He said I was better than this. I should be better than this.
But you have to do it yourself, he said. These fuckers won’t do it for you.
Javi slumped out with the beer, shouting something about screwing the cashier. He grabbed Rick’s shoulder, and Rick gave Javi’s a squeeze.
Something important had happened. Something had changed. But I didn’t know what, so I tore a can from the plastic.
4.
A couple months later Rick was blown up on the court. Shots all over his face and his arms and his back. I wasn’t there, I can’t tell you for sure, but I heard he’d been making the last of his rounds.
When I told Javi that was it for me, that I wouldn’t be dealing again, he actually laughed in my face. He asked if I’d honestly thought he’d been holding out for it.
We ended up passing through the wake. Ma came too, in this dress that was way too much for mourning. She talked up Rick’s mother while we stood in the back, with all of the aunts and a girl laced in black. She had hazel eyes, with this crazy look on her face, and when they finally opened the casket she wailed like a parrot.
When we made it to the body, my brother snatched my hand. He made me touch Rick’s face. He told me this was what happened to fags.
BAYOU
Mix found his chupacabra next to the bayou, under the bridge, and by the time he ran to fetch me it’d bled in the water and died.
For better or worse, this wasn’t the worst thing that’d happened. Mix and I were broke. We’d flunked out of the community college. My girl, Denise, was having someone else’s baby, and I’d been living down by Shepherd, out in the Heights, back with Gran. Her place sat behind what were basically cardboard houses, leaning against the wind like a baby’d scribbled them in, and Gran had started slipping Navy pamphlets under my door, which Mix called unfortunate, and debilitating, but hilarious—like, picture my fat ass in somebody’s uniform, because you couldn’t even do it without the buttons pegging your nose.
That these things could keep happening and life could keep going was more mysterious to me than whatever the fuck he was showing me.
It was also hot as shit. Typical Houston.
The chupacabra was hairless and brown. Pale under the paws. I looked at the body with the gnats creeping around it, and then at Mix, and then the chupacabra again, and I thought about whether the stench was rigor mortis or just the sunburnt factories across the 10.
Mix said it might be a dog or something but obviously it was not. I knew dogs. We had bitches all over the block. The North Side was where they came to die, between the alleys and the laundromats lining the feeder.
This thing had fat fangs. Crooked ears. Stripes on its back.
And it looked a little spooked.
Like it’d made some big mistake.
Like it’d been looking for something better but it’d ended up with us.
* * *
• • •
An hour later, it coughed.
Fuck, said Mix.
He was barefoot and he poked it with a hairy toe, and the torso sort of deflated, and its chest began to rise and sink and rise and sink again.
Mix reached for my phone. I told him I had to jet.
You have to work, he said. I give you the gift of modern mystery, and you dodge it to sweep for gabachos?
Gabachos tip better than everyone else.
You’ve got no class, he said. No vision.
No plata, I said. No choice.
Hijo de puta, said Mix, motherfuckers always got a choice, and he popped a squat with my cell, and he snapped like twelve photos. The flash had both of us wincing.
Mix was short for Mixcoatl. Which I’d never heard him pronounce. The one place you saw it was his name tag for the Sushi Shack, where we both worked. He only wore the fucking thing because no one could say it, and if no one could say it then no one could ask him to do anything. He’d stand at the counter for hours, handing back incorrect change. Dipping his fingers in everyone’s rice and sighing at all of our customers.
T, he said, this is our big break. We make ourselves viral with this thing right here.
He stepped around the chupacabra, holding the phone and snapping photo after photo. He lifted its legs, flipped the body on its side. The chupacabra wheezed a little, jerking its ears, and Mix threw back his hand. But it only began to snore.
We unclenched. Exhaled.
If it wakes up with a paycheck I’ll stay, I said.
You don’t get it, said Mix.
Let’s say we break even with this, said Mix. Let’s say we go big.
You go ahead and hold your breath.
I’m keeping your phone, said Mix.
When I asked him why, he told me to jump-start my brain.
To call the fucking Chronicle, he said. The fucking mayor. Fucking KUHF and the six o’clock news.
Monsters in Alief, he said. You can’t make that shit up.
But you probably could, I said.
And it’s probably a raccoon, I said.
Go off and play kitchen, said Mix. He was already dialing.
Go play the other man, he said. Earn some pennies for your bastard.
You fuck all the way off with that.
It’s not like you don’t already know.
And I started to say that knowing something didn’t give you license to shout it—like how I knew Mix was a fag, but it wasn’t something we talked about—but then the chupacabra opened its eyes. And the two of us jumped. And then Mix fell on his ass, and I was right behind him.
It looked up at the both of us.
We froze. Held our breath.
It had talons like glossed talc. They tore at the grass. And it shivered, sort of, as if the heat weren’t shit to it at all. The chupacabra could’ve been hungry, or thirsty, or lost, or maybe all of those things, or maybe none of them at all, and I looked at Mix to tell him, like, we should totally leave it alone, its crew would come back for it, but then Mix caught my eye, and he lifted a single finger, and he was on the phone popping off about what a fucking discovery we’d made.
