The Lies that Bind by Judith Van Gieson

probably takes more Halcion than she should, but who knows how much? Probably she doesn’t even know herself. Her doctor hands them out like candy. I snitch a couple now and then when I need them, but she never notices.”
    â€œActually, I took a few myself,” I admitted.
    She was startled. “You?”
    â€œI wanted to see what kind of effect they would have combined with a couple of drinks.”
    She laughed. “I guess I’d better lay off for a while. She might notice double dipping.” She touched my hand, brushed her hair out of her face and looked into my eyes. “I’m glad you’re here, Neil. As far as I’m concerned, you’re the best thing about Albuquerque, maybe the only good thing. When this mess gets straightened out and El Dorado sells, Whit wants to go right back to Arizona. You must like New Mexico—you’ve been here so long—but to me it seems poor and empty.”
    â€œThat’s what I like about it. What’s El Dorado?”
    â€œI’ll show you.” She went into another room and came back with a watercolor of an enormous adobe-colored building that appeared to be floating above the desert, suspended on clouds of illusory money. “It’s a planned development and destination resort that Whit was building outside Phoenix. This is the hotel. There was also going to be an eighteen-hole golf course with home sites around it.” It looked to me like the kind of development they call Las Tramponus in Santa Fe, a place that uses up all the natives’ water and tax dollars but won’t let them in. “He lost it to the bank,” Cindy continued. “We lost just about everything when the real estate market collapsed. They let us keep our house, but by then the mortgage was worth more than the house was. Whit lost his polo ponies, his cabin cruiser, his collection of antique cars. El Dorado is being sold at auction, and we’re hoping to get enough out of it to go back and start again. In the meantime Whit’s been working for Mother.”
    â€œWho’d buy a property like that at auction these days?”
    â€œForeign investors.”
    â€œUm,” said I. Maybe they’d like to buy some oceanfront property in Gallup too, I thought. It’s okay to share secrets with an old friend but not necessarily to tell the truth. El Dorado means “the golden place,” but in this case I’d say it was fool’s gold. The truth was that if El Dorado was being sold at auction, the Reids were far more likely to end up owing than receiving. It was a truth Cindy could have found out for herself easily enough if she wanted to. Foreclosures rarely sell for the amount of the mortgage. By the time the banks get them, the properties have often been trashed, and in the eighties real estate was often overvalued by appraisers and overmortgaged. If the bank didn’t recoup the amount of the mortgage, the Reids could remain liable for the difference.
    Cindy sipped her tea and moved the conversation back to a more entertaining subject. “I hear you’ve got a, um, young hunk, Neil.”
    â€œThe Kid? He’s too skinny to be a hunk. Who told you that?”
    â€œMy mother.”
    â€œYour mother said the Kid is a hunk?”
    â€œNot exactly. She said he was tall, thin, had lots of black hair and was … Spanish.”
    â€œIs that anything like being a spic?”
    Cindy threw up her hands. “You know my mother.”
    â€œActually, he lives in Albuquerque, was born in Argentina, grew up in Mexico. His father is of Spanish descent, his mother Italian. He speaks English, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. He has a business here. He has a green card. I’d say that makes him an American.”
    â€œHey, you don’t have to defend him to me.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œAre you getting in deep?”
    â€œNot that deep.”
    â€œSo is he good-looking or