Читать книгу Rocket City - Cathryn Alpert - Страница 6

The morning after he cleaned his house from top to bottom, Figman drove to Roswell for art supplies. He took his painting book with him and bought everything it said he would need to become an artist. He purchased oil paints in a sketch box, assorted brushes, three canvases, and an easel. He bought a palette, a palette knife, turpentine, a brush washer, and rags. He picked up a notebook to keep a painter's journal. He considered, also, buying a beret, thinking that it would keep the hair out of his face while he painted. But Figman, who did not have sufficient hair to justify the need for restraint, ultimately rejected the notion as clichéd.

He would also require food, a necessity his book failed to mention. Passing up Furr's in Roswell, he headed back south on Highway 285. It was Saturday, and Lester's E-Z Mart was crowded.

She was there like a dream waiting to be reentered. Figman shopped for two days' worth of groceries, lingering in each aisle, pretending not to have noticed her. " Still shop here?" she asked as he moved through her checkout line.

"No," said Figman. "I went back to shopping at Bulldog Superette."

Oma laughed, a warm laugh. Figman felt the tension at the base of his neck subside. "No aloe?" she asked.

"Not today."

"That's too bad. It's on special. Two for eight ninety-five."

"Really?" said Figman. "That's a good price." He drew four bottles out of the box on the rack and placed them on the counter in front of her. He'd continued taking aloe, the least offensive of Mrs. Smith's remedies, as a hedge against the possibility that the woman's method had some actual legitimacy.

"What's okra this week?" Oma yelled to the checker next to her.

"Eighty-nine," the woman yelled back.

Oma punched in the numbers. "You like okra?" she asked.

"I thought I'd try it."

"I hate okra. Too slimy. Even breaded and fried, it feels like snot." She rang up Figman's bottles of aloe. "What do people do with aloe, anyway?"

Figman contemplated confessing his terminal condition. "Experiments," he told her.

"Experiments? What kind?" Her right hand raced over the keypad while her left emptied his basket.

"Plant experiments," he said. "I study its effect on plant growth."

"You some kind of scientist?"

"Sort of. Listen, would you like to go get some coffee? I could tell you more about it."

"I'm working," said Oma.

"Well, yes, of course you are. I can see that. I meant when you get out of here." He'd been careful not to buy anything frozen in hope of her being available.

Oma emptied Figman's basket and punched more numbers into her register. "I don't think so," she said. "That'll be sixty-one thirty-two."

The bagboy eyed him. He was a tall, well-built football type Figman had failed to notice. His badge said, "Dino." Figman reached into his wallet and handed Oma two tens and a fifty.

Her fingers flew. " Sixty-one thirty-two," she said. Oma counted the change into his palm. " Sixty-one thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five, forty, fifty, seventy-five, sixty-two, sixty-three . . ." Would she ever get there?

"Need some help out with these?" asked Dino. He had slits for eyes, and the left corner of his mouth curled upward. He looked too old to be boxing groceries.

"I've got it, son," said Figman.

Dino's mouth uncurled and his eye slits narrowed, something Figman would not have imagined possible. Figman gathered up his three bags as if he'd purchased nothing but cottonballs. " Think about it," he whispered to Oma.

Oma shrugged.

Figman walked briskly to the store's nearest exit. Behind his back he heard Dino ask, "What the fuck's aloe?"

Having loaded his groceries into his trunk, Figman drove the five miles to his house on the highway. The day after his car accident, a representative of the Aion Corporation had contacted him before he'd checked out of the hospital. Off the record, the man had offered him a deal: Figman would be given a brand-new Aion in exchange for his refraining from any further mention to reporters of that insignificant detail about his car's locking left front brakes. Figman readily agreed. When he left the hospital shortly before dinner, the discharge nurse brought him his clothes, his wallet, and a new set of car keys. They fit the ignition of the vehicle of his dreams: a red 2SXT, replete with climate control, electronically adjustable sport seats, and black leather interior.

