FICTION: “PALMING JADE” by Roberto Ontiveros

Illustration by Maura Walsh / Black Nail Studio.

FICTION
PALMING JADE
By Roberto Ontiveros

I followed Veronica Talon like I promised her father I would, even though the man was five years dead now and my obligations to him were over.

Larry Talon – my boss for nine out of the eleven jobs that had me transition from unqualified food critic to unlicensed gumshoe – was a private man with deep pockets, and when I started tailing his over-litigious brother-in-law over some missing motel room receipts, Talon expressed to me how very worried he was about his one kid Veronica, who was in her late twenties when I started to look out for her and make sure my late boss’s sole heir was safe. Now, at thirty-three, Veronica could still easily pass for a twenty-four-year-old and made damn sure to use that power to her advantage. Although she was in no way ever going to have to scrounge, the woman got mad kicks from conning lovelorn suckers out of their cash, and she had been pulling this very similar stunt on very similar men for over a decade. But right now, at the cusp of early middle age, she was just beginning to realize that she might not be able to keep pulling off this same con so easily for much longer – not in this town at least, and maybe not even in this part of South Texas anymore either, this border zone where, despite never having been cuffed and booked, she was starting to really look like she was up to something sinister to anyone who cared enough to think twice about how she stood to be seen when in line at Starbucks but never ever had to stand in line for a drink at a bar.

Talon’s modus operandi was this superstitious twist on a very old grifter routine. She would come into the life of a man with some money, some property, or even just the promise of either of those ephemerals. That part was a no-brainer but the establishing shot before Talon’s big picture could develop was that her mark should be a happily married man whose lady was also a jealous type, and more than just jealous, her victim’s other half had to feel hip to the other side: that is, wifey should believe in some unseen moral order, or ghosts, or the mal ojo, or at the very least the woman should have been forced to attend church as a child; that bauble of belief was a prerequisite for the ruse and abuse to come and had to be there in order for Talon to work her magic. So: Veronica would scout out the woman first – at funerals, or at a day spa, or an astrology center, or maybe even after an Al-Anon meeting, look for that ring, then find out about the man who got down on one knee, before getting to the craft of her con.

The affair, once initiated, took no time to get serious, and Talon made it as pleasant as possible. The seduction and the set-up were seamless and only then, when her mark felt comfort and maybe even that confidence that oozes out of the successful two-timer, would Veronica start to transform before her target. She would pack herself into some panic about these unseen forces coming at her: talk about sleep walking, show up on dates with scratches over her skin, and go into all this noise about how she was not a religious woman, and did not believe in anything, no way, not ever, but she had been going on-line and studying up on all the ills that were falling her way and felt that she must be cursed. She would say she knew she was being haunted and pursued spectrally, plowed and needled by some dark and angry force, and then she would look like a possessed woman about to snap into froth and howling. Then maybe she would even go through with the demonstrable froth and howling, or for sure roll her eyes back, zoning out in cauldron brain, making Linda Blair faces that looked more like scenes from Chained Heat than The Exorcist. Maybe she would even be better in the sack during these episodes, and her mark would be amenable with all madness, but it would look like someone else was enjoying her body, was puppeteering her frame, and then Veronica would feign forgetfulness after a weekend tryst, act shocked at any pictures taken of her on a beach, in a robe or in her mark’s dress shirt; these shots with her mouth open like she was ready to eat and eat and knew no satiation, eyes closed tight or wide like she was a child learning to see peripherally.

