretty easy to make as someone who works with plants all day, even before you know he's a botanist: quiet, lean, and deliberate. Frank (Frederico then) was doing most of the talking, little conversational jabs to feel us out, everyone too nervous to mention the ad at first. I let Lillian do the talking for us, and watched both of them, yes, but mostly Adam, where he sat staring back with those cool blue eyes, chowing down on a steaming plate of ziti. Natural. Steady, even when we explained to them that I was in law enforcement. I trusted him on the spot. I didn't know then that he was bi. Lil didn't know that she was either. Funny how life works out. So it wasn't until Frank went job-hunting that I started to understand what a disaster we had created. He spent weeks chasing down every ad he could find, but to American bosses, a Peruvian botanist's just another immigrant gardener with bad English. This was when he started going by Frank, thinking that it would improve his chances. It didn't. He even got turned down by some lawn-mowing services in the suburbs. About that time he started living off of macaroni and cheese and Ramen noodles like a college kid, just so he wouldn't have to call Adam for more money. Usually I offered to share my dinners, but he always turned me down. 'Still better than we eat sometime in Peru,' he said, grinning. But the levels of my liquor bottles started to drop.

Then one night, coming home late, I opened the door to the apartment and smelled gore. I don't mean that stink you get around a murder scene, or some kind of rot, I mean gore. Blood, guts, rent flesh. There's no way to describe it unless you know it. I knew it. I used to smell it rolling off my father at dinner after he worked all day at the slaughterhouse. It's the reason why I'm a vegetarian. From the kitchen, I could hear the chock chock of a knife on my wood cutting board. I took a few deep breaths to try to calm down, but it was like inhaling pork chops. I stepped slowly around the corner. Frank had two sirloins bleeding on my cutting board and was slicing the fat from their edges. He turned, white teeth flashing in a grin. 'Hey, I...'

'You fucking prick.' The smile fell satisfyingly to pieces. 'I've got a nose. I know you've got a job, and I know where, and get that meat out of my apartment.' 'I'm sorry for the smell. I didn't have stuff with me today to clean.'

'I mean it,' I said, my stomach churning.

'I can't believe you could bring those in here after what you must have seen today.'

'Hey,' he said sharply, dark features darkening still more.

'That's not easy work, ok? You try cutting meat off the bone for eight hours and see if you like it, ok. I feel like somebody's cutting me with one of those knives.'

He stretched his right shoulder. I could see the blisters bubbling up on his palm like furious red mushrooms.

'Then.'

'Manuel, the hombre next to me, training me, went to cut the stomach of the cow, it kick him right in the face. Hanging from a hook, half its fucking skin gone, still alive, still meuhing. The guy who was suppose to be shooting them at the start of the line fucked up and let one past. Broke Manuel's jaw. They say it happen all the time.'

Frank picked the knife back up and resumed cutting. 'I earned this steak, ok?' He smiled again. 'Besides, I get one for you, too.'

I shook my head. 'Not in my apartment.' He ignored me and fumbled at the bottom of the stove for the broiler handle. A moment later it slid free, squeaking with disuse.

'I'm serious, Frank.'

He straightened up. 'Well,' he said, face sparkling with what he must have thought was charm, 'the way I figure it... now that I'm going to be paying half the rent... that makes it our apartment, verdad.'

I broke the rules and spent the night over at Lillian's that night. I didn't know where else to go. We lay talking in the dark for hours, a bottle of wine between us on the bed, but in the end there was nothing she could really say. I couldn't leave Frank without putting us all in jeopardy. Reality hit home like a jail door clanking shut. I was trapped. Just now Frank came back out into the room wearing nothing but the shower steam that followed him. He saw me wince and flashed a grin.

'Sorry,' he said. 'Didn't have time to pack any pajamas.' He slid his hairy legs into a pair of green boxers. He didn't put on a shirt. 'Are you sure you don't want the bed tonight?' he asked.

'Just go to sleep.'

