In Between Men

by Mary Castillo

  “Stay away from me!”

  “Hey baby, I just wanted a good morning hug,” Carlos said.

  Isa stepped around and saw Carlos and some guy who resembled a weasel circling around what looked like a Britney Spears impersonator with the shoulders of the Hulk.

  “Look, you motherfucker, don’t you come near me again!” she shouted. On a closer look, she had man hands.

  “Hey, I didn’t even touch you, bi—” Slap. Carlos jumped back, holding his arm. “Ahh! You see that? Did you see this shit? She hit me!”

  “Hey, you’re not supposed to be here,” a roadie said to Isa.

  They all turned and saw Isa standing there.

  Carlos stopped nursing his arm and his face screwed into an ugly scowl. “What are you doing here?”

  “Nothing, I—”

  “Sorry, but you have to go,” the roadie insisted.

  “No, wait,” Isa said. She looked at the blonde. “I’m his ex.”

  “You were married to this punk?” she asked, smacking her fist into the palm of her other hand.

  Both Isa and roadie stepped back. “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “And you put up with all this?” Smack!

  “Not much I could do when I had his son.”

  The blonde’s hands fell at her sides and she turned to Carlos. “You have a little boy?”

  “Hey, Isa, get the fuck out of here,” Carlos shouted, puffing his chest out and stalking to her. “No wait, everybody! See this! This here’s my unfuckable wife!”

  Isa heard the roadie suck in his breath beside her. No one jeered or laughed at her. They just stared at him.

  “Yeah, the very one,” Carlos continued, losing steam. “She’s the one tha—”

  When the cops asked her later, Isa didn’t remember actually walking over and sinking her fist in his flabby middle. But she could remember the sound of the air rushing out of his abdomen and then his body hitting the pavement like a felled tree.

  She looked up at his weasel friend, holding up her fist as if she couldn’t quite believe what she’d just done. He held shaking hands out to protect himself. “I don’t want any trouble.”

  The blonde walked up, giving her a friendly smile and a handshake. “Hey, I’m Becky and I had to spend four shitty days in Vegas with this slob and his fat friend. Why did you…how could you marry that?”

  Isa stepped back. “You wrestled in K-Y for him.”

  Becky nodded her head thoughtfully. “But I did it for my career. Did you really love this guy?”

  Isa looked down at him and then winced. During the fall Carlos’s pants came loose and his black Calvin Klein g-string emerged between his pasty butt cheeks.

  “Ewww.” Isa and Becky both looked away.

  Yes. At one point in her life, Isa loved this quivering, pathetic bit of masculinity with every cell in her being. All this time everyone thought Carlos was the man because he had women fighting over him on the radio, but really, he was the kind of man who wore a g-string.

  “Come on,” Becky urged. “I only had one weekend with this creep and I can only imagine what you went through. You deserve a good kick to his nuts.”

  Then again, if Isa hadn’t loved him, she wouldn’t have Andrew. One good punch was enough. It ended this. Because when she thought about it, if she hadn’t had Andrew that meant she wouldn’t have met Alex and then—

  She drew her right foot back and drove it in the back of his thigh.

  “Ahh!” Carlos screamed. “She kicked me! Help! Help!”

  “Oh, shut up,” Isa shouted, and kicked him again.

  “I’m gonna sue you! My mom has a lawyer, she’ll sue you for—oomph!”

  Carlos’s friend fell on top of him. Becky stood with both feet planted wide and arms crossed over her tube top. “That’s for not understanding the word ‘no,’ you ass-grabbing jerk.”

  “Hey, somebody get this on the air!” Isa looked over her shoulder as the crew scrambled in each and every direction.

  Becky grabbed her, marching her to the parking lot. “Just go. Let me handle this.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Like I said. This is for my career. Maybe they’ll give me my own show. You know, like The Bachelorette Meets WWF or something.” She gave her a little push. “And don’t be coming back here to get a show of your own. I’ll kick your ass.”

