In Between Men

by Mary Castillo

  The reminder of Saturday night’s incident drowned Isa’s confidence in doubt. Just hearing his name sent off a roar that collided off the walls of her head. Snatching back some of the assurance her new look gave her, Isa straightened her shoulders. Fuck Alex. She winced, having already done that.

  “I see,” June murmured. She turned, “Everyone back up, me and Ms. Avellan need to chat in private.” She dragged Isa back up the ramp towards her classroom. “Come on now! Get!”

  Isa unlocked the door, and she and June stepped into the room. June pushed the door closed, cutting off the students’ chatter, then crossed both arms over her chest. She didn’t let Isa stop to turn on the lights. “Okay. What happened?”

  “Nothing.” Isa plucked at her cardigan. “Why?”

  “Something’s not right. Alex came home Saturday night and went straight into the shower. I haven’t seen him since.”

  Where had he been? Isa told herself she didn’t want to know.

  “Was he a jerk?” June accused.

  “Of course not. We just talked.” Isa pretended to sort through the papers she’d painstakingly organized Friday afternoon before her ill-fated weekend.

  “Uh-huh.” June wasn’t buying Isa’s explanation. “No woman in her right mind chops off her hair and buys new makeup without telling anyone first.” And then June’s face lit up. “Are you guys…”

  Her tone suggested something a little more committed than sex in the backseat of Alex’s car. Had Isa really done that? Standing in her classroom, it seemed like a very unlikely scenario.

  “June, don’t be that way. Al—” She struggled to say his name out loud, and then cleared her throat. “Alex and I had a lot of fun and that’s it. End of story.”

  “And since when did a man like Alex get up on a bar and shake his ass in front of nearly every red-blooded woman in town?” June’s eyes narrowed. “Oh yes, everyone knows about that.”

  “It was just a stupid contest.”

  “What did you offer him to make him do it?”

  Isa curled her lips back, sealing Saturday night’s “events” in the vault.

  “Okay, fine,” June sighed. “Y’all can play the game any way you want. But it’s a lot easier if y’all just come out with what you want and then get it on.”

  “No talking to Alex. Really June, I mean it!”

  Satisfied, June straightened her sweater and then opened the door.

  “June, don’t you—” Isa stepped forward.

  “See ya at lunch, sweetie,” she chirped, leaving the door ajar.

  Alex weighed his cell in the palm of his hand. A crazy idea occurred to him to drive to Isa’s school and see her.

  See her and then say what? Hey Isa, you may have gotten knocked-up by a guy who lost his job, supports his father, sister-in-law, and a sister in med school, and who wakes up every morning hoping the water heater doesn’t explode. Gee, sorry you got mixed up with me.

  Alex shoved the phone into his pocket and walked the brick path to the house. So much for being the man his mother had raised him to be. The second her coat came off, he forgot what convictions were.

  “You’re home,” his dad said, looking up from the newspaper spread out on the dining room table.

  “Yeah.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

  Alex stood at the end of the table, the truth burning a hole in his tongue. “Are we alone?”

  Removing his reading glasses, his dad glared. “Sure. Do I need my heart pills?”

  Alex sat down, threaded his fingers together, freed them, and then ran his hands over his jeans.

  “Did you get someone pregnant?” his father threw out at him.

  “What? What made you say that?”

  His dad’s laugh came out as a wheeze. “Because that’s how I probably looked when your mother told me we were having you.”

  Alex never heard this story before. “What did you do?”

  Relaxing back in his chair, the old man’s memories played upon his face. “Got some extra hours at the factory and took a part-time job with your grandfather’s business. It was tight but we made it just fine.”

  In that moment Alex decided he wasn’t telling his father about work. He was going to get another job. But he needed to talk to someone about Isa, and if anyone would understand, it would be his dad.

  “You know her name, right?” his dad cut through his panic.

  “Yes, I know her name,” he bit off impatiently. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I didn’t…I hardly knew her and then two hours later we were, you know.”

  His dad nodded that he knew.

  Alex should’ve left it at that but he heard himself continue, “We don’t know for sure if she’s…you know.”

  “I see. Do you know if you like her now?”

  “Well, yeah. I liked her from the very beginning. She’s smart and she’s—uh, very pretty.”

  A proud smile spread across dad’s face. Alex knew exactly what he was thinking: that’s my boy. But if one of his sisters were in his place right now, she’d be dead in the water. And frankly he’d want to kill the son of a bitch who knocked her up too.

  “I guess we just wait and find out,” Alex finished lamely.

  “Get to know her then,” his dad said. “Just in case if she’s…you know and you have to get married.”

  Alex slumped in his seat, his shoulders knotted. “I guess I could.” But Isa and her little boy deserved more than just him hanging around to make sure he was off the hook, so to speak. Also, he wasn’t so sure she’d just go ahead and marry him. One thing he knew about Isa, she didn’t give in without putting up a fight.

  “I know you’ve always said you’d never get married and have kids of your own,” his dad said, staring at the dinner table where so many Thanksgiving dinners and Christmases had been held. “You practically helped raise all the other kids. But think of this as a gift. All of you were gifts to me.”

