Banana Rose Read Online Free PDF

Taos Mountain. It was misty gray, like in a Japanese painting. I’d come to Taos a year and a half before with an old boyfriend named Nicky. We broke up two months after we got here. He left, and I stayed on. I’d known it was my home the moment I saw the mountain.
    It figured Rita was late. Even though I knew it couldn’t be her fault—after all, she was on a bus—it felt like her fault just the same. She was always late. I stuck a piece of chewing gum in my mouth.
    Then I saw the bus in the foggy distance. It pulled up in front of me, and as soon as the door opened, Rita fell out. I caught her in my arms. The driver threw her knapsack out after her and I caught it.
    “Good-bye,” he yelled with a good-riddance voice.
    “What was that about?” I asked.
    “Oh, nothing.” Rita waved her hand dismissingly.
    “C’mon, it wasn’t nothing.” Rita had beautiful long black wavy hair that frizzed out like Jimi Hendrix’s, and she always wore silver sneakers.
    “I was just singing in the bus a lot, and someone complained, and I asked the passengers to take a vote. I won, and so I kept on singing. Then I lost my wallet in Pueblo, Colorado, where we made a pit stop, and I wouldn’t let the bus leave until I found it. After everyone searched for fifteen minutes, I found it in my pocket.”
    “So you were why the bus was late?” I asked.
    “Naw, it was an awful driver. He was so slow.” She turned her head around. “So this is Taos. It’s so small.”
    “My car’s over here,” I said, toting her bag.
    I took her to dinner at the House of Taos.
    “This restaurant is dark,” she said.
    I looked around. “It’s adobe, and they did a thin wash with straw and sand over the adobe bricks. They have great pizza. Let’s get a green chile. It’s my favorite.”
    “This place feels like jail.” She made a face.
    “Look, Rita, it’s a great place. It’s not New York, okay?” I felt that old crunch in my stomach. It was a cross between rage and claustrophobia. It made me want to run. I’d been feeling it since I was a young kid, so I bolted from Brooklyn as soon as I could and went away to college in Michigan. Since then, I’d only been back home for a week or two at a time for visits.
    “So what was it like in Kearney?” I asked, as a way to shift the energy from Taos.
    “How would I know? I only saw a cell. Look at all the weight I lost.” She showed me the waistband on her pants.
    “Well, let’s order a large. You want anything else? A malt, salad?”
    “Yeah,” she cheered a bit. “Everything. How ’bout a beer?”
    “They don’t have a liquor license.” I made a gesture at a smile.
    “Brother! This place is a honky-tonk—”
    I cut her off and called over the waitress. “We’ll have a large green chile, extra cheese.” I turned to Rita and took charge. “Do you want a chocolate malt?” She nodded. “And a salad with blue cheese. We’ll share it.”
    Rita told me how she and four friends had been driving through Kearney at 3 A.M., high on Quaaludes. They were headed for California and had stopped in a café. “You could just see it,” she said, slurping her malt.
    Just then the waitress placed the pizza before us. Rita pulled some of the cheese off a slice and put it in her mouth. “Five wired freaks from the Big Apple stop for OJ. The café owner took one look at us and called the cops while we were sucking juice at the counter.”
    “You were wearing your silver sneakers, I presume?”
    She nodded, laughing.
    “And your hair was way out, no doubt?”
    She nodded again. “And Calvin had painted a cross on my forehead. I guess it was still showing.” She smiled.
    “I guess it was,” I said like a lawyer. God, I hated playing the part of the big sister. I had my own life, but around my family I always fell back into the same role.
    But I couldn’t stop myself. “And so how long were you there?”
    “Two weeks. Man, I thought I’d die. Daddy started to cry when he heard. I