The flag of his and Verdie's mailbox had been lowered. Figman parked in front of his house and walked the short distance back to the highway. His boots crunched through the melting snow. Soon, he imagined, grass would be pushing up through the soil and the landscape would turn green.

Their mailbox held eight items: seven letters addressed to Verdie and a typewritten postcard from Figman's mother:

Dear Louis,

How's the new house? The new job? I'm so glad you've settled in somewhere and gotten away from that motel. Motel rooms can be so depressing.

I still can't believe you're not here anymore. New Mexico seems like such a lonely place, but if that's where the company needs you, I can understand your having to go. You've always been such a good employee. Virginia came to lunch yesterday and showed me pictures of her granddaughter. A real doll. And Dee called. Can I give her your address and phone number now? Running out of space. Send me a picture of your new home. I miss you oodles.

Love, Mother

He was glad to have intercepted the mail before Verdie got to it. Occasionally, his mother sent postcards; he would have to ask her not to do this anymore. Figman thumbed through Verdie's letters before placing them back in the mailbox. She'd received what seemed to be an awful lot of mail for a woman living alone. There were two envelopes he couldn't identify, an electric bill, a phone bill, a notice from the I.R.S., a statement from some doctor in Carlsbad, and a handwritten envelope addressed to Mrs. V. C. Hooks. Its postmark said Albuquerque.

"Anything for me?"

Figman jumped. He had neither seen nor heard his landlady approaching.

"Scared you, didn't I? Well, I'm sorry about that. How's the house? Find everything okay?"

"It's fine. Nice place," said Figman."The heater puts out a lot of heat."

"Lordy, yes," said Verdie, laughing."Ruby— she was one of them sisters I told you about— she used to say the heat from that heater made the back of her throat itch." Verdie's laugh was more like a cackle. She wore a pink-purple lipstick that exactly matched the color of her trailer.

"These are for you," said Figman. He handed over her assortment of mail.

"Thank you kindly," said Verdie. She had that west Texas accent that sounded like a coil wound tightly around a tomcat. Verdie tucked her mail up under her armpit and just stood there, squinting up at Figman, looking more turtle-like than he'd remembered.

"So," said Figman, starting down his driveway. "What's to do around here?"

Verdie followed him. "Well, I golf," she said.

That explained the problem with her skin.

"Then there's the caverns. Skiing up at Cloudcroft. Horse racing at Ruidoso, but they're closed all winter."

A semi whipped by them, heading north. As soon as it had passed, a chubby little boy about seven darted across the highway toward Verdie's ugly trailer. He carried a yellow bucket and a large metal spoon. Figman had first noticed the child the day he moved in. He'd been digging in the dirt out behind his kitchen window.

"Who's the kid?" asked Figman.

"Oh, that's Bobo. Rodriguez's boy." She nodded at the house across the highway, a white clapboard farmhouse with a side-yard clothesline. Figman knew the place. It was an eyesore, perfectly framed by his living room window.

"Don't his parents care if he crosses the highway?"

"New," said Verdie. "Bobo's got more sense than both folks put together. You want some help with them groceries?"

"Thanks, I can manage."

"Well, let me know if there's anything I can do for you," she said, continuing down the gravel driveway toward her trailer.

"Do you know how to fix okra?"

"Depends what's wrong with it," said Verdie.

Figman unpacked his groceries, then set about the heavy business of becoming famous. Figman liked fame. His brush with notoriety had been brief but gratifying beyond anything he'd previously known. He wanted more of it. And now that dying had proved more chronic than acute, Figman had to consider the possibility that fame might not come to him posthumously. Living in Artesia, with its good air and water, he would have more time to devote to his painting, more time to send his work out into the world, more time for the world to take notice. Dying was a time for fame. A time to make a name for himself. To do something to set himself apart from all the other Figmans of the world.

