Snake Face Read online

  She stepped back and studied him with concern, pushing his hair back from his face. “Your head looks like a hoora’s nest.” Her eyes scanned the room, the pillow on the floor, the ravaged mess of the bed. “You didn’t sleep too good, did you?”

  He shook his head and sat at the table, looked at the Styrofoam bowl of dry granola and the banana she’d brought him. This must have been the only vegan choice downstairs. She’d gotten herself a boiled egg and a bran muffin. Having already eaten the soy yogurt that could have gone on the cereal, Jamie dumped coffee on it, and Mae smiled at him as if she found something charming about that act. If only she knew.

  She asked, “Is that gonna taste okay?”

  It didn’t. He drew an F in the air.

  “You cussing?”

  He nodded. She turned and dumped the shell from her egg into the trash behind her, and paused. All the empties were piled there. Deli pasta salad tub, yogurt tub, burrito wrappers. Soy ice cream containers. Now she knew. Evidence shouted at her, He’s a wreck. A fucking wreck. Mae faced him again and frowned. “Sugar, you’re real stressed out, aren’t you?”

  He nodded again and drew another F, this one on his belly.

  “You feel fat?”

  He mimed his own expansion with horror and disgust, pulled up his shirt and grabbed a handful of himself as if the layer of fat was something he wanted to choke to death. Probably looked like comedy to her but it wasn’t meant to be. It was how he felt.

  She opened a little salt packet and sprinkled her egg. “You’ll be all right. It’s just one bad night, that’s all.”

  She had to mean his weight. One bad night of eating. She has no idea how bad a night.

  Or did she? Did his face, his hair, the room, the chair against the bathroom door, the pillow on the floor, as well as the binge trash, tell everything? He drank what was left of the coffee in his cup, and rested his head in his hands.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t say that right.” Mae stroked his forearm. Her touch stirred the tearful place. He sat up and drew away from her, poked his spoon around in the granola. She continued, “I know you’ll be hurting for more than one night. I wrecked my voice once, when I first started teaching boot camp classes. Trying to make this little squeaky voice sound like a drill sergeant.” She sipped her coffee. “It hurt so bad. My doctor told me not to even whisper while I rested it, that it was worse than talking, like beating on your voice box. I couldn’t make a sound. But I was okay in three days.”

  He nodded. He already knew this, but she was trying to be helpful. She cared. Maybe she had no idea he was suffering from anything but vocal damage. Miming gratitude, he put his hands together and made a Japanese-style bow to her.

  Her smile in response was warm but somehow incomplete, a glimpse of sun through clouds. “That’s a long time for you not to sing or talk, isn’t it? I’m so sorry about your shows you had to cancel. That’s hard on you. I wondered if you’d like to come stay in Cauwetska while you rest up. Arnie doesn’t have another guest room, but he’s got a couch. And Hubert’s folks have this big old farmhouse with lots of rooms. If he asked ’em I bet they’d be happy to have you. No—never mind, they got dogs. But stay with Arnie and me. Jen could get you a pool pass at Health Quest. Does that sound good?”

  Jamie turned his back and drew a deep breath. He couldn’t take this offer—they would see the shape he was in. Anyway, he had to get on his way for that final show. It would take two days to get to Louisiana. Three if Sylvie could meet him as she’d promised, with Gasser and his instruments. Then he could turn back for New Orleans. Finish the tour with everything he’d started with. Maybe even his heart and his mind.

  Jamie drew an invisible map on the table with his finger, drove a raisin down it, and then picked the up the banana and mimed playing didg on it.

  “You’re going to get your things back? You’re sure of it?” Mae broke off a bit of muffin and put it in her mouth without looking, her eyes still on Jamie. He wriggled his shoulders. She swallowed, drank coffee. “It’s hard to see you trust Sylvie. I still don’t know what she did to make you yell at her.”

  How to tell it? It was humiliating. He’d lost control. Mae had seen him run from that dog in Norfolk and seen him bolt from spiders—but this had been worse. Much worse.

  “Before you go meet her, I’d like to know what she did. It must’ve been bad—you keep not telling me.”