* * *
• • •
Like I said—we worked at the Sushi Shack. You got your fish blinking on these trays like right in front of you. The chefs had these tattoos the size of your foot, with the faces of their wives, or at least that’s what they told us, and they’d gripe about you handling the trays without mitts but then the mitts went missing and we’d find them in their cubbies.
Right before I punched out, I thought about calling Denise. But then I remembered Mix. Who’d kept my cell. And the thing he’d needed it for.
So I wiped the tatami. Washed the rice. Scrubbed the piss from the toilets, greeted the moms drunk off lukewarm sake. I watched high schoolers push silverware onto the carpet, snapping their fingers for a server until I stooped to pick it up, and when I asked Tanaka-sama if it was cool to use the landline, she nodded wordlessly, frowning, stoic.
She’d been nodding since Mix’d introduced us. She’d nodded when I’d asked how to tell when the salmon turned. She’d nodded, months back, when I’d poked her for a raise, and when I finally got my check she’d actually shaved a little off. She claimed it was for all of the food I’d stolen—she understood, it’s just how my people were—which I denied, obviously, because I hadn’t, at least not yet; but that was my cue. From then on, I was the fucking Hamburglar.
I’d wrap the salmon and the tuna and the rice in plastic. Walked all four courses right back home to Gran. And she’d ask why I’d gone and brought a goddam fish tank, why I couldn’t have found a casserole dish like everyone else.
Straight out the ocean, she said. They don’t even wash it.
Oldest people in the world and they got no good sense, she said.
* * *
• • •
I
tried ringing Denise.
Of course she didn’t answer.
So I walked my ass home. Gran wasn’t around. Most nights, she was channeling Moses in some pulpit. I wedged the door behind me, reached through the sofa cushions for the phone card, but all I found were the Bibles and the fans and the Jets.
Her place has two rooms if you don’t count the bathroom. If you do, then we have two and half of a quarter. Neither of us can use it without the other dialing in, which makes nature and its precedents inexpressible, unimaginable.
Gran was allegedly born in the backyard. Her daughter, my mother, was born in the bedroom. I left the womb in the Emergen-C off the feeder road, but Gran tells everyone I was spawned here too. It makes a better parable than her daughter’s drunken delivery, and the cigarettes they’d taken from her purse like right afterwards.
My mother’s love story was the usual hood dramedy: first she met a boy, some southside Breno Mello. Gran’d warned her that the locals were nothing but trouble, but her tolerance only went so far. She wasn’t down with mixing. And her daughter heeded that, at first, like a good Baptist girl, but my father just kept shaking his hips out in East End, dancing bachata up and down Westheimer, blowing kisses at her face, doing that thing with his tongue, and eventually she gave in like anyone else.
He knocked her up in the usual way. For six minutes it looked like he’d stick around.
But then I was born, and he stepped out for a glass of water, and believe it or not he’s been thirsty ever since.
I’m told my mother held me close. That she’d smiled. Pinched my cheeks. And after the usual recovery riffraff, she took off to find her guy.
They never got hitched. But of course he’d taken her to prom. Gran still keeps the photo before the dance on the mantel. They’re smiling, draped in formal wear and looking suspiciously close to happy, and most days if I remember I’ll stuff the frame behind the candles.
Gran props it right back up whenever she makes it home from church.
In our own silent way, it’s how we’ve learned to coexist.
* * *
• • •
The phone card was in the kitchen this time, in a drawer, wedged between some forks.
I rang my cell.
Mix answered.
Hey, gordito, he said.
You reach the BBC yet?
Even better, he said. Get your fat ass over here.
I asked if the thing’d woken up. Had it made any moves.
Ándale, he said, and then he hung up.
* * *
• • •
Before I bounced, I caught Denise on the fourth ring.
TeDarus, she said, and that felt good. Her just saying it.
She studied at the college downtown. Wanted to plan the insides of buildings. It took her a year to tell me, and at first they were just words because when people here say they’re doing something it’s either tomorrow or the day after.
But she did it. She figured it out. And from then on, she was busy. Whenever I actually saw her I thought she’d already upped and moved.
So when she called about the baby, I didn’t know who I felt worse for: the kid for coming now, at this point in time, or her for being stuck with it.
Or me for wanting it.
I realize how that makes me sound.
I asked her how she felt. Had our little parasite kicked.
Good, she said.
I asked if there was milk in the fridge, and Denise said she’d check in a bit.
I asked if there was gas in her tank, and Denise said she’d just filled up.
I asked if she wanted to chill, and Denise told me she was fine, and I clinched my ears for anything else in the background—muffled laughter, BET in the next room. But she asked if I’d called for a reason, or was I simply fucking around, and I sort of blanked for a second. The sense just whooshed right out of my head.