Months ago, in L.A., Figman had decided that what little time he had left would not be spent in courtrooms and hospitals. He would go somewhere obscure, not only to paint but to avoid being found in the meantime. He'd sold his house below market value. He'd sold his brand-new 2SXT. Then he'd bought a used Aion identical to the one he had totaled in his accident, a model known for its numerous mechanical defects. No one, he'd figured, would expect him to make the same mistake twice, even when that mistake was the reason he was still around to make it.

Figman had paid cash for the car and registered it in his mother's name. He'd told no one where he was headed (he himself had not known), and as soon as he'd settled on Artesia had informed only his mother. His goal was to become renowned while remaining anonymous, a concept whose irony was not entirely lost on him and whose prospect motivated him to assemble his easel.

An hour later, Figman had erected the contraption minus one bolt on its canvas holder that had been missing from its package of hardware. The art supply store in Roswell would be closed now. Figman constructed a makeshift fastener out of a large bobby pin he'd found under the toe kick in his bathroom, an implement sufficiently old and corroded to have belonged to Verdie and not one of the Pontelle sisters. He was handy with these things. He twisted the bobby pin and attached it to the canvas holder so that it held it to the upright without interfering with the support of the canvas.

After getting himself a beer, Figman returned to his living room to admire his work from all angles. It was a fine easel that would serve his art well. He moved it into the space beside his large front window. The light was best in his living room, both his bedroom and kitchen having northern exposures, and his spare room's windows being covered by tall hydrangeas. His living room's only drawback was that it looked directly at the Rodriguez house, a ramshackle structure whose paint peeled from its walls and whose front porch had slipped from its foundation. Figman eyed the house disparagingly between swallows of beer. Tires and rusty box springs leaned against its southernmost wall next to oil barrels, car doors, and assorted engine parts. Laundry sagged from its side-yard clothesline: old sheets and women's underwear, torn and starchless as overboiled zucchini. Birds nested beneath its eaves. Bobo, the family prodigy, squatted in its front yard, digging.

In college, Figman had been given an A in Watercolor. He'd received A's in most of his subjects, but the one in Watercolor had made him especially proud. He'd taken the class reluctantly because he'd needed an elective in the one-to-two-thirty time block on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Convinced he had no talent, Figman had entered the class believing he was, at best, destined for a C. But he'd received the best grade possible. The teacher had even told him he had promise.

In the fifteen years since, Figman had not lifted a paintbrush. Though it had been his intention to pursue painting as a hobby, L.A. afforded no time for hobbies, no time for anything but the bare necessities. His social life he considered a bare necessity, a pun that occurred to him one night while he was fondling the breasts of a woman named Renee.

It was hard for Figman to imagine how he could live without the breasts of a woman. There was nothing more comforting than the way the soft mound of flesh melted into the palm of his hand; few things more stimu lating than the response of a woman's nipple to the flick of his tongue. He wondered what Oma's breasts looked like beneath her shapeless uniform. Figman had forgotten to notice her breasts, a realization that, in retrospect, surprised him. He noticed breasts and had long ago perfected discreet ways to regard them while not offending the person to whom they were attached. He felt a stirring inside, a familiar longing that he assumed to be sexual but soon identified as hunger. He had not eaten since his Chicken Fingers breakfast at Tastee Freez.

It was time Figman fixed his first home-cooked meal. Until now (indeed, for the entire three months he'd been living in Artesia) he'd eaten all his meals in restaurants. He was sick to death of restaurants. He gagged at the thought of another Big Mac or Whopper. He was bored with Kwan Den, the Town House Cafeteria, and Eileen's Tac Olé. Even La Fonda, which drew people from Carlsbad and Roswell for its chile rellenos and hot sopaipillas, no longer held any appeal. But mostly he was sick of cigarette smoke.

Figman had never lived in a place where people smoked so indiscriminately. Few of Artesia's restaurants had non-smoking sections; more often than not, Figman was forced to choke down his meal amidst the noxious fumes from somebody else's filthy habit. In New Mexico, people smoked in stores, in elevators, in markets, and in theaters. They smoked walking down the street. Sometimes they didn't smoke at all, just held on to their burning cigarettes or placed them in ashtrays while they ate. Figman was unaccustomed to such rudeness. In L.A., one would sooner enter a restaurant naked than holding a cigarette. In L.A., people cared about whom they poisoned.