  “What?” Alex asked, pressing the cell phone against one ear and a finger in the other.

  He had the cops here walking an eighty-year-old neighbor down the street who had earlier chained himself to a tree in protest of the new house going up. They’d just got the backhoe going when his phone buzzed.

  “Say that again!” he shouted.

  “I said that your brother is alive,” Dad shouted back.

  Alex went cold under the relentless sun. “Is he hurt? Where is he?”

  “He’s on his way to a base in Germany. We’re getting ready to leave now. What’s that noise?”

  “Work. I’ll be right there.”

  Static garbled Dad’s voice, and then the call ended. Snapping it shut, Alex lowered himself on the bumper of Daryl’s truck, reaching around to scratch his shoulder.

  His brother wasn’t dead. He would see him again and joke with him…tell him that he was going to be a dad.

  Alex didn’t know what was worse: getting the call that his mother was dead, leaving him no opportunity to hope, or having lived through the darkness and the mental static of yesterday.

  And what if it had been Isa? His shoulders slumped forward on a long sigh. If he lost her, he’d have lost the best thing that ever happened to him. And he loved her. He just screwed up his chance to say it back.

  He knew what he had to do. He didn’t know how to tell Daryl but he was going to find her and tell her in person.

  “And here’s the miracle man,” Daryl called, coming at him across the site. He ducked under the architect’s elevation markers and then swept off his hard hat. “Well, my friend, you just saved our ass. Mrs. Kwan there would’ve called this whole thing off if you hadn’t come along and got us back online.”

  “The neighbor still chained himself to the tree.”

  “Eh. Local color. Just trying to get into the papers and if any reporters show up, tell the guys that only you do the talking.”

  Alex bobbed his head up and down. “Will do.”

  “I’m thinking with everything moving along now, you might join me for breakfast.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Sure you can. I’m the boss, I said so.”

  “No, I have a family situation back home. Just got the call.”

  “It’s not too bad, is it?”

  “No, not at all. But I probably won’t be able to come back today.”

  “You sure you want to do that? I’d like to talk about future projects.”

  Somewhere hidden between duty and doubt, fear and hope, Alex knew he loved Isa. He’d be an idiot to put it off any longer.

  Alex stood up and knocked his hard hat on his thigh. “I’m sure.”

  34

  “Hey there!” Isa said when June stood in her doorway after class. She tried to smile even when her stomach felt hollowed out with dread.

  “He’s alive,” June said, her voice unaccustomed to talking. “They found him and he’s okay.”

  Isa flew across the room and hugged her. “June, I’m so happy for you.”

  June sobbed and tears gushed out of her eyes. Isa walked her to a chair. With her hands covering her face, June cried out all the darkness she’d kept locked inside while Isa held her.

  “Look at me,” she struggled through her sobs. “I couldn’t cry when I thought he was dead and now that h-h-he’s alive, I can’t stop.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with that. You just deal with it in your own way.”

  June nodded, pressing her cheek with the heel of her hand. “I’m flying to Germany tonight. I gotta be going in twenty minutes.”

  “Then you get going. Is your
mom going with you?”

  “No. I’m going with Ted’s father.” She settled her shoulders back but she still looked scared. “And I’m really sorry for not being there Tuesday ni—”

  “Stop it. When you come back, stop in for a visit with the kids.”

  June sighed. “I heard what you said to Alex.”

  Isa dropped her gaze and stood up, not needing to hear this. “June, don’t—”

  “You’re really, really brave. And lucky to be having a baby. I’m gonna remember that when I get on the plane today.”

  “I’m stupid.”

  “How dare you say that? Take that back right now.”

  “Can’t.” Isa tightened her fingers into fists. “It’s true.”

  “But you love him, don’t you?”

  It didn’t even occur to Isa to lie. “I do.”

  “And I think he loves you. He’s just not smart enough to figure it out.”

