The Pot Thief Who Studied Einstein Read online

  After we came back, several cars came by and a couple of them gave me a quizzical look. It occurred to me that perhaps the area under the trees was part of the communal property of Casitas del Bosque, so I decided to check with the nice lady at casita numero 742 to make sure I wasn’t going to be asked to leave by the neighborhood patrol.

  When she opened the door and saw it was me, she said with a smile, “Did you come back to tell me I can adopt him?”

  “Uh, no,” I replied. “It’s too soon.”

  She looked disappointed.

  “We give the owner a certain number of days to claim the animals before we allow them to be adopted.”

  “How many days?”

  “Uh, I’m not certain.”

  “Oh, right. You told me you’re new at this.”

  “Right. The reason I stopped by was I wanted to ask you if you thought it would be O.K. if the two of us had a sort of picnic over there under the trees.”

  “That would be great. Just let me put on some shoes,” she said and left me standing there like an idiot as she went back into the house.

  I looked at Geronimo and said, “You understood that the two of us meant you and me, right?”

  He nodded.

  She was gone so long I began to suspect she’d lost her shoes, but she finally came back to the door with shoes, lemonade, and biscochitos.

  After we shared the lunch I’d brought, I let Geronimo off his leash and he went for a swim in the canal, plopped down afterwards in the dirt, and woke up an hour later looking like the company mascot for a regiment of those mud soldiers they dug up in China. Or a clay anteater.

  When my companion from number 742 with ample lips and dimpled cheeks saw Geronimo’s condition, she went back to her house and returned with an old blanket. I took the dog back to the canal and threw him in. He paddled around for a few minutes, and then I winched him out, but this time I held the leash tight and kept him off the dirt. Miss Lips, as I had come to think of her, spread the blanket around the trunk of the catalpa like the apron around a Christmas tree, and I tied Geronimo to the tree with the leash shortened enough that he couldn’t get off the blanket. After Miss Lips had rubbed his ears a while, he went to sleep.

  “What will you do if someone comes along and claims to be the owner?” she asked.

  “I’ll give him his dog and go back to the shelter.”

  She looked alarmed. “But what if it’s not really the owner?”

  I didn’t know what to say and I said it.

  “It could be a bad person,” she said, as if this would help me know what to do.

  “You know,” she continued, “like someone who does experiments on animals.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” I admitted.

  “Doesn’t the shelter have rules about that?”

  “I’m not sure. I’m just a volunteer.”

  “Maybe you need a sign.”

  “A sign?” I pictured a man claiming ownership of the dog and then a white dove flying by as a sign that the man was not someone who collected animals for evil cosmetic companies to test their products on.

  “Yeah, like ‘Is this your dog?’” she explained.

  “Oh, that kind of sign.”

  “I can cut out the side of a cardboard box and nail it to a tomato stake, and we could write on it with a Sharpie.”

  I couldn’t think fast enough to come up with a plausible objection to the sign. After all, if I was trying to find the owner, I could hardly object to a sign that would help me do so. As she walked back to her house, I thought about that old saying about the webs we weave when we lie. I had made up what I thought was a harmless deception to help me find the collector’s address, and now I was trapped in it.

  When Miss Lips came back, I noticed as she approached that her lips were not the only ample part of her anatomy. She was about as different from Izuanita as a woman could be – short, pudgy, pigeon-toed, and round-faced. Yet attractive in her own way.

  “I’m sorry,” I said as she sat down next to me, “but I don’t know your name.”

  She smiled at me and said, “I’m Dolly Aguirre.”

  “I’m Hubert Schuze, but my friends call me Hubie. Is Dolly a nickname?”

  “Nope. It’s on my birth certificate, Dolly Madison Aguirre. My father taught American history.”

  “Oh my God! Did he teach at Albuquerque High?”

  “Yep. And you’re going to tell me you had him as a teacher, right?”

  “I did. Frank Aguirre, right?”

  She smiled and nodded.

  “Is he still teaching?”

  “Oh no, he retired years ago. In fact, he lives with me. You want to come over and say hello?”

  Oops. There was that deceptive web thing again. Oh well, it’s not like Mr. Aguirre was going to call the animal shelter to check up on whether I volunteered there. And what would he do if he found out I told a white lie to his daughter, go back and change my grade to an F?

  I told her I thought I should stay at my post in case the owner happened to drive by, but that I’d like to talk to her dad another time, and she agreed that made sense. We sat together on the blanket and passed a pleasant Saturday afternoon talking, eating biscochitos, and drinking lemonade. I also watched the comings and goings of the residents of Titanium Trail.

  It turned out Dolly had also had her father as a teacher, and that had proved awkward for her and him and for the other students who always assumed she didn’t have to work for her grades. She told me she did in fact get a break from her dad on her grade. He gave her a D even though she thought she had failed.

  Dolly had been at Albuquerque High as a freshman when I was a senior, but she didn’t remember me, probably because I didn’t play sports. The only people you can remember almost thirty years after you leave high school are the girls you dated – or in my case, the ones I wanted to date – and the sports stars. I didn’t remember her either, but then who pays attention to freshmen?