  Jesus, she was persistent. He went to the bedside table, got the hotel notepad and ballpoint, and came back and drew a picture for her. This was easier than writing. He detailed the knife, the delicate whorls in the blade, the engraving in the hilt, and the spider sitting on it and then dangling from a thread.

  Mae looked up. “Oh, sugar, I can see why you hollered at her. You have to call the police now. She’s carrying a weapon.”

  How did she never understand this? Jamie balled up the sketch and pitched it past her into the trash. Calling the police was not an option. He mimed holding Gasser, then holding off imaginary dogs.

  Mae didn’t seem to comprehend. “She didn’t bring her own spider, did she? She didn’t plan this?”

  No. Mae’s stepdaughters probably had left some piece of their little zoo. He shook his head, set down the image of Gasser as if he’d been holding him, saddened by his absence, and ate some of the coffee-soaked cereal. Why was he eating on top of last night’s binge? It sickened him, and he laid his head on his arms on the table. Water. He needed to get up and get water when the sickness passed.

  Mae sighed and fell silent for a while, no sounds but her delicate nibbling at her breakfast. “Can you text her while I’m here? I want to see her answer.”

  This was a lot of caring. A lot of attention. A dim light pushed at the fog in Jamie’s mind. Mae had come to him. He hadn’t asked her. She must have gone to the trouble to get his hotel information from Wendy. Mae wanted to be with him, right now, and to bring him back home with her. Had she missed him?

  Talk. Jesus, how he needed to talk. He wanted to tell her—what? He had no idea. It was too big for words and yet he craved making sounds. It was what he did to connect, even if he didn’t know what to say. Talked and sang. He was lost without his voice, yet he had to ask her somehow, ask her the question. It took the strength of a superhero to lift his skull. Pushing himself to a sitting position took twice as much.

  It would take no strength at all to hold her, to caress her, undress her. To taste her all over, touch every inch of her. In that, he would float, effortless and transcendent. But he was such a mess now. Body, heart, and mind. Was there anything left for her to love? He reached out and laid his hand on the table in front of her, palm up, and waited. She frowned, as though she didn’t get his meaning—or she saw the mess and didn’t want him. And yet, she had come.

  With a burst of desperate courage, he rose, walked to her, and cupped his hands around her face, so tenderly she couldn’t possibly misunderstand. She turned worried, questioning eyes up to him. “Jamie—what are you doing?”

  She had to know. He drew a heart on his chest, one on hers, and mimed bringing the two hearts together in the space between them. His hands slid down his torso, then reached out, making an offering. His body began to ache for her just in the asking. If only she wasn’t giving him that bewildered look. If only he could talk.

  Suddenly he saw himself as she must see him. No wonder she was stuck, too nice to say no. He was falling apart. Last night’s clothes still on him. The room full of warning signs of chaos and collapse.

  Ashamed, he turned from her and escaped to the shower, where the dragged-down hole in his heart reopened. The crying, soul-sucking pain came back. She had to have understood. The hearts. The give-you-my-body offer. Not that it was worth having, but his heart came with it, and he could love deeply. She’d turned him down.

  The tears finally stopped, and now all he wanted was silence and darkness. He emerged in a towel, walked past Mae, and got into bed, not looking at her. It was the only place he could bea
r to be, curled up with a pillow over his face.

  “Sugar.” The mattress compressed behind his back. Her touch on his shoulder felt cautious, so unlike a lover it was worse than no touch at all. “You’re going back to bed? What’s going on? I’m trying to help you and—”

  The words clawed out of him, a grating sound that couldn’t possibly be his voice, a rusty gate in a windstorm. “I don’t want your bloody fucking help. Jesus.”

  Help. He might as well have sent those pitiful texts all night, if that was how she saw him. Why in bloody hell had she even come? He’d thought it was an act of love. He needed to share love with her. Not to be babied and watched over, but united. He’d tried to tell her, offered her his whole self—and her answer? She wanted to help him.

  Her fingers, light and cool on his forehead, brushed his hair back. “But you need it, sugar.”

  Rage flew from a fire he didn’t know was in him. “Get the fuck out of here, then.”