Figman, who had located a frying pan for his steak and a small saucepan for his instant mashed potatoes, soon realized he had no suitable pot in which to cook okra. He'd bought a half-pound of the stuff. It was green and pointy and looked as if it wanted to be boiled whole. (Boiling was what Figman assumed one did with it, though he wasn't entirely sure.) The metal drawer beneath his oven contained a few pans of the wrong size, ei ther too large or too small. Okra, he figured, required a medium-sized pan. Figman was hungry. His potato flakes were measured, and his saucepan of water and milk stood waiting. His steak sizzled over a low-to-medium flame.

When Verdie opened the door to her trailer, Figman was struck simultaneously by its foul odor and the presence of a man. He'd expected her to be alone. There'd been no car in the driveway but her green Impala; he'd seen no one tread past his windows. But here was this fellow in a plaid shirt and bolo tie seated at her kitchen table.

"Well, hi there," said Verdie. "Come over for a drink?" Her breath smelled of Scotch whisky. She wore a pink sweater over white slacks and the same pink-purple lipstick as before. The man looked up at them.

"I'm sorry to bother you," said Figman, standing on the top step of her trailer. "Do you have a saucepan I could borrow?"

"Sure, hon. Come on in while I hunt for one." She handed Figman the drink she'd been holding. The glass was sweaty.

Figman stepped through the doorway of the single-room trailer. It was a hurricane on wheels. Clothes and unwashed dishes were strewn everywhere. In the kitchenette, trash overflowed onto linoleum that looked as if it hadn't seen soap or wax in a decade. The sink was full of dishes in brownish-gray water. Paint peeled from the two cabinet doors that still clung to their hinges; fingerprints marred their button handles. Verdie's dinette, a formica table wiped surprisingly clean, was encircled by three matching metal-frame chairs, their plastic seat covers cracked and grimy. The place stank of mildew, fried onions, and unemptied ashtrays. And he'd thought the Pontelle sisters had been dirty.

Verdie dug around in her kitchen, hunting in corners, opening and slamming shut drawers, rummaging into the backs of doorless cabinets. Beyond the kitchenette lay Verdie's living room, dark and depressing as the living room of any thirty-year-old trailer could be. Its walls were covered in fake wood paneling that Figman thought must certainly absorb whatever daylight managed to seep through the curtains of her weird little windows. The carpet, which looked like a remnant of his own, was soiled and covered with pink fuzzballs the color of Verdie's sweater. She had no TV. The corner revealed a tiny bathroom. A sofa sleeper, opened and unmade, filled almost the entire width of the trailer's far wall, blocking access to a second external doorway. Directly over the center of her sofa bed, a red Christmassy fixture hung suspended from an extension cord looped twice around a screw-hook in her seven-foot ceiling. Verdie's entire trailer was not much larger than Figman's bedroom. He wondered what terrible necessity had forced her out of her house and into such a trash heap.

Verdie cussed as she ransacked the insides of a high cabinet. The man at the table eyed Figman. He and Verdie obviously had been playing poker. Plastic chips lay in a pile in front of her empty seat. The man cleared his throat. Verdie stopped her foraging. "Jeez Louise, how tacky can a body be? Poe Titus, this is Louis Figman. Louis, this is Poe."

Poe Titus? What was it with the names in this town? The man tipped his cowboy hat. "Nice to meet you, Louis."

"Likewise. But people call me just Figman. It's sort of this thing I have."

"Well, nice to meet you, Just Figman," said Titus. Verdie broke into fractious laughter, a rooster crowing to greet the dawn. Figman felt the veins in his neck swell.

"Well, I ain't calling you Figman," said Verdie. "I don't call nobody by their last names."

"That Jewish?" asked Titus, fingering the tidy stack of chips in front of him.