  The emotion in his father’s voice nearly made Alex spill the rest of the story. But he couldn’t worry his dad that way. If he knew Alex was fired, the old man would insist on getting a job, bad heart or no bad heart. So he sucked it back in, the fear he could barely admit to himself burning the back of his throat.

  “Thanks, Dad.” The groaning of the chair against the tile echoed through the house. “I’ve got some phone calls to make.”

  The old man nodded as he reached unsteadily for the glasses hanging from his breast pocket. “You know where to find me.”

  14

  Isa flinched when someone knuckled her window. As if in a daze she looked over and saw Alex standing inches from her car. With her students’ reaction to fighting the school board still eating away at her confidence, Isa hardly remembered driving to the park.

  “Hey,” he called through the window and then motioned for her to roll it down.

  She reached across the seat for her purse and got out of the car instead.

  “I was wondering if that was you,” he said, making her squirm under his close scrutiny. “You’re coming out to watch practice, right?”

  “Yes. I was just thinking about something,” she said, slamming the door. “What are you doing out here?”

  “Looking for you.”

  Isa looked for the one little tick that would give him away. But she couldn’t find anything but those dark eyes focused on her.

  “Thanks.” Thinking he’d move if she stepped forward, she caught herself before she ended up back on top of him. “Excuse me.”

  “I want to take you to dinner some night.”

  “Wha—Why?”

  “Because I’d like to.”

  “But we already—” Isa almost said it.

  “Let’s put that behind us and start again. Isa, will you go out to dinner with me?”

  She was very much aware of curious eyes from the gazebo crawling all over them. “Alex, I don’t know.”

  “How about tonight?”

  “Andrew has homework
.”

  “We’ll make it quick.”

  Her face flamed red with the inflection of his voice. “We really don’t have time to talk about this right now so why don’t we—”

  He moved in and she held herself still, hoping he wouldn’t touch her. If he did, she feared she’d kiss him in front of all these soccer moms who’d then tell Susan, who’d then start planning her a pink wedding.

  “Tonight after practice,” Alex insisted. “We’ll go to Taco Mesa. All three of us.”

  “Let me think about it.”

  “You do that.”

  “But I need to know why.” She summoned her inner Joan. “Just because we had sex the other night doesn’t mean that you need to…pretend to get to know me or anything.”

  “I’m not pretending anything. If something happens…” he paused to look down at her abdomen and then back up into her eyes. “I want to be part of that. And if we start out as friends it’ll make things much easier.”

  “Oh.”

  “So are we on?”

  She wondered what would happen if she wasn’t pregnant. Would he just walk away from her and Andrew? “So how do you want to explain this to Andrew?”

  “What do you mean?”

  She nearly asked, are we really just friends? But that required courage in the form of a martini glass and two garlic olives. “Never mind. Can I go now?”

  He swung his arm out for her to pass. “See you tonight,” he said as she squared her shoulders and saw the gang of mothers quickly avert their eyes, pretending not to watch.

  Alex looked across the table at Taco Mesa and wondered once again what Isa had done to her eyes that made them so much more intense. She seemed to look right through Alex with a startling blue clarity that revealed his motives had been duty instead of desire to ask her out.

  But now he wasn’t so sure if it hadn’t been both. Isa had intrigued him before the new hair and makeup. After that night in his backseat, he knew that a wild and unpredictable woman hid in the shell of a mousy know-it-all. God, he wished he’d never seen her naked. Eating at the same table with her and Andrew hit home that he had a responsibility for her feelings as well as that of a boy who was starved for a father’s attention.

  “Come on, let’s go another round,” Andrew pleaded, wiping his taquito-stained fingers on his napkin. The jukebox put up a good fight in the joint crowded with high school kids on dates and families breaking away from the routine of home-cooked meals.

  “Andrew,” Isa warned.

  “It’s okay,” Alex assured. “Here, get started before I cream you.”

  “Cream me? I’ll destroy you,” Andrew promised as he took the quarters out of Alex’s hand.

  “We’ll see about that.”

  “Andrew, what do you say?” Isa prompted. Andrew thanked him and then ran for the games.

  Alex respected her gentle discipline. The way she handled her son reminded him a lot of his mother.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Put up with Andrew. He’s pretty high maintenance.”

  “I’ve got nephews his age. Do you have brothers and sisters?”

  “No. Just me.”

  Thousands of questions occurred to him at once. But he didn’t know his boundaries with her. She didn’t invite inquiries, or give any clues about her past.

  “So what do you teach?”

  “ESL.”

  “Yeah? My mother taught honors algebra.”

  “I remember her.”

  “So how long have you been teaching?”

  “Why don’t you just write all the questions and I’ll email you my answers.” Her tone was sharp but a smile played on her lips. She had a sarcasm that intrigued more than annoyed him.

  “But then I won’t get to look at you,” he baited, leaning forward. “That’s one of the best parts.”

  Her eyes darted around the room, finally landing on the napkin dispenser.

  Alex felt like he’d said something wrong, but he had no idea what. Her lips twitched while her fingers shredded her napkin. He barely made out her “Thanks.”