  Her weight left the bed. Jamie rolled over and sat up, his heart slamming into his throat. Mae was looking at him all worried like he was pitiful. Talking ripped at his vocal cords but the landslide of words wouldn’t stop. “And don’t come back, don’t call, don’t text. Get the fuck out of my life. Jesus. I’m not your baby. You don’t get it, you don’t get me. Fuck—yeah—I’m hurt, I’m bloody fucking smashed to pieces, but I’m still a man. I’m still all of me. I’m not just my fucking pain.”

  She opened her hands toward him. “Jamie—stop. Please. You’ll hurt your voice.”

  “Fuck my voice. Listen to me!” He didn’t know why he was attacking her and sending her away. It was stupid, self-defeating, a tantrum. Everything was his fault, not hers, and yet the hurt had a mind of its own and fought her. “You don’t hear me. Go away if you can’t love me.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “Do you mean that? I’m—your best friend, sugar. I don’t want to leave you when you’re feeling so bad.”

  “Go.”

  She didn’t leave. Didn’t move. He grabbed the towel to cover up, flung himself out of the bed, stalked to his suitcase and snatched the first clean clothes that he could find. Fuck. She could see his body. The fucking ruin. He tried to tell her, “Close your eyes,” but not a sound came out. Only pain.

  He dropped the towel and dressed with his back to her. Why bother to hide? It wasn’t the first time he’d blundered into nakedness in front of her, and it had never mattered to her as far as he could tell, any more than the nakedness of a baby. Probably how she thought of him.

  When he turned around, Mae was standing by the table and fumbling in her purse. Her voice cracked. “I brought you something.” It was a little flat square black plastic object. A charger cord. A plastic stem with a suction cup. “If you get some ... ” she sniffed, “some information from Sylvie, where you need to meet her, I can type it in for you. And I can set it up with your home address and everything too, so you can just press home, and you ... you won’t get lost.”

  I’m already lost. Guilt kicked him in the gut. He’d made her cry, and now she was giving him a gift. That bloody GPS thing. If only he’d accepted it while he was still whole, back in Mesilla. Pre-Sylvie. Been grateful instead of proud. “Thanks.”

  “Shh. Don’t talk.”

  He mimed sorry, a mea culpa fist to the heart, and shoot me, a finger to the head.

  Mae wiped her tears and almost smiled. “It’s okay, sugar. You couldn’t help it. You want me to show you how to use this thing? It’s not too hard.”

  He nodded. He had to let her. He’d hurt her too much already.

  She put the GPS on the table and wrote something on the notepaper. “This is my stepfather’s address and phone number. Arnie Gaskins. If you have any kind of emergency, you can come stay with us. If you can’t reach me, call him. He’s a good guy, and he’ll understand. You get a few miles down the road and you don’t think you can make it, come on back. I already programmed it in the GPS. You choose ‘recent places’ and you’ll find it. Okay? You need someone, I’ll help you. Arnie will help. Hubert and Jen will help. You got people here.”

  Numbed and ashamed, Jamie nodded.

  “I don’t want to leave you, you know. I’m worried sick about you.”

  He made his feet walk to her, and folded the note and tucked it into his wallet, fighting the urge to cry over this little bit of her writing, this scrap of her caring. Overwhelmed and trembling, he kissed her once on each cheek, then lightly on her lips, hugged her, and let go. It took all his strength to show his love without drowning her in it, but he’d done it. He put on his best smile and mouthed the words No worries.

  He pulled the two chairs side by side and sat next to her. She had him write his parents’ address and explained what she was doing as she programmed it into the GPS for him. She even showed him how to look up a Starbucks in Austin. At Mae’s request he texted Sylvie. No answer. Mae showed him how to do the search in the GPS unit again and watched while Jamie tried it. “See, you can do it, sugar. I know you hate typing and little gadgets, but this is gonna help you. A lot. And I programmed it to speak Australian English. You’ll like it.”

  The process exhausted him. He felt as if he’d swum miles, learning how to choose the right sequences. Watching Mae’s graceful white fingers as she touched the glowing squares absorbed him. Her hands were strong and plain, no polish, a little rough yet beautiful. He wanted to kiss each finger, but she only wanted to take care of him and send him off safely. He had to let her.