  “There’s no such thing as figuring out love. He either does or he doesn’t. And people don’t learn to love each other over time either. It just doesn’t work like that.”

  June wiped tears from her cheeks and sniffled. “We get to stay friends, right? If I’m still here in California, I get to see the baby, don’t I?”

  “Now look what you started. I never cry,” Isa said.

  “It won’t be like what you had with Carlos,” June said, her voice as calm as Buddha’s. “Alex isn’t like that. You know my theory about shaving. He’s lucky to have any skin left because of you.”

  Isa laughed and cried harder.

  “True as I’m sitting here,” June insisted. “You’ll see. Now when I get back, we’re going shopping for some sexy maternity clothes. So be ready.”

  “Come on, let me walk you outside.”

  They walked arm in arm through the deserted campus. The school seemed a little sad when the kids weren’t around, like a host whose party guests were in a rush to leave. Newspaper and discarded tests drifted along the sidewalks and stuck to the chain-link fences.

  This was Isa’s favorite time of year. The kids were already planning the Halloween dance.

  “You missed out on some action this morning,” she said to June when they reached the parking lot.

  “Yeah?”

  “I might have beat up Carlos behind the stage of his radio show.”

  June’s scream could be heard in the next county. “OHMYGOD! Good for you! Did you get a good kick at his nuts?”

  “No. He was bent over gasping from the punch I landed on his stomach.”

  “That’s something,” June said, clearly not impressed. “But next time, aim lower.”

  Isa never returned Alex’s calls. He drove to her school but found out they had a half day and Isa left.

  He went to her apartment to find her and Andrew gone. A desperate call to Susan and he found out she took Andrew up to Tamara’s for the night. No note. No phone call. Not even a damn message if Andrew would be playing today.

  But her silence told him everything he needed to know.

  He’d screwed up. By not being man enough to tell her he loved her.

  “She’ll come around,” Susan said, appearing beside him before the game. “I brought Andrew.”

  He turned and his eyes caught on the kid, tying his shoe laces. “She didn’t want to see me, huh?”

  “She told me, Alex,” Susan answered, her arms crossed over her chest.

  He waited for the knife to slit his throat. “Is she okay?”

  “Just very, very sick.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “When are you going to talk to her?”

  Alex shrugged his shoulders. “Isa and I need to talk a few things out, but…”

  “Well I have a little problem,” Susan said, putting her fist on her hip. “I have to take something to somebody but I said I’d take Andrew home—”

  “I’ll do it,” he said.

  Susan’s lips twitched and she looked strangely very satisfied that he got her Isa pregnant.

  “I knew I could count on you,” she said. “And don’t mess it up.”

  The car threw up smoke when Susan squealed to a stop in front of La Diosa salon. She’d prearranged for Josie to have her mani/pedi at ten-thirty the second she saw Isa this morning.

  Kids these days. Thinking they could pull their excuses over a woman her age! The flu-schmu. She knew a pregnant woman when she saw one and when Alex all but confessed, she almost danced with joy. It was all too easy.

  “What’s that strut all about?” Patty demanded from behind the cash register.

  “You owe me one hundred dollars. Pay up.” Susan patted the edge of the counter.

  “Don’t you order me around. Where’s the evidence?”

  Susan caught Josie’s eye roll and her moaned, “Hijole. There they go again.”

  “They’re in love.”

  “Impossible,” Patty declared, not having any of it. “I know my auras and they are not meant for each other.”

  “But did you look in their eyes? Did you see them together?”

  “No,” she sniffed. “I didn’t have to!”

  Susan lifted her eyebrow, giving Patty the look that struck fear in the hearts of her children. “I’m going to be an abuelita.”

  Josie stood up, knocking her soapy water all over Juanito. “Tamara?”

  “Memo?” Patty asked.

  “No,” Susan snapped. They better not be, at least not yet. “Isa.”

  “With who?” Patty asked.

  “What do you mean with who?”

  “Girls, girls,” Josie cautioned, running over with one soapy hand.