  “And thank you for letting me take you guys out,” he said, backing off. “We should do it again. Just you and me.”

  Her face almost matched the color of the booth.

  “I mean unless you’ve got other plans,” he added, praying for the razor-sharp humor that he knew waited underneath.

  “I’d like that as long as we stay out of your backseat,” she said slyly.

  Alex had been so careful to avoid any mention of that night and here she was joking about it. “Then that means you have to start wearing things under your coats.”

  “I always wondered if my chest had super powers,” she mused. “Now I know it does.”

  “It wasn’t just that. It was you.” Just like that, Alex saw her confidence wilt and she blushed again. “Come on, guys don’t tell you these things?”

  “You were listening when I told you about my public humiliation, weren’t you?” She watched him stretch his arm over the top of the booth.

  “Bullshit. Seriously, would you want your students looking at you like a sex object? I never liked any of my teachers.”

  “Weren’t you taught by priests and nuns?”

  “Only until middle school, and not all of them were priests and nuns.”

  “Still, now that I have this new look going, maybe it’ll raise my stock.”

  “I liked the old look,” he said, meaning it. “Especially the hair. It would’ve made kissing you easier.”

  She almost backed down, but didn’t. “Mexican men always want women with long hair.”

  “It’s sexy. Especially when it’s all over your shoulders and other places.”

  She ran her fingers through her hair and the light rippled over waves of deep brown and hints of gold.

  “It’s not like I shaved it off.”

  “I’m not complaining. It works because it leaves everything uncovered.” Nodding, he reached for his soda, needing something cool to wet his throat. “Yes, I think I can definitely work with this new look.”

  “Okay, I’ve given you enough time,” Andrew reappeared, resting his arm on Alex’s shoulder. “Time to be destroyed.”

  “Give me a couple more minutes.”

  “Ahhh come on,” Andrew groaned.

  “Dude, here’s more money. I need to say something to your mom.”

  “Mom, make him get up.”

  Alex couldn’t admit that this sexy banter they had going had another part of him going too. Isa met the look in Alex’s eyes and then a wicked grin bloomed. “Honey, let me play with you,” she offered, scooting out of the booth.

  “You will?”

  She stood up, grinning at Alex. “Alex needs the rest.”

  “I should have Mom play you,” Andrew challenged. “She’s even better than me.”

  Alex arched a look up at her, his eyes trailing down and then back up. “I don’t doubt it.”

  15

  It’s okay for a man to commit adultery if his wife is ugly.

  Howard Stern

  This guy was a frickin’ idiot. Through droopy-lidded eyes, Rocco watched as the intern pointed to the seat for Carlos Muñoz to sit. The dude already put his headsets on, giving the intern a hard time when he got tangled up in them.

  Irritated that he’d burned his tongue from his coffee and his wife made him get up early to take her dog out, dealing with this moron for another Friday morning was going to be even more difficult.

  Where the hell did they get these people? And the women—Rocco turned and looked at three overly ripe women—were they really so desperate for a man that they’d compete for Carlos?

  It’s a living. But it still never ceased to amaze him what people would do to hear themselves on the radio, especially when the joke always turned on them.

  His caffeine hadn’t yet kicked in and with a long sigh he punched the intercom button to talk to the moron. “Yo
man, you ready?”

  “Yup.”

  “You get a chance to talk to some of the ladies?”

  Carlos looked over into the booth next door, where the three girls were all staring open-mouthed at themselves in compact mirrors.

  “Whaddya think?” Rocco asked.

  “I think I like what I see.”

  Idiot, Rocco thought. But it was showtime.

  “All right, we’re back and Carlos Muñoz, the luckiest bastard in L.A., is with me and three fine-looking ladies—Julie, Becky and Stacy—who are competing for a weekend in Vegas with our man,” Rocco announced over the airwaves.

  “Now y’all saw our contestants on www.KHRD.com,” Sal chimed in. Rocco sent him a glare: you’re late. “But our man Carlos ain’t all about looks. He’s gotta have some conversation, meetin’ of the minds.”

  Rocco caught the confused look on Carlos’s face and hit mute on his mic in case he said something stupid. Rocco and the intern came up with this idea and he didn’t want it to get all screwed up.

  “So Carlos here gave us some questions to determine which of these three beautiful women is the smartest, and we’re putting you ladies to the test,” Rocco said.

  “We can handle it,” Becky shouted.

  “Sure about that?” Sal asked, turning on the charm.

  Stacy and Julie giggled, but Rocco saw the evil glitter in Becky’s eyes.

  “Now these are some very hard questions—” Sal warned.

  “I don’t like hard questions,” Julie the blonde whined, fingering the tip of the microphone.

  “But I bet you like other hard things, right?” Rocco teased, knowing his wife would get him for that one.

  Julie frowned and shifted her head to the side as if she didn’t get it.

  Catching on, Carlos added, “I hope so,” but his mic was still on mute.

  “In each round you will gain points and then all three of you will have to fight for the date at our K-Y Cat Fight,” Rocco announced.