  She turned off the GPS, wrapped its cord around it and its stand. “Keep it charged, and put it in the glove compartment—oh, the latch is broken, isn’t it? Never mind. But hide it when you park so it doesn’t get stolen.”

  Stolen. Jamie almost laughed, but was afraid he’d lose control if he did. He stood while he still had a grip on himself, gestured to his suitcase and then the clock. Have to pack and check out.

  Mae rose. “Text me every day, now, okay? Two or three times. Let me know you’re all right.”

  Jamie nodded and gave her his best smile again, walking her to the door. She said a hesitant goodbye, eyes full of doubt. He touched her lips, drawing their corners up, and whispered, “No worries, love. Hooroo. Have a good Christmas.”

  “You too, sugar.”

  He closed the door softly behind her and leaned against it. Proud of himself. Best performance of his entire tour.

  The room echoed with her absence. Jamie folded like a fighter who’d been punched in the belly, and wept, sliding along the door to land on his knees. “Mae.” The word was not a sound, just a breath with an M on it, and his soul flew out with it, leaving him hollow like the shell of a drum with its skin pulled off.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Mae drove back to Cauwetska without the radio or music. A sad song would hurt too much. A happy song would, too. There was no place for it. Jamie hadn’t fooled her, though his pride touched her. His pain broke her heart. She wanted to do more for him—the GPS was nowhere near enough—yet this endless struggle over his unrequited love got in the way.

  He needed someone to take the rest of this trip with him. He probably wouldn’t let anyone help him, though, if he wouldn’t let her. Was there even the scrap of a chance he would be all right?

  Sylvie was more troubling all the time. Jamie would be safer if Mae could get Roxana to ship Gasser and the remaining instruments and bypass Sylvie. It would be expensive. Roxana would need her employers’ money to do it, and Mae had no contact information for the pet sitter. She could try reaching Joe Wayne again, this time through the car club. Sylvie might not be able to monitor his contacts though that site. If that didn’t work, Stamos’s ex-wife had Joe Wayne’s private phone number—unless he changed it after every affair. Could Stamos ask Diana to give Mae the number? It would be an awkward request twice over, but worth the discomfort if it helped Jamie avoid Sylvie.

  Assuming Mae accomplished all this, getting Jamie home with his cat and his instruments would be only th
e first step. He had so much unfinished business. Depression, anxiety, phobias, and traumas. If he could ever afford therapy it would take years, with no guarantees of total wellness at the end. He could give up halfway, collapsing into self-destruction. He could get stuck incompletely well. He could be cutting his wrists right now.

  No. Mae struck the fear away. Jamie was going to make it. He’d sing and dance, laugh and chatter and make silly jokes again. That incredible light inside him would come back and shine. And she was going to help, whether he wanted to be rescued or not.

  When she got to Arnie’s trailer, she still had time left before meeting him for lunch, and hours before she could pick up her stepdaughters from school, so she set to work on helping Jamie. In the back of her mind she heard Stamos reminding her that she wasn’t Jamie’s mother. But she wasn’t Stamos’s girlfriend, either. She didn’t have to listen to him.

  She looked up psychologists in Santa Fe online. Dr. Carl Gorman, with an office on Calle Medico, was the only one with that surname. In response to Mae’s question, his receptionist said that they did offer a sliding scale for clients with a limited income. Mae would tell Jamie and talk him into it. Help from a professional shouldn’t hurt his pride. He’d liked this doctor and had thrived when he was seeing him—before Sylvia Ramirez’s manipulations derailed the process.

  The next project was to get hold of Joe Wayne Brazos. She looked up JB Wainwright III of the Southwest Classic Car Club. The club’s home page featured Stamos’s Coronet, alone and perfect and gleaming, parked on a desert road near a Route 66 sign. Mae lingered on the image, remembering how promising their first date had been, riding to Mesilla in that fine old car. Stamos the gentleman, so patient, wise, accepting, charming, and sexy. She wondered if she would ever see him that way again, not as Stamos the martyr.