The last date night would be a scary set of questions regarding how much the mark’s wife actually knew about her, a desperate begging to know exactly what the woman knew. The mark would be flustered alright, then the guilt would set in as Veronica went in on a strategic line of questioning: Just how spiritual is your wife? Does she pray? Does she keep a prayer journal? Did I leave any item of clothing around in your car, a bra or even a button that she might have come across and scooped up in her witchy hands? I am feeling such oppression now and I don’t believe in evil or the evil eye but, yes, I know that prayers work – all prayers work for ill or for aid and someone is trying to hurt me, and someone is hurting me! And it has to be your wife! If the guy was buying her panic, not even Talon’s claims of spiritual sabotage but just her very true and obvious panic, then he might set her up right then and there with a trip to leave town, or the money to leave or give her keys to a place or a car even to just drive off and be somewhere safe. This material sacrifice would even help him out too since the mark was starting to feel that maybe this lovely woman he was so weak for was a loon and maybe his wife did not deserve what he had pulled and thought he was getting away with. If, however, this first step of the scheme did not work then Veronica would simply wait him out; three months would be all she needed to fake the changes. Three months and Veronica Talon emerged a broken woman under the soak of a spell. She would turn herself into something else, something pitiful and hard to look at, and then request another date and then, horrified with what had become of his lover, the mark would oftentimes write out a cheque right away to help with all the damage that had occurred to this once lovely creature who was falling fast. This would be the end unless there were some deep pockets involved. If there were, then Veronica would wait longer – this time only three weeks, less than a month to return and to show the man how his money had helped pay for desperately needed treatment or to get her own curandera involved, to buy her all the time she needed to heal, and See how much I have improved thanks to your help, Love. You have saved my life and now I want to do all I can to make yours better and the two would meet again to set up a routine of constant help, a secret joint checking account, or even a trip together somewhere where parched pilgrims take the waters and healing happens under a parasol and beneath the warm weight of black yogic stones. Unless he got wise. No one ever got wise. And there were deep pockets involved tonight.

. . .

The light in Veronica’s loft was on: a rose-yellow square of lamp glow diagonally cut by her pacing silhouette as she went up and down the stairwell in a skirt and stockings and heels, a bra and bracelets, from mango couch upholstery to upstairs closet, with her palms cupping around her ears, elbows making shark fin/wire hanger shadows along the custard walls of her living room, looking like she were blocking out some noise, but I had seen her prepare for one of these reunion nights before and knew she was keeping all the noise inside, getting her lines right and ready for the impending put-on. The lights went out and, from the back seat of Arnie’s emerald green old school Chevrolet Bel Air, I spied the brass and glass door of her building, waiting for Veronica Talon to emerge.

A young man in a UPS outfit held the door open for her as she approached her exit and Veronica smiled at him big enough for me to feel it too and then she strode off to the curb where a cab was waiting and Arnie got ready to tail.

“Jesus, she cleans up nice,” Arnie said when he got a good look at Veronica sliding into the cab. Those legs in black stockings, that leather skirt, her hair a red that bordered on blood- black, and even from this distance we got the glint of nails that matched the emerald green of her earrings. “Jade and leather is her look, I gotta say,” Arnie said when what he was really trying to get out that this could not be the same woman he tailed three months back with me. But it was. I had seen this transformation trick before. Talon was good at it.

“I think I know the place she is heading towards. Stick to the left so we turn before hitting Orion’s,” I said, knowing that she was going to this bar that used to be in constant danger of going under but, since they went all upscale and started this only open one night out of the week deal which required reservations which required a credit check even, they had prolonged their life and become the place to be that only those willing to put down $200 bucks for a table-securing bottle of vodka would ever see. I had been there nine times and, of course, paid nothing. Back when I was reviewing the local bar scene, the Verger let me use their card; and then when I transitioned into this skulk-and-seek work I was always someone’s guest anyway.

We parked across from Orion’s and waited the ten minutes it took for Veronica’s cab to drop her off at the front. Arnie shook his head and smiled when he saw Ms. Talon come to the door.

