Picture Perfect Read online

  She would wait.

  She opened her eyes, hoping for answers, but all she could see were clouds that covered the sky like a bruise.

  THERE WASN'T ENOUGH LAND IN CALIFORNIA.

  He couldfeel it, beating like a hammer at the base of his throat, this claustrophobia born of the hissing asphalt under his tires and the condos pressed so close they left no room to breathe. So he kept driving west to find the ocean, hopefully before it got dark. He had never seen it. There had only been pictures, and accounts from his mother and his father.

  He remembered stories his father had told him, stories he hadn't believed at the time, of Indians jailed in the 1800s who died overnight because they couldn't stand the confinement.

  He thought of the statistics from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which said that sixty-six percent of Indians who left the reservations returned, unable to live in the cities. Of course, he was not entirely Sioux. But he was not entirely white, either.

  He smelled it before he saw it. The wind carried him the salt from the waves. He parked the rusted secondhand pickup on the shoulder of the road and ran down the sloping dune. He did not stop running until his sneakers were submerged, until water stained the thighs of his jeans like tears.

  A gull screamed.

  William Flying Horse stood with his arms outstretched, his eyes fixed on the Pacific Ocean but seeing, instead, the brindled plains and rolling Dakota hills that he would not call home.

  ON THE PINE RIDGE RESERVATION IN SOUTH DAKOTA, ROUTE 18 took you into town, and if you wanted to get anywhere else you navigated by natural landmarks or long-abandoned vehicles, since there weren't many other roads. But it had been three days since he'd moved to Los Angeles and Will had yet to get his bearings.

  He was renting a little row house in Reseda, which was close enough to the LAPD to eliminate the need for a long commute, and far enough away for him to feel like he wasn't attached to his job. He didn't have to report to work until tomorrow--the paperwork for the position had been done through the mail--and he had planned to use this time to find his way around L.A.

  Will slammed his fist onto the steering wheel. Where the hell was he? He groped along the front seat, looking for the map he'd tossed away minutes before. He squinted at the tiny red roads, but the overhead light in the pickup had been one of the first things to go, so he pulled to the curb underneath a streetlight. He peered at the map in the soft glow. "Shit," he said. "Beverly Hills. I was here an hour ago."

  For the first time in decades, he wished he was more of an Indian.

  He blamed his faulty sense of direction on hiswasicun blood. All his life he'd heard stories of his grandfather's father, who tracked the goddamned buffalo by the slightest rising of the wind. And when the woman his father loved had left without a word, hadn't he ridden for miles using only his intuition to find her? Compared to that, how difficult could it be to find the San Diego Freeway?

  Once, when Will was little, he'd followed his grandmother into the woods to collect roots and leaves for her medicines. He'd picked the ones she pointed to, cedar and sweet flag and wild licorice. He'd turned his back only for a moment, and his grandmother had disappeared. For a while Will had wandered in circles, trying to remember his father's lessons about footprints left on broken leaves, snapped branches, the sense of movement in the heavy air. It was hours before his grandmother found him again, cold and curled beneath the burl of an oak. Wordlessly she pulled him by the hand in the direction of home. When the small log house came into view, she turned and cupped Will's chin in her hand. "You," she sighed. "So white."

  He had only been ten, but that was the moment he knew he would never be like his grandparents. To them, to everyone who lived around him, he would always beiyeska , a mixed-blood. He had spent the next twenty-five years acting as white as he could, figuring if he could not be like his father's people, he would be like his mother's. He threw himself into his schoolwork so that he'd be able to go to college. He spoke only English, even at his grandparents' home where Lakota was the primary language. He nodded when his white bosses described the Sioux as lazy alcoholics and when the words ran cold through his blood; he wrapped his indifference around him like a cloak.

  Well, he was white now. He was off the reservation and he was planning to stay, and as for finding his way out of Beverly Hills, he'd do what every other white man would do: he'd find a gas station and get directions.

  Shifting gears, Will eased the truck away from the curb and started down the street again. The opulence of Beverly Hills amazed him--the wrought-iron gates and the pink marble fountains, the lights that winked from great Palladian windows. There was a party going on at one of the houses. Will slowed down to glimpse the silent ballet of waiters and guests and it took a moment for him to notice the flashing lights of the police cruiser pulling up behind him.

  Co-workers, he thought, as he stepped out of the pickup to ask directions. There were two officers. One was blond, and that was all Will had time to notice before the man slammed his head against the cab of his truck, pinning his arm behind him.

  "Look what we got here, Joe," he said. "Another fucking spic."

  "Listen,"Will heard himself rasp, and the cop brought his free hand down between Will's shoulder blades.

  "Don't talk back to me, Pedro," he said. "We've been following you for ten minutes. What the hell business do you have in a neighborhood like this?"

  "I'm a cop." Will's words fell heavy to the pavement.

  The man released his wrist, and Will pushed away from the truck and faced him. "Let's see your badge."

  Will swallowed and looked him in the eye. "I don't have it yet. I don't have my piece, either. I just got here; I start work tomorrow."

  The officer's eyes narrowed. "Yeah, well, if I don't see no badge, I don't see no cop." He nodded to his partner, who started to walk back to the cruiser. "Get the fuck out of here."

  Will clenched and unclenched his fists as he watched the cop's retreating back. "I'm one of you," he shouted, and behind the thick plate glass of the police cruiser's windshield, he saw the officer laugh. Walking back to his truck, he stared at the people at the party on the hill, laughing and drinking like nothing at all had happened.

  The moon slid behind a cloud as if it were embarrassed, and at that moment two truths struck Will: He did not like L.A. And he was not white.

  WHEN SHE AWAKENED THE SUN HAD SET. SHE SAT UP AND LEANED against the familiar gravestone. Somewhere to the east, a searchlight was cutting across the sky, and she wondered if some awards show was scheduled for that night--they were a dime a dozen in L.A.

  She pulled herself to her feet and began to walk toward the gate. With each footstep, she spoke aloud a different female name, hoping that one might jar her memory. "Alice," she said. "Barbara. Cicely." She had gotten to Marta by the time she reached the street--Sunset Boulevard, she knew it right away and she realized she was making progress, since she hadn't remembered that earlier. She sat at the curb, in front of the sign that listed the name of St. Sebastian's priest and the hours of confession and masses.

  She knew she wasn't a member of the congregation--that she wasn't even Catholic--but she felt she'd been there before. She felt she'dhidden there, really, or taken refuge. What would she possibly have been running from?

  Shrugging, she dismissed the thought and peered into the distance. Across the street and down the block was a billboard for a movie. "Taboo," she read aloud, wondering if she'd seen it, since the title seemed so familiar. The poster showed a man half in silhouette, but even with the shaded features it was easy to tell that the actor was Alex Rivers, America's sweetheart. He'd successfully starred in everything from action thrillers to Shakespeare, and she remembered reading somewhere that his Q-rating for recognition ranked above the President's. He was smiling at her. "At theaters everywhere," she read, hearing the catch in her own voice.

  LATER ON, WHEN WILL THOUGHT BACK TO THE MOMENT, HE REALized it was the owl's fault. If he hadn't braked at the