Figman ignored the question. He leaned back against the refrigerator, an old Amana with dust on its top and jelly smeared on its pull-down handle. He studied Verdie's companion. He looked like a man suffering from unrequited life. Tall and gaunt, he appeared to be a few years older than Verdie, which, as Figman remembered, was as many years as there were cards in a deck. Smoke rose from the cactus ashtray on the table.

Figman, who had never seen Verdie with a cigarette, assumed Titus to be the current source of the trailer's rank odor. He wondered whether the stench in his own house, which had yet to air from his drapes and furniture, had come from this Titus fellow. He wondered, too, if Titus was responsible for his kitchen floor's scuff marks. Figman checked out the man's shoes. He wore red leather cowboy boots with two-inch wooden heels.

"Eureka," said Verdie, producing a pan the size of a washbasin.

"Oh, no. I'm sorry," said Figman. "I should have been more specific. I need one a little smaller. Something medium. To boil okra in."

"I hate okra," said Poe Titus.

"Well, let me see," said Verdie, getting down on all fours. "Hand me that flashlight there, Louis." She motioned toward the countertop. He looked for a flashlight amidst all the clutter but couldn't see one."It's right up there," said Verdie, "just behind them dishes."

Figman walked the two steps to the half-moon window above her sink, the window that comprised the left eye of the face that started at him across his backyard. Sure enough, directly beneath its sill in a pool of standing water lay an old metal flashlight. It felt heavier than Figman remembered flashlights ever feeling. He wiped it dry on his 501 jeans. "You ought not let this thing get wet," he said, handing it to her.

"Oh, hell," said Verdie, laughing. She shone it into the dark cavern beneath her corner counter, then crawled halfway into the space as she banged around, hunting for just the right size saucepan for Figman's okra. Poe Titus reached for the bottle next to his ashtray and poured himself another drink. Figman, who wished he'd chosen a less elaborate vegetable, stared down at the glass he was holding, slender and covered with multicolored dots. Its ice was half melted and its rim was smudged with Verdie's fuchsia lipstick. He wondered what flavor it was, and how vile it must taste mixed with cigarettes and Scotch whisky.

Figman remembered women from the taste of their lipstick. Few women wore the same brand and color, and Figman was able to separate them in his mind this way. Lipstick tasted like nothing else, its flavor waxy and ersatz— not truly cinnamon or genuinely peach, but something not quite cinnamon or almost peach. Dee, his last girlfriend, wore sort of a licorice flavor, though its color had been pink. She'd cried when Figman announced he was leaving, so he'd given her his stereo and bed, the two things he'd thought would most remind her of him.

Aside from Dee, few women stood out in Figman's memory. There was Lizzie, a bank officer who talked too much but enjoyed making love in parks and on the beach. There was beautiful Gwen, who hated sex but was thrilling to be seen with. There was Mary Ellen— not such a beauty, but sweet. She'd had a child in high school, and her father had once offered Figman ten thousand dollars to marry her. And then there was Sandy, a petite brunette who liked to give Figman head while he drove the streets of the San Fernando Valley. She had, unfortunately, been the woman who'd once opened his mail.

These were the women whom Figman remembered apart from the flavor of their lipstick. Occasionally, he'd kiss someone new, taste her lipstick, and recall some detail about a woman he'd once dated: the shine of her hair or the curve of her hip as they walked, arm in arm, about the city. He wondered sometimes if he didn't mix them up, so that what he thought he remembered of a particular lover was not a true memory at all but a fragment of some larger female composite whose features he culled from the melting pot into which all women had been poured.

"This is the mediumest pan I have," said Verdie. "You can keep it. I never use it, 'ceptin' holidays."

"Sorry it was so much trouble," said Figman. He took the pan and returned her drink.

"Sure I can't get you one?" she asked.

"Thanks, but I have to get back," he said.

Poe Titus stood up and extended his hand across the table. "Good meeting you, Figman. Good luck with that okra." Figman shook the man's hand. It felt beat up and scratchy as a fifty-year-old fence post.