When last he saw her, Veronica was walking with a cane. She had worn a grey pantsuit to accent the streaks of grey she had dyed into her dusty black hair. If I were to guess I would say she had intended to convince her mark that some rapid decrepitude was upon her, the result of sleeplessness and psychic vampires sipping away at her youth and vitality, some spectral jealousy coming from Dr. Verga’s jilted wife, no doubt. As a man of science the cardiologist who owned several vitamin stores in McAllen would, of course, not easily accept Veronica’s paranoid accusations but confronted with the evidence of his lover’s slurred speech and the obvious limp and the cataract-looking contacts she now wore to swamp-fog her green eyes, what else would he think? Of course, he gave her the two grand it would take to see her healer in Albuquerque, to get the help she needed, and maybe check herself into a room far from the vile influence of Morgan Verga; it did not take much convincing. Veronica was weeping slowly that night, I had seen it all as I sipped my Johnny Walker Red and observed how she played the good doctor. I shook my head as I saw Dr. Verga take out a checkbook and pen out a series of cursive zeros fast and without hesitation, and the way he held Veronica’s hands as she shook before her vodka tonic. O what had he done to her? What had his wife done? How could he not see how this would end? this guy was thinking. I saw the man suffer guilt for everyone involved.

And now, three months later, Dr. Verga was going to see what his money had done as Veronica Talon returned to Orion’s looking like it was Halloween and she had already earned a

costume prize for going as some Goth Rita Hayworth.

I would wait in the car for a bit before going in.

I asked Arnie about his kid. He had a nine-year-old daughter that was in the Gifted and Talented program.

“Is that right?” I said when I heard how good she was at math and history.

“April wants to get her ears pierced, though. I told her to wait, maybe when she is thirteen, maybe eleven, I said to her.”

I nodded in happy confederacy with my driver, who had been raising his daughter alone for four out his daughter’s nine years and doing everything to be both parents, with the PTA meetings, and then driving her around the nice neighborhoods to sell candy bars for school fund-raising, and then driving me around on those days I needed him, plus anyone else who needed his services. The guy was even taking night classes to learn to do computer accounting so he could apply for temp work with the IRS around tax season.

“So, tell April her uncle Bob is proud of her and, hey, remind me to give you this Barnes & Noble gift card when you drop me off. It was for her birthday – for last year’s birthday even, when I was so out of town I almost changed my P.O. Box. So, she never got it then. Remind me.”

“Will do, boss.”

“Okay, let me see where we are,” I said and started towards the door of Orion’s.

I right away asked the hostess where Dr.Verga’s table was. Said I was supposed to meet him and my date and his wife here tonight.

The girl, who already knew me as a preferred customer since the tapas chef pointed out a framed copy of my glowing review a few months back when I was eating my dinner alone at the bar, stretched her neck looking out for the cardiologist but I could see Veronica’s blood-red hair and the happy face of Dr. Verga who was beaming to see such health return to his lover. But as I approached their table, his smile froze and his eyes zeroed in on me like he really knew me and knew I was trouble for him, but could not place the where and could not fathom the how.

I stood behind Veronica Talon and called out the name she was going by with this guy. “Lydia? Lydia Owen? I had zero doubt I would find you here and yet am still so relieved that I

did.”

Veronica turned to look at me and taking over the smile that had left the lips of her mark, said: “Christ, Bob. Dad said you were a sneaky guy. Look how you find me even in this place where there is a line to get in and my doctor friend here had to make reservations like in June.”

I nodded my salutations to the man whose face started to still and stone up even, as if he was fully aware than anything he uttered I would remember and he did not even know my story but, like the petrochemical tormentor in that Laurie Anderson O Superman song, I knew him. “Well, funny you should mention your Daddy. The old boy is not well. I would ask you to go somewhere private to tell you this but the medical man here might very well understand the severity of this news: your father is not having a good night, does not know where he is and thinks you are with me, even – that’s how lost he is tonight. He called eight times and I was almost going to call an ambulance for him but I also thought this was not my problem and was going to get myself something to eat and then recalled how you were fond of this place and how fond I was of their endives and pear cider combo too. Then I saw your gorgeous blood-red-black hair and had a sudden taste for malbec and antipasto crudo and knew right away it was you sitting there and really I do not want to interrupt you and your date here but your Dad is a very sick man. If he still thinks you are living at my place then he is going back in time-sick too.”