I told her I was busy.
Going to an interview, actually.
When she didn’t ask for what, I said it was for a project.
This thing I’d been working on.
I had found something amazing.
Something the press wanted to talk to me about.
She didn’t answer for so long that I figured she’d hung up.
Then she did this little cough thing.
She said that was interesting. It was the word’s first appearance between us in months, if not ever.
No doubt, I said.
They thought so too, I said.
I told her it’d been a tough sell, but stations were showing some interest. I told her I’d be on the news. I told her I’d let her know.
And Denise said, For sure, you do that, looking forward to it.
And I waited for her to say something else.
But that’s when the dial tone really came.
* * *
• • •
Mix was still on my phone when I stepped through the door. He pointed at the chupacabra on his table, mouthing, Hey, pendejo.
He lived in this complex across from the Kroger. Maybe an hour’s walk from Denise’s. His place was always unlocked. He’d been staying there since the Great Thanksgiving Rupture, back when his brother’d found the dick pic in his pillowcase.
Now he was pacing the floor of his room. The chupacabra was wrapped in some towels under a lamp. It blinked at the two of us.
It looked like a kolache. A too-big beanie covered its ears. I reached out to touch it, and my fingers grazed the skin.
The chupacabra blinked. Shrugged my hand away. Mix’d wrapped a bandage around its paws, and another around its belly to keep it warm.
Yeah yeah yeah, said Mix, picking at a toenail.
By the highway, he said. Like, we almost ran it down.
No, he said, we didn’t. But close. Pulled over and chased it.
I know, right, he said. You’re so right. We totally should’ve.
But, he said, but! We didn’t. And it made this noise! Like, aaiiee! Aaiiee! Like a cat, you know?
Not a cat, he said.
Like one, he said.
Yes, he said.
Claro, he said.
And then it died, he said. But now we’re pretty sure it’s back.
Then there was silence.
A marathon of nodding.
He read off his address. Slapped his palms together, bowed, and pantomimed a thank-you.
After another pause he tossed my cell across the room, and the chupacabra jumped when it skidded across his mattress, bouncing onto the floor.
Fuck, I said.
Shit yeah, said Mix. We’ve got press.
We high-fived.
I asked what that entailed, specifically.
It means we’ve got to get this fucker going, he said. It’s got to put on a show. We’ve got to give it some pills or something.
Chupacabra pills, I said.
So that’s what we’re calling it now.
You’re the one who wanted a goblin.
You know what the fuck I mean, said Mix. We’re agreeing that this is a thing?
I looked at the chupacabra. It’d stuck its nose into some AUX cables. The only thing I knew was that this thing had been abandoned.
We’re not agreeing on shit, I said.
And anyways, I said, you told them it was fine.
This shit looks fine to you?
That’s what you said on the phone.
Pinche tonto, he said, waving me away. I said that to get them out here. Nobody comes through Alief just to look at a dead thing.
But it isn’t dead anymore, I said, and Mix told me I was missing the point.
We’ve got a few hours before they show, he said. Maybe it’ll start dancing or some shit. Maybe it’ll get hungry.
&nbs
p; Just in time to eat us, I said. Sounds like a plan.
And I thought he’d crack on me about my weight, or Denise, or my excuse for a fucking life, but Mix’d already stepped into the bathroom, humming, taking a leak.
* * *
• • •
We’d met like a decade earlier and even that isn’t very remarkable. Maybe I was nine. He’d have been ten. Gran had me in the grocery store when Mix’s mother walked up, asking if we knew where in the hell they kept the Goya.
Blanquitos, she’d said. Even their stores don’t make any sense.
I was bigger than him—I was bigger than everyone—and he stood behind the shopping cart wringing his shirt.
He asked for my name.
He hasn’t shut his mouth since.
Mix’d always been into monsters. Always into the unreal. He kept this gorgon print on his wall, right when you stepped through the room. His father got it for him maybe a year before he bounced, and now Mix’s bed was surrounded by orcs and dragons and the leech-looking fucker from Dune. I never understood that shit, it never once clicked for me, but that wasn’t a deal-breaker. I dealt with it. It was the least I could do.
There’s the time Mix’s ma got sick, and Gran had him and his brother over for dinner, and Mix vomited the okra she’d been stewing onto the good table linen.
There’s the day the firecracker exploded in my hands, and Mix blew on my palms until we found some ice.
There’s the day Mix told me he might like boys, and I said it didn’t matter, he’d still be fuckless his whole life.
There’s the day I told him I might love Denise, and he told me that I loved how she was willing to screw me.
And there’s the night after graduation, when I should’ve been cross-faded, at some party with my girl, who’d already caught a little escape velocity, and Mix should’ve been at his mother’s, for one of the last dinners they’d share; but actually we’d driven, on no notice, all the way up to Austin, to celebrate what we’d been told was a new chapter in our shit.
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