'Not very nice talk for our anniversary.' I can't believe he remembers it. For a man who spent two years hacking up cows, Frank can be a real sentimentalist. I didn't look over. The last thing I needed was to get into a maudlin conversation with him about what had gone wrong. I felt his eyes on my back, waiting for me to turn, but I stared resolutely into the fuzzy landscape. A few months ago I could never see a picture like this without picturing Lil and I in it, some day when we were free.

Finally Frank clicked off the lamp.

'Happy anniversary, Senora Sanchez,' he said in the darkness.

I hate it when he calls me that.

* * *

This is the third night I've sat down to write this and the third night I've thought about how stupid I am to be doing it. I'm turning into one of those suspects we always laughed at, the kind that forgets his wallet at the crime scene or keeps a map to her husband's body in the bottom of her underwear drawer. But it also gives me a way to talk all this out that's not Frank. If I tried to talk to Frank about this, I'd probably end up shooting him.

What to do with the Colt is actually turning into a serious problem. It's an expensive gun, and I didn't mean to abscond with it. It was locked in my glove compartment when we ran and I didn't think of it until it was too late. Dropping it at a branch office or police station is too risky for us. Mailing it back would give them a postmark, and I don't think the post office would appreciate it either. So Frank and I become 'armed and dangerous.' A Bonnie and Clyde for the new millennium. At least no headlines have popped up yet. I figured the agent-gone-fugitive angle would make some news, but maybe the Bureau's keeping a lid on it somehow. Or maybe no one really cares. Every time I sit down my thoughts turn back to Lillian. Like a vulture, circling over a carcass. I drive for fourteen hours across three states, cross the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains, and at the end of the day, all I've seen is her. Lil's the kind of woman who's at the center of the room no matter where she was standing. The kind of woman an ordinary dyke like me should know better than to ever get involved with. That hair, that accent, those endless legs. She could make me do anything, and she knew it, too. But she didn't, except once.

Except the ad.

'It has nothing to do with you,' she told me again and again, after that day in the kitchen. She usually laughed as she said it, not out of cruelty but because she simply couldn't understand why I felt threatened. It was like arguing with a fairy, or a space alien, someone who's got no sense of how humans work or what makes us afraid. She'd even kiss me as she said these things, in between words. 'I love you. I want to spend my life with you. I want to spend every last second that I can with you. But if I can't be with you sometimes then it doesn't mean I love you any less if I spend that time with someone else.'

I disagreed.

'He's no substitute for you, love. It's not even the same anatomy.'

That, I told her, was half the problem.

'I wish you would talk to Adam about this. It sounds so natural when he explains it.'

Adam and I used to be friends but now we hardly ever spoke. At least, I hardly ever spoke to him. He continued to act as if nothing had happened, or as if what had happened was nothing. 'If you and Frank did something, you know I wouldn't care.' I shuddered at the thought. Frank knew about Adam and Lillian, but he just thought it was funny. 'This is your hang-up, you know. You're the one who's saying this isn't ok.' True, but not helpful. Our lovemaking had always been rough but now things hovered on the edge of violence. I couldn't stand her but I couldn't push her away. Sometimes when I'd go down on her all I could think of was Adam's cock sliding in and out of the same hole and I'd want to throw up. One night she screamed his name as she came. I slapped her across the cheek, hard.

After we finished, she apologized, but I barely listened, looking at the ceiling and thinking of blood. It was easy. The apartment still reeked of it every time Frank came home. At least he had stopped telling me stories about the cows. That bothered me a lot, thinking about the cows. When I was a kid, I used to get really upset about the idea of what would have happened if I had been born a cow. I had only vague ideas of how my father's job worked, but it was enough to give me nightmares of him caging me up and hacking away my arms with a cleaver, or a saw. Whenever the smell got bad enough in our apartment, I thought of that.

Then Tuesday night Lil shook me awake with the real bombshell.

'I have to talk to you.' I lay still and quiet. 2:23, the clock flashed. 'I have to talk to you,' she repeated. I had rolled away from her in my sleep and I stayed turned away, determined to play it cool. A web of frost covered the window and I watched the moonlight flicker along its strands. 'Are you awake?'

'Yes.'

'I have to talk to you.'