"Now, remember, don't undercook it and use lots of butter and salt," said Verdie.

Figman had no butter. He'd forgotten to pick some up at the E-Z Mart but decided not to mention this lest Verdie go digging for some underneath her kitchen sink. He said good-bye and walked the thirty feet back to his spotless kitchen. His steak had burned. He yelled, "Fuck," and "Shit," and threw it into the sink, pouring water on it to lessen its smoking. It looked like some horrible fungus the Pontelle sisters had left for him to discover.

When the room finally aired, Figman whipped up his mashed potatoes and boiled his half-pound of okra. He set his kitchen table, poured himself a beer, and sat down to his first home-cooked meal in New Mexico. Without butter, his potatoes tasted starchy; his okra went down like snot. He dumped the whole lot of it in the sink on top of his mutant steak. Outside, the night was dark and windy. The lights went off in Verdie's trailer.

Figman awoke at daybreak to a clap of thunder. As this was the first thunder he'd heard in New Mexico, he took it as an omen, an auspicious beginning for his life as a famous painter. It was a Sunday in early February. Figman looked outside his bedroom window and saw the first signs of the changing seasons. The sky revealed clouds and wind, but not the same kinds of clouds or the same direction of wind to which he had grown accustomed. Surely these departures signaled spring.

Figman brewed himself a cup of coffee and pulled his book on oil painting down from its perch in his living room. He started reading at the beginning. His book told him to first pick a subject. He looked out his window; the Rodriguez house beckoned to him from across the highway. That was easy. Next, his book told him to study his subject in terms of light and composition. It was morning light, the best light in which to paint the east-facing Rodriguez house. The structure itself was nothing more than a box, but its drooping clothesline offset its otherwise static form. Best not to start with something too complicated, thought Figman. The Rodriguez house would make for a fine beginning.

The canvases he'd purchased had come ready-stretched and primed, but Figman would need to lay down an imprimatura, a thin layer of paint on top of the primer to tone the work surface. It was not unlike washing one's paper before beginning a watercolor. Reading further, he discovered that famous artists often used an imprimatura: Constable preferred red; Holbein, dark blue. Figman admired the work of Holbein. He squeezed Thalo blue onto his palette.

Figman had chosen oil as his medium because all great painters painted in oil. He knew of no famous watercolorists, but museums were full of masterpieces in oil. As his book suggested, Figman diluted his Thalo blue with turpentine. With a squared-off brush, he applied a thin coat of paint, completely covering his canvas. He was careful to check for any buildup; many canvasses whose imprimaturas were applied too thickly later cracked.

Once his underpainting was completed, Figman checked his book for the next step in the process. It said, "Wait twenty-four hours to let dry." He'd forgotten that detail. Outside, thunder rumbled off in the distance and the sky grew darker. There was nothing to be done about it. His art would have to wait a day.

Figman fixed himself breakfast, then sat down at his kitchen table to write a letter to his mother. Figman loathed letter-writing; his words were brief:

Dear Mom,

Got your card. Thanks. Things are going well. I like working in the field, especially not having to deal with L.A. traffic. My work is highly confidential, so it's still important not to tell anyone my whereabouts. There are even people at Goetschke who don't know what I'm doing out here.My new boss is terrific— a regular guy who's already given me some pretty intense assignments. Sorry I can't be more specific. Please give my best to Dee if she calls again.Got to dash. Say hello to Virginia. That's great about her granddaughter.Love, F.

P.S. Next time please write to me in a letter. My landlady and I share the same mailbox and any postcard you send is likely to be read by her.

Figman had never asked his mother to call him Figman. She, alone, he allowed to call him Louis, but only because she had given him the name. Still, he had trouble signing "Louis" so he wrote just "F." He knew she would understand, for understanding was what his mother did best. She'd understood him when he lost his father at the age of three. When he was caught stealing eight years later. When he dropped out of college at nineteen. When he reenrolled at twenty-three. She'd even understood when he moved to New Mexico the year before he turned forty.