  I continued to keep one eye on the comings and goings of her neighbors while we talked, and around five she said she needed to check up on her father. Then she asked me if I’d like to have Sunday dinner at her house the next evening and get a chance to visit with her dad. I hesitated ever so slightly in answering because I wondered briefly whether she was asking me for a date, but I said yes, and after she left I thought about it and realized that it might be a pleasant evening either way, so it didn’t matter.

  I stayed under the catalpa until around seven then drove home. I put Geronimo out in the patio, put a bookmarker in Martin’s book on page fifteen, and made myself a large plate of nachos with fresh roasted jalapeños on top.

  The house I had finally focused on was number 730. No one had come and gone all day, the air conditioner wasn’t on, and no light had shone through any window at any point during the day. I was there again now that it was getting dark, and I sat in the Bronco as day turned to night and lights flickered on everywhere except number 730. An hour after full dark, I drove slowly to the garage and opened it. I loided the door and stood listening. Nothing.

  By this time, I knew the floor plan like I lived there. I also knew the house was empty. The air was hot and stale. I turned left as I entered the door from the garage, pushed open the swinging door, turned right and then looked right to the shelves. The moon was not yet up, but even with the faint ambient light I could see the pots. I took my three copies one at a time out to the Bronco and put them in three boxes I had brought for that purpose. I pushed newspaper around them gently to pad them for their ride back to Old Town.

  My portion of the ancient adobe I call home was in serious disrepair when I bought it. The rear portion that is now my residence had a hundred year backlog of deferred maintenance. My remodel included removing everything down to the original adobe bricks and putting plaster over every square inch of wall. The result was organic and irregular as adobe structures should be. And seamless except for two expansion joints. But they aren’t there for e
xpansion purposes. I put them there because when you turn and press the wall sconce just to the left of them in a certain way, a plastered panel swings out on invisible hinges, and that is where I hide pots that cannot be displayed in public. And that’s where I put the three copies when I got home.

  28

  The wooden hand-carved sign outside the church reads, “Iglesia de San Felipe de Neri – Fundada 1706.”

  The fundador was Don Francisco Cuervo y Valdez who originally named it San Francisco Xavier. Cuervo y Valdez is also the man who founded our fair city and named it after the Duque de Alburquerque. The Duque subsequently ordered the name of the church changed to San Felipe de Neri in honor of King Philip of Spain. We don’t know who ordered the first ‘r’ dropped from the spelling of ‘Albuquerque’.

  I also don’t know of any connection between the Saint and the King other than their names, and I don’t think the King was named for the Saint because there are eighteen different saints named Philip or Filipe, and the one called Neri was an Italian noted for his sense of humor. The King, on the other hand, had little sense of humor. He had the city of Xàtiva burned to the ground when they lost a battle, and then he renamed the city after himself. Today, a portrait of Philip V still hangs in the local museum there, but it’s deliberately displayed upside down.

  I like the fact that the sign in front of Old Town’s church is in Spanish. While national political debates rage over things like “English First” and “Bilingualism,” Albuquerqueans live in a city where Spanish and English peacefully coexist. One might even say lazily.

  The policy debates are inane. People who live in America eventually learn English no matter what their native tongue. People who live in Albuquerque usually learn Spanish, even if English is their first language. But nobody worries about it. If you don’t pick up Spanish, you miss out on much of the charm of the city, but it’s your loss and there are no language police.

  I was contemplating adding to Schuze’ Anthropological Premises a new SAP on the topic of language when mass finally ended and Father Groaz eventually made his way out to find me sitting on the adobe banquet as I often do on Sunday afternoons.

  “Gud afternoon, Youbird,” he greeted me.

  “Hi, Father. Can I have a word with you?”

  “Yass,” he said and then smiled. “Do you want to make confession?”

  “I’m not Catholic, Father.”

  “I know thot, Youbird, so we can make it informal here on the sidewalk.”

  He sat down beside me.

  “I’m worried about Miss Gladys,” I told him.

  “You do not trust her new suitor.”

  “You know about him, huh?”

  “Yass. Several people have mentioned this to me. Bot no one has said he has done something bad to her.”

  “Yet,” I said.

  He leaned his head back in thought and stroked his bushy beard. “God made man and woman to be together. He also gave us each the ability to choose. We should not judge Mr. Fister. And we must not assume that Miss Gladys is gullible old woman.”

  “That’s why I haven’t said anything to her. I didn’t want her to feel patronized. But I also don’t want her to be hurt.”

  “If you interfere, you will certainly hurt her. If you do not, she may still be hurt, but is not certain. Better to have romance and risk a hurt than to have a hurt inflicted on you by a well-meaning friend.”

  We sat in silence while I thought about it. I felt certain the good father was right. But I also felt certain that T. Morgan Fister was up to no good. To not interfere seemed wrong. To interfere seemed worse. I was like one of those subatomic particles – uncertain.

  I had a meeting with Chris, so I strolled back to my shop and found him waiting. I apologized for being late and told him I’d been at San Felipe de Neri talking to the priest. Chris seemed pleased that a church in New Mexico was named after a saint from his home town of Florence, and he told me he had studied Neri’s teachings which included a simple motto – Be good, if you can.