'Ok.'

'You're not going to like it.'

'Ok.'

I looked at the darkened windows across from mine. A young married couple lived there with their two little blond kids, but they were all asleep now, so we could leave our blinds open for a little while. 'I'm pregnant,' Lillian said.

Once when I was little I had been running through a playground when I cracked my head on a balance beam and found myself flat on my back, blood trickling down my forehead. All I could remember was running through the mulch and laughing, and then I was down. Finally I found the blood and figured out what had happened. That's what this felt like. The only difference was that on the playground, I cried.

'I want to keep it. For you and I to raise. Once it's safe for us.'

His child. My life was being ripped from my hands. I almost got up and walked out of the room. You'd better be gone when I get back. The words chimed melodiously in my ears and I thought they'd sound pretty good out loud, too. But the only things that waited for me outside that door were domestic bliss with Frank, or jail. 'I'll think about it,' I finally said.

'Do you want me to go?'

I just kept lying there, and she stayed, hand stroking my side.

I thought about it all night, long after her hand slipped down my back and into sleep. I thought about Adam and I thought about violence. I thought about a baby boy with Adam's face, seeing it every morning and every night. An hour later I was thinking about places to hide bodies. I tried to stop myself but I kept imagining the Colt exploding in Adam's face, seeing him topple like a snipped orchid. The smell of blood was everywhere. I thought about the night that I came back to the apartment --our apartment, then-- and found Lil with her head down on the kitchen table, sobbing. In front of her was a letter from one of the state universities, her last chance at a job. Next to the letter was an unopened envelope from the INS. She burned that one later, I think. We stayed up till dawn that night, like it was the end. When I came home the next day I found her sitting in the same chair, but this time, she was smiling. She had a magazine propped up on her crossed legs, one of the gay/lesbian 'issue' magazines she was always reading. I never cared about the political side of it, really, as long as I had her. 'Love,' she said. 'I think I've found the answer.' She handed me the magazine, open to the classifieds. At the bottom of the page she had circled with a thick red marker: Foreign/American gay couple seeking foreign/American lesbian couple for mutually beneficial arrangement. Must be willing to move to New York.

Are you kidding? I almost said. Then I looked up and saw her eyes. 'I'll think about it,' I told her. That time, I said yes, and ended up chained to Frank Sanchez. I rolled over and stared at Lillian's stomach.

She didn't say how long she had known, but she wasn't showing yet. I put my hand on her stomach and she murmured sleepily at the touch. She felt the same as ever. I thought about the fetus in her womb and my Colt in its holster and I thought about Adam's face exploding into red.

Finally I realized that I had a better weapon than the Colt. I had a badge. Outside, the sun was coming up. I spent my lunch break that day with Adam's supervisor at the greenhouse. His boss was a heavy, shaggy-headed man in overalls who seemed ill-adapted to the greenhouse's jungle temperature. He sat at his desk and sipped a Coke as I asked him a few questions about Adam's work habits, about visitors, about Lillian.

Yes, he worked hard, no, they had no complaints, no, she never called or came by. Finally I dropped the heavy ordnance. 'Are you aware that Mr. Claybourn is participating in a sham marriage to illegally naturalize an immigrant?' No, he hadn't been aware. His eyes narrowed as he swept a hand across his sweaty forehead.

'Or that he is carrying on a homosexual liaison outside of this marriage?'

No, he certainly hadn't known. But he did now. His hand dropped down to a Bible on the corner of his desk, like a man taking an oath in court. I don't think he realized he had done it. I asked him not to mention my visit, and left him my card. When Adam came back to work that afternoon, he found two weeks' pay waiting for him, and an invitation not to return. That was Wednesday. I didn't see Lillian for the next three days, as per our usual schedule, we didn't want the neighbors seeing the wrong people coming and going every morning. I felt a cold satisfaction at getting Adam fired, but it didn't make Lillian any less pregnant. And so I kept worrying. Saturday afternoon the phone rang me out of a nap.

'Hello?'

