The Hunt

She sneaks up on me when I’m out at night.  I’ll bump into her at the grocery store, or on the subway.  When I’m sitting at a café, supposed to be studying but really staring off into space, she’ll take the seat opposite mine.

Then we’ll lock eyes.  And then we’ll head to my apartment as fast as we can.  Sometimes, she’ll bring her motorcycle and a second helmet.  She’ll unzip her jacket and put it on me, so I can be armored on the ride home.

From the moment our eyes meet to the moment our lips meet to the moment I lead her to my bedroom.  All these moments happen at once whenever I’m with Gracie.  Gracie Lynn. Not her real name.

She never stays until morning, instead leaves me to face the daylight alone and ponder the appointments I blew off to be with her.  I don’t normally take the paper, but after a night with her, I drag myself over to the corner store and pick up a copy of the Times.  To read about Artemis, who never fails to make the front page, top of the fold, after an attack.  Seven victims and counting.

Four were rapists and three child molesters, all out on bail or parole or walking free because they managed to beat the system.  But they’re all guilty because Artemis would never kill an innocent man.

Artemis is the name she chose for herself, the one she signs in blood on the sidewalk next to her victim.  The newspaper always refers to Artemis as a he, and so do the police.  But I know that’s not true.  Artemis was a goddess, and besides, Artemis is Gracie.

It’s the timing that gives her away.  She always attacks after our trysts.  Maybe that’s what gives me my rush.  She has a body fit for killing, long and sinewy, dotted with freckles, scars and tattoos.  She wears her hair just long enough to be acceptably feminine, just past her ears, and that’s how I know she has a day job, not a trust fund and a hulking, empty mansion to return to after nights on the prowl.

We first met in the library, where she was checking out a book on metempsychosis.  It was closing time and past dark and she asked me if I needed a ride home.  And I accepted, because I saw her clutching a motorcycle helmet and knew exactly what kind of ride she meant.  She was the kind of girl I always wanted to be picked up by, not like the anemic vegans I usually end up with, the kind that confuse self-denial with making a difference.

I went with her even though bad girls bring bad luck.  And indeed, one morning she did show up on my doorstep with a bullet in her shoulder.  I wrapped her in bath towels and had her swallow some aspirin as I tried to convince her to go to the emergency room.

She had me call Dr. Martinez, who makes house calls.

We watched cartoons as we waited for him, and held hands.  Because she came to me, I knew she had nobody else.

Dr. Martinez came accompanied by two male nurses.  Bullet removal would cost 10,000 dollars, cash, and that included stitches and opiates.  He would prep Gracie while I fetched the money, but he wouldn’t begin surgery until I returned.

I went to Gracie’s place, finally granted the key to her apartment, finally getting a glimpse into her existence.  She lived in the two-car garage of a live-work loft, motorcycle on the left, mattress on the right.  I paused a moment, then found the toolbox, as instructed.  It contained all of Gracie’s money.  All $200 of it, in bills of various denominations.

It was after banking hours, so I went around to various ATMs, withdrawing the maximum from my account.  I didn’t have enough to cover the procedure, not even close.  When I returned to my apartment, Dr. Martinez had already removed the bullet and stitched Gracie up.  They were chatting in Spanish, as Gracie clutched a half-empty bottle of tequila.  The doctor was a reasonable man after all.

I handed him a thick stack of ragged bills and frowned. “The rest in two days,” he said, and then left.

“We better pay him back,” she said, “He’s a gang doctor.”

Gracie slept the whole day on my couch, then went out at night and mugged a bunch of people.  I didn’t try and stop her.  My life was on the line too.

“Is this what you do for a living?” I asked.

“Only when I have to.”

“Why?” I asked. She didn’t answer.

I made us pancakes as a prelude to serious conversation. “You can’t keep doing things the way you are,” I said.

She shrugged and took two vicodin with her orange juice.

“Move in with me,” I said.

“I’m going back to Mexico.”

“Don’t,” I said.

“Don’t,” she replied.

Gracie had her money by the deadline, plus a little extra, which we split.  She still owed me some and promised to pay me back, but I wasn’t looking to collect.  She zipped up her jacket, which was slightly misshapen from the blood that’d been scrubbed out of it.  I willed her bike not to start, but it did.

A week later, I found an envelope stuffed with bills in my mailbox.  And a note.  It said, “Love, Gracie,” and that’s all.

I didn’t hear from her again for ten years.  She sent me a letter urging me to visit her.  It gave an address in Ciudad Juarez, where she said she was working as a maquiladora.  By day, that is.