  “It’s Alex,” Susan said, relishing his name.

  Patty held her hands to her heart, shaking her head with denial. “Impossible. It’s can’t be—I sense disaster.” She folded her arms over her chest. “Mark my words, I told you Tamara would break up with Ruben and sure enough she—”

  “Oh Patty, shut up,” Josie said. Patty’s eyes flipped open. “Now Susan, who else have you told about this?”

  Isa heard a voice and looked around. A second ago she’d been lying on her bathroom floor and now she stood at the helm of the Queen Mary.

  “There you are, darling,” Joan cooed, sitting atop a mountain of steamer trunks and hatboxes. She wore a white suit with a skirt that did justice to her legs and a large sunhat that covered her dark hair. “I’ve been meaning to tell you something.”

  “Are you going somewhere?”

  “Well darling, you don’t need me anymore.” Joan cried gorgeously in a lace edged hanky. “And now it is bon voyage.”

  “You’re leaving me? Now? Look at what you got me into!”

  Joan paused in the dabbing of her eyes. “Into? I gave you a gift.”

  “I repeated the same mistake I made at nineteen,” Isa informed her.

  Joan shook her head as if Isa just didn’t get it. “A child is never a mistake. Men, now that’s a different matter. But look at me.” She ran her hand over her long, curvaceous lines. “I have three children and grandchildren. I loved their fathers, at the time, but I’m still fabulous.

  “That kind of love is not for you, my dear,” Joan continued. “What you could have, and God only knows why, is that delicious man with whom you can spend the rest of your life. That is, if you try.”

  Isa tested the hallucination and set her hand on the railing. It felt wet with sea mist. “You make it sound bad.”

  “Really darling, do I have to be so obvious? No matter how sexy you are, you’re still the kind of woman who wants happily ever after. Me? I want happily ever after over and over again.”

  Was Joan calling her a dud? And what gave her the idea that Isa had the potential for happily ever after with Alex? Was there even such a thing?

  Just then the door opened, and of all people, Tamara’s little brother, Memo, walked out in a white tuxedo, holding a silver tray bearing a glass of champagne. With his hair slicked back, he held up the tray. “Ms. Collins, y
our champagne.”

  Joan fluttered her eyes at him and dipped down to pluck it, showing lots of cleavage without toppling over. She sipped and then licked her crimson lips, turning to Isa, “See what I mean?”

  The ringing phone jerked Isa up from her slumber in the shadow of the porcelain god. She got up to her elbows and her mouth pooled with saliva. No way was she making it to the phone without throwing up again.

  But what if it was about Andrew? What if he got hurt at the game?

  Cursing Joan, she grabbed the trash can. In degrees she got to her feet with the can poised under her chin. Some of the nausea cleared by the time she made it to the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Ms. Avellan, it’s Dr. Quilley. How are you?”

  “Dr. Quilley?” she managed. “I’m fine. Everything’s fine. And you?”

  “I was reading the paper today. There’s an article on page A3 about you.”

  Remembering the feel of Carlos’s stomach giving to her foot and his black g-string, she swallowed.

  “I haven’t seen the article.” She’d been avoiding the paper ever since the survey had been made public.

  “Well, let me read you a quote.” He cleared his throat and then said, “‘Ms. Avellan is an example of a local daughter who has returned to her community to teach the next generation of our leaders. We are very proud of the honor she has brought to our ESL program.’”

  It had been a long time since anyone had said they were proud of her. But that would be quickly forgotten when word got out about the baby.

  Dr. Quilley cleared his throat. “I’ll pluck a few copies from the newsstand and have them in your box Monday morning.”

  “Thank you. I don’t know what to say,” she said even as her throat swelled. “Who said that about me?”

  He was so quiet that she wondered if he’d hung up. “A member of the school board. Alisa Torres.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Quilley. Thanks for calling.”

  “No, Ms. Avellan. Thank you.”

  35