'Love.' Lillian, whispering. I sat up. 'They've found out.' My eyes flicked down the hall to where Frank was watching television. 'They just arrested Adam.' In the background I could hear a pounding, and very distantly: 'Open the door, Mrs. Claybourn.'

'Get out,' she whispered.

'We're kicking it in, ma'am.'

'I love you, Anne.'

I started to say it back. I wanted to say it back. But the words moved through my throat like molasses.

'I...'

I heard a crash, and a click. I hung up the phone, my heart jumping like a skipping record.

'Who was it?' Frank called. I didn't answer. If they had come for Lillian and Adam, they had to know about me and Frank, too. Just a glance at the phone records would have told them where to find us, and if they had caught Lillian on the phone, they'd know that we had been warned. I got off the bed and started for my closet, thought better of it and headed for the door. I could always buy clothes on the road. Frank intercepted me in the kitchen.

'Is something wrong?'

'No, no,' I forced a smile. 'I just realized I left something at the office.' I snatched my purse off the counter without looking and went out the door. I took the stairs, hoping INS would take the elevator. Frank caught up with me on the street as I fished through my purse for my keys, almost at my car. 'What's going on?' he asked, catching my arm. A couple of lies jumped to my lips but then I caught his eye.

'The INS got Lillian and Adam. They're probably on their way over.' I expected a long string of Spanish cursing, but instead he just stared at me, his mouth open a little bit. I realized that as hard as it was going to be for me, it was going to be even worse for him --weak language, not much money, no car, no friends. 'I'm sorry,' I said, and I meant it.

'Take me with you.' That brought me back to my senses.

'No, I'm sorry. Just get out of the city as quick as you can.' I hurried the last few steps to my car, still ransacking my purse. He didn't follow. When I glanced back at him my keys were dangling from his hand. 'You forgot something,' he said, teeth flashing.

We've stopped at Salt Lake City tonight, which means we should reach San Francisco by tomorrow afternoon. In protest to the national law, San Francisco has declared itself a city of refuge for gay couples with expired visas, instructing city officials not to turn them in to the federal government. Who knows. Maybe they'll take us, too. I cleaned out my savings, and it's enough to live off of for a few months. I promised to give Frank half.

It's 3 AM and I have to drive tomorrow but I still don't want to sleep. I hoped that by writing all this out I'd have a better idea of where things went wrong, what the point was where I should have said 'no' and walked away. I still don't see it. More than anything, I can't get that phone call out of my head. Lil had to have known that tipping us to skip town was as good as a confession. If the four of us had gone in together, maybe we could have bluffed it out. There were phone records, and friends who knew us as couples, and neighbors who must have seen some things, but maybe. But Lil didn't hesitate. She couldn't have. When the INS go in, they go in fast. Undeserved love can be the most painful love of all.

I've had the same nightmare three nights in a row now. I'm standing next to Frank, who's wearing a butcher's apron and holding a giant carving knife. The apron is dripping with blood and has flecks of bone stuck to it and bits of grey that could only be brain. So does the knife. 'Hold this for a second,' he says, and for once, his accent's perfect. He hands me the knife and walks away. I hear a whirring noise behind me and a conveyor belt starts up and Adam slides down toward me, naked, hanging from a hook stuck in his back, pale ass wriggling. Most of his skin is gone and he's screaming and screaming. When he reaches me I slice through his waist, and I'm surprised, because it's much easier than Frank said it would be, like cutting through a soft cheese. Adam's lower torso drops onto the conveyor belt and drifts away. All the while the hooks keep coming. Frank slides by on the next one, grinning through half a face. I cut him and his legs drop down, and he's screaming, but he's also grinning. Then Lillian rachets down the line to me. She's wet and naked but she's unhurt except for the hook sticking into her shoulder, and she's screaming, but I cut her all the same. When her second leg hits the belt with a moist plop, that's when I wake up. The first night, I almost screamed, but I choked it back before Frank could hear me. Now I'm getting used to it.

Frank's excited about getting to San Francisco tomorrow. He loved Adam, but he's a realist, he told me today. 'It's going to be a brand new start for me,' he said. 'For you, too.' I'm not so sure. Some cages you carry with you.