  I offered Chris a beer. He asked if I had red wine. I apologized that I did not. He ended up with water. He started telling me more about Neri, and between the subject matter and his fractured locutions, I admit my attention drifted.

  The Cadillac was where no Albuquerque policeman or Highway patrolman could spot it, and the three copies were safely tucked away in my secret compartment. Yet I was still worried. I needed time to think it through just to make sure there wasn’t some further precaution I needed to take, and I wondered when I could do that because I had promised to have dinner with Dolly Aguirre and her father that evening. So I was wishing Chris would leave, and I stopped correcting his English because that only prolonged his visit. And I was uncomfortable that he always sat so close even though Susannah had explained that it was just part of Italian culture.

  In fact we were talking about Susannah at one point, so I wasn’t surprised when he asked me if I thought he was attractive. I told him he was, and he told me I was, and I assumed he was just being nice and returning the compliment.

  And then he leaned over and kissed me passionately on the mouth.

  29

  Dolly greeted me at the door wearing a yellow blouse over a long green skirt. She looked like a plump sunflower.

  It was a good look, casual but dressed for dinner, and it almost matched my choice of a yellow cotton button-down shirt over chinos. No jacket or tie.

  I brought a present for her father, David McCullough’s acclaimed recent biography of John Adams. Bringing nothing would’ve been bad manners, and I’d rejected flowers because they would reinforce the ambiguity of the event. She hadn’t actually asked me for a date. But I hadn’t asked her on a picnic either, and look what happened.

  Frank Aguirre looked exactly as I imagined he would, the same face that evidenced a Native American grandparent or two, now wrinkled and topped by silver hair, but the same intelligent eyes.

  “It’s great to see you again after all these years, Mr. Aguirre,” I said to him after Dolly led me into the living room.

  “Call me Frank,” he said, but I didn’t.

  “I remembered how much you loved reading,” I said and thrust the book out awkwardly.

  He smiled and held it with two hands as if trying to assay its intellectual heft. Then he looked up at me sharply, “How did you know I haven’t read this?”

  I looked towards Dolly and he smiled.

  She asked me if I’d like a drink before dinner, and I asked Mr. Aguirre what he was having.

  “Decaffeinated coffee,” he said with disgust. “Doctor’s orders.”

  Dolly said she was having wine. I knew it wouldn’t have bubbles, so I chose the decaf.

  The interior décor of the Aguirre home belied the exterior, which was like every other house on the street. The beige carpet had been replaced with hardwood floors covered here and there by worn Navajo rugs. The walls were the color of cantaloupe with a gouache artfully applied to make the gypsum board appear to be genuine plaster. Non-structural ceiling beams had been added by a skilled carpenter. The furniture was rustic campaign, the chairs and sofa cushions covered in various brocades, and the parchment-shaded lamps cast a candlelight glow. Unfortunately, the cream-colored window shade remained. The overall feel was slightly kitschy but mostly homey, and we sat and talked while the chicken roasted, the house redolent with garlic and rosemary.

  Dolly adored her father and proudly told me he’d been the first teacher at Albuquerque High to receive a doctorate. Politeness required me to ask about it, and he told me he had written his dissertation at UNM on how U.S. immigration policy between 1864 and 1893 affected the labor market of that period. Evidently the most important step to ensure a successful dissertation is to define the topic so narrowly that no one else has written on precisely that subject.

  Not knowing enough about the topic to ask an intelligent question, I asked instead what the significance of the specific time period was.

  “186
4 was the first Congressional attempt to get a handle on the topic. They passed a law creating a Commissioner of Immigration and authorizing contracts wherein would-be immigrants could exchange a pledge of wages for transportation to the U.S. The end of the period, 1885, marked the passage of the first contract labor law, effectively bringing policy full circle.”

  I nodded as if that meant something to me, and Mr. Aguirre broke into a smile.

  “Even more boring than my American history classes, right?”

  “I liked your classes,” I said honestly, “but I don’t remember us discussing immigration policy.”

  “I had to stick to the approved curriculum. Can you still name all the presidents and their dates in office?”

  “No.”

  “I wouldn’t think so. And who cares when Franklin Pierce was president?”

  “There was a president named Franklin Pierce?”

  He and Dolly laughed.

  “The theory in the public schools,” he explained, “is that social studies prepare you for responsible citizenship. If all the students I taught and all the students all the other history teachers taught over the last thirty years had studied immigration policy instead of memorizing the presidents, we might be having a more intelligent national debate about what to do about illegal immigration.”

  My mother advised me not to discuss religion or politics at the dinner table, but that evening we discussed little else. Aguirre’s position was that immigration policy is driven by labor considerations. When the unions have their way, immigration is restricted and there is less competition for jobs and therefore better pay. When capitalists have their way, immigration is encouraged as a source of cheap labor. It reminded me of the stories Emilio told me about the Bracero program, and when I mentioned that to Mr. Aguirre, I was surprised to find that he supported the reinstatement of such a program despite the fact that he was basically a Marxist on the labor issue.