His mother was the person Figman trusted most in the world not to abuse his emotions. Still, he'd had difficulty informing her that he was leaving his job, his girlfriend, his home town (and her) to drive to some obscure western state to make a name for himself. So he'd concocted a small falsehood. His company was transferring him and there was nothing he could do. A lot of his friends were being laid off. If he didn't go, he'd lose his job. Besides, it was a better position, in fraud investigations. More money and more responsibility. He'd grown tired of AD&D.

It was the first lie he had told his mother since he was seventeen, and though he'd forgotten what that lie had been about, the guilt from having told it still lingered. He felt terrible about having to lie to her again and wished she would stop inquiring about his work. Outside his kitchen, the clouds were an angry swirl. Verdie stepped outside her trailer. She was alone. Perhaps Titus had left during the night, or maybe he was still asleep on the sofa bed in her living room. Figman watched from his window as Verdie climbed into her green Impala and drove off down the driveway. He wondered where she was headed.

When the dust from her tires settled, Figman noticed a small, hunched figure at her trailer's far corner. It was Bobo Rodriguez with his bucket and spoon. Figman watched as the child filled his bucket with dirt, then emptied it into a pile a short distance from the flower bed. Bobo worked meticulously, first excavating, then carefully refilling each of the holes he had made. He dug with intensity, with a sense of purpose Figman had rarely seen in adults, let alone children. When he'd filled his last hole, Bobo gathered up his spoon and bucket and headed back across the highway. He was followed by a large orange cat that Figman had not previously noticed. It was nice for a boy to have a cat, especially one that followed you around. Figman wondered what to do for the rest of the day; he knew what Bobo would be doing.

He decided to go see Oma. He'd buy another steak, a different vegetable, and tell her how right she'd been about okra. Figman stamped and addressed his envelope, then dropped it off at his mailbox on his way into town. The flag was up; Verdie had left an outgoing letter face down inside the box. Figman resisted the urge to turn it over. He tossed his letter in on top of hers and headed north on the highway.

At Lester's, Figman bought top sirloin and a head of fresh broccoli. Oma was not there. Instead, he found Gert behind the counter, a woman whose name said it all. It was an omen, he concluded, his second that day. If his time in this life were indeed limited, he should not be wasting it on women. If he couldn't paint today, he'd draw. He headed over to K-Mart on Main Street and bought sketching paper and charcoals.

On his way out of K-Mart, Figman ran into Verdie. "Well, hi there," she said. "How'd that okra turn out?"

"Not too well," he responded.

"Did you fix it up with lots of butter and salt, like I told you?"

"Damn," he said. Once again, he'd forgotten to buy butter.

"You gotta listen to me. I've been fixing the stuff for over forty years."

"I guess I'm not the okra type," said Figman.

Verdie looked him over. "No, I reckon you ain't," she said.

Figman wondered what she meant by that. He excused himself and drove home quickly, anxious to begin his afternoon of sketching.

Figman thought about what he should draw. He looked around his house, but few of his possessions called out to him. At a loss, he dug through a box in his spare bedroom's closet. Halfway down, he came upon an album of photographs. Surely it contained a wealth of subject matter, snapshots from which Figman could sketch portraits of the people he had known. But when he lifted the album, he discovered his six bottles of Essence of Chicken. He remembered having packed them despite his promise to scale down his possessions. Essence of Chicken was too weird to throw out; too wonderfully surreal to keep packed away. Perhaps their rediscovery was yet a third omen.

He carried all six bottles to the counter in his kitchen. Essence of Chicken had not aged well. Thick and red, it looked like the blood that Drs. Feldstein and Mercer had extracted from his body. When he shook one bottle, he saw particles. Beaks maybe, or chicken toes. It was foul, this rediscovery, but not insignificant, for Figman knew that in life there were no accidents. He stored five of the bottles on a shelf in his pantry. The sixth, he decided to keep in plain sight as a curiosity. And as a reminder. He wiped the bottle clean, tightened its cap, and centered it on his windowsill.