I cooked up an excuse to give to my wife Leslie and drove down there by myself.  I didn’t bother removing my wedding ring because I was already four months pregnant.

She lived above a farmacía, the kind that are filled with gringos lining up to get prescription-free Ativan.  I was nervous until I saw her.  She looked the same.

I gave her a moment to adjust to me.  My tank top was tight across my full chest and the beginnings of a belly peeked over the waistband of my baggy jeans.  Her eyes grew wide and she was silent.

“Aren’t you going to kiss me?” I asked.  I used to be the shy one.

She put one hand around my waist and the other under my chin.  She gave me a delicate kiss that was not entirely to my satisfaction.  So I pulled her in closer, kissed her harder.  She led me to her bedroom, finally, after all these years.  It was a sunny room, unlike her garage, though it also had a mattress resting on a bare cement floor.

I undressed for her, proud of my new body and eager to show it off for her.  She was mesmerized and let me know as much.  She was loving in her caresses, if a little too gentle, but I was not too full to take the lead and straddle her.  I braced myself against the wall as she went down on me.

It was only the eighth encounter in the entire history of us.

The first seven times with her were like hits of heroin, or how I imagine heroin, never having tried it.  In between times I could think of her and only her, and it fragmented my life to the extent that it was a good thing she left when she did.  My secret life as her lover was beginning to eclipse the real life I had built for myself before knowing her.

The withdrawal was terrible, accompanied as it was by the notion I would never love again as I did.  Which turned out to be true.  I love Leslie, but she is not my oxygen, and the vow I made to her is superseded by the vow I made to myself, to be with Gracie again, if only for a short while.

“I missed out on a good thing,” she says, after.

My silence is my agreement.  I roll over and touch her shoulder where the bullet wound and stitches left a faded pink scar.

“How’s your arm?”

“It’s not the same,” she answers, “I avoid using it, if I can.”

I sit up and rummage through my duffle, pulling out a wrinkled sundress suited to the southern climate.

“Are you with someone?” I ask.

She blinks.  “How did you know?”

I pull out the box of condoms I spotted wedged between the mattress and the wall.

“Those are my girlfriend’s,” she answers

I raise an eyebrow in disapproval.

“She owns a brothel,” she says.

I exhale loudly.  Maybe this is why Gracie never lingered after sex.  The sweetness has now vanished .  We have skipped straight from the honeymoon to the long held resentments and suspicions of an old married couple.  I feel cheated.  I never got a relationship.  No late-night phone calls.  No dinner and a movie. No lovely middle, just a beginning and an end.  And this is the end, which is why it is important to say goodbye properly.

“Don’t get like that.  It’s a nice place.  They use condoms.  It’s clean.  Better pay than the maquilas and a lot safer too.”  I’m surprised she cares what I think about her situation.  It’s a welcome change of pace.

“Do you work there?” I ask.

“Only as a bouncer, when I’m not busy with my own project.”

“What project is that?”

“I’m looking for the man who killed 400 women and buried them in the desert,” she answers.

“How is that going?”

“I have a few suspects.”

“Where are they?”

“Also buried in the desert.”

She leads me into the kitchen half-dressed and pours me a glass of ice water from a pitcher she keeps in her old refrigerator.  I swallow large gulps and listen to her describe her new mission.

She came looking for a man turned out to not exist.  Because it wasn’t one man responsible for the killings, but several, who knows how many.  She had caught as many as she could, fourteen to date, but still the women disappeared after filling their shifts at the factories.  Killers came from all the over the world to stalk prey in Juarez, Gracie among them.

I have a question for Gracie.  A rude one.  And though I am not entitled to the answer, I ask anyway.

“Were you ever raped?”

“No,” she says, surprising me.  I thought I already knew the answer to this one.  “But my first love was.”

“Did you ever catch the guy?”

“Yes,” she says before pausing, “And no.  Because I see him everywhere.”

She looks at me to gauge my response, but her madness doesn’t scare me, it never did.  I know what it means to lose someone you were meant to find.  You become haunted by their ghost.  But at least Gracie and I were never soul mates.  Her other half is also her villain.  I imagine it’s the same for all superheroes.

“Are you happy?” she asks.  The curiosity is mutual, and it is another way of asking “Why not me?”

Looking at her now, I see what I didn’t before.  Only took me ten years to figure it out.

We are like dogs and wolves. Creatures of the same species that mate but lead separate existences when not in heat.

Being pregnant sometimes feels like being in heat.  My clit is swollen, my breasts are swollen and I have a salty taste in my mouth.  I pull Gracie towards me, so that she might soothe the deep ache in me, and we begin again, this time on the kitchen floor.