Veronica knew she had to go with me, that I would escalate and elaborate and blow up schemes, and so she nodded like she was identifying a corpse for the cops and could not bring herself to speak due to the shock and doused reflections that followed a sudden and mute-making grief.

“I will wait for you outside.”

. . .

I did not have to wait long. Arnie held the door open for Veronica who grinned when she saw him and thudded a fast one-two onto his left shoulder before she slid in.

The two of us in the back seat, I lit the cigarette that was already pursed in Veronica’s pout and complimented her on her earrings. They matched her green eyes and nail polish really

well.

Arnie chimed in with a, “Yeah, I was telling Bob here that jade and leather look, that’s for you, that’s your look, no question.”

“Thank you, Arnie. The skirt I picked out maybe four dates ago,” she said. “The earrings were a gift from the man I left inside. So, Bobby, where does Dad’s money and your guilt drive

me out this evening?”

“Back to your place, and you should stay there maybe for a while. I know something about this Dr. Verga. He is about to be a single man. And he is about to be a very broke man too. So there is a very big chance he is about to become a desperate man. And desperate men do crazy things.”

“Oh, I know,” Veronica said and shook her head. “Yeah, he grilled that wife of his, he told me. He grilled her good on what spells she knew and had thrown my way and all this crazy witch stuff and after she really really stuck to her guns about not knowing what the hell he was talking about, so then he went in all mad like he would not take it anymore, all this ‘Look, I know what you have done to my Lydia and she is out now, protected from you,’ and then all this ‘I never want to see you again’ drama he detailed for me and I am very glad I did not get to hear the rest of the story he was going to tell me, which was about how he was all mine now, and he even gave me an address too. Right when you walked out here. A cabin in Mercedes. Yeesh. I am supposed to meet him on Wednesday and then we fly out to his brother’s place in Maine of all places. I won’t be there. I can’t do cabins.”

“He will know by then,” I said. “He will know how you are and get angry at what you have done.”

“Yeah,” sighed Veronica Talon.

I walked her to her door. Veronica turned to look at me and stared at me for more time than was right for a goodbye and shook her head in full knowledge of the sickness she had in her and in full acceptance of the fact that one of these nights I would not get to her in time and she would have to make fast decisions about how she was going to survive.

“I won’t be able to follow you if you leave town,” I said.

“I know,” she said and tilted her head to remove her jade earrings. “And you know where he is right now. Dr. Verga. You know where he is maybe right now this second, because it makes sense he would still be there. He can’t go home now. Not after what he told his wife. And he paid so much for that table tonight. Bring these back to him and tell him that I had to take my Dad to his doctor in San Antonio and will get back to him when I can.”

I palmed the jade jewelry and watched Veronica punch in a code and enter her building and then I walked back to my guy Arnie and told him to drive back to Orion’s. That Dr. Verga had dished out maybe three bills just to be there with Veronica Talon for five minutes before I intervened and changed up his night and his world, forever maybe. If the man had any sense he would have called his wife up after Veronica split and told Morgan to meet him there, to talk things out, to iron out everything. But he had no sense or else he would not have been taken in so slick by this sick chick I was looking after.

“Okay, Arnie, so if the man is still there, then I am going to hand him back these earrings he got for … er, Lydia … and then tell the good doctor what all this really means for him.”

“And if he’s not?”

I smiled with the feel of the jade earrings warming beneath the closed fingers of my left hand. “If he is not there, then I want you to take these pretty earrings and put them in a pretty box and save them for when your daughter gets her ears pierced. Tell April she does not need to wear earrings ever but if she must then they are right there for her and then give them to her on that day she makes you drive her to the mall to get the piercings done.”

“Will do, boss.”

I nodded and smiled when I saw Arnie straighten his tie in the rearview mirror before turning on the ignition.

Roberto Ontiveros is a fiction writer, artist, and journalist. Some of his work has appeared in the Threepenny Review, the Baffler, AGNI and the Believer. His debut collection, The Fight for Space, was published by Stephen F. Austin State University Press, and his second book, Assisted Living, was published by Corona/Samizdat Press.

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