Rust Read Free

a decision, and he had stuck to it ever since. He would keep order in his life, despite this part inside, this madman, who wanted to get out and tear up everything. In his shop, his tools were clean and oiled. They each had a specific place, and they were in it, always. The corners were swept, the weeds that grew up through the cracks in the sidewalk out front were pulled, and even his desk was organized, with slots prepared for receipt books, pencils, pens, and phone numbers. At home it was the same. Even Rosalita teased him about the way he hung up his shirts, always buttoning the top button so they looked alive on the hanger. For years now, Rico had just moved along, from one thing he had to do to the next, like a train across the mesa.
    So he was taken by surprise by what stormed over him when he saw that woman in the doorway of his shop. In that moment, seeing her in the arc of light, he felt his life caving in, an old mine shaft that intended to collapse no matter how many miners were still inside. But in another way, he felt it open up.

    “C AN YOU teach me to weld?” she asked, her voice not much more than an echo.
    “I can teach you anything you want to learn,” he replied, and the power in these words centered itself right in his balls, and he felt like a king.
    “I want to learn to weld,” she said. “I already have the parts laid out in my yard.”
    “What kind of metal?” Rico knew women. He knew they couldn’t tell the difference between a piece of steel and a piece of aluminum, that they thought all the metals in the world would melt before the torch. He knew that women lived in a dream world, that they never saw the truth of the simplest thing, like what metals will bond together and which ones won’t, or how to tell what was hot enough and what wasn’t.
    “Iron,” she said. “I think.”
    “I better take a look,” Rico said. It sounded casual, as if the words were skidding across the ice that once in a great while formed on the river, pretending there was no dirty water underneath.
    “Could you?” she asked, and, as if she owned the place, she quickly moved to his desk, and wrote down her address on his notepad. The whole time, that big dog watched Rico, her eyes communicating in the way only a big dog’s can. They said, Stay back, old man. Stay back.
    “Does that dog bite?” he asked.
    “Only when I tell her to. She’s very well trained, an ex-police dog.” She said this over her shoulder so automatically that he almost believed it. But that would probably make this woman an ex-policewoman, and Rico could tell from the curve of her hips that that was not true. He could tell by the way she didn’t look around, never swept her eyes toward the bays or the closed door to the bathroom behind her.
    “Can you come by today? Later? After work?” she asked, and her voice was breathless, as if she wanted to burn in the fire between them.
    “Yeah. About six,” he said.
    “Great. I’ll wait for you.”
    I’ll bet you will, he thought. I’ll bet you’ve been waiting for me for your whole life. This thought arrived like an avalanche. It carried him away, tumbled him head first into the desire she was not able to hide. He looked at the slip of paper she’d left behind. Her name was Margaret. Rico moved to the doorway to watch her walk to the corner and turn left.
    All afternoon, he worked his torch with the precision and focus of an assassin. He imagined Margaret on fire beneath him, reminding him how passion burned, how it scorched the human body from the inside out and left it wanting more. At the end of the day, he didn’t wash up. He didn’t change out of his coveralls. He didn’t call Rosalita to tell her he’d be late. He went straight to Margaret, dirty.
    When he pulled up in front of her house, she was on her hands and knees on the cement pad, her rear end aimed toward the driveway, and he felt himself get hard. He climbed out of his truck not caring if she or anybody else