Last Flight of José Luis Balboa
Page 20
“Why don’t you two just shut the fuck up?” Hi-Lo says. “It’s too late for this shit. And there’s no way I’m letting either of you fuck this up now.”
“Just do the math,” Ponytail says. “That’s all I’m saying. OK? Do the math, and you won’t feel so bad.”
“He’s right. All that money for a few hours of work,” Hi-Lo says.
“And there’s more of them where that one came from,” Ponytail says.
The coldness inflates and expands in all directions, into my chest and down my legs and arms, until it overtakes my hands and fingers.
“People,” Maylin says, “can you please shut up? You’re scaring him.”
“Hey,” Hi-Lo says. “Didn’t you hear what I said?”
Maylin looks at me and smiles. I want to think that she is sorry for all this, that it’s just a joke that got out of hand, that everything will be all right. I want to see that in her smile, in her eyes. I try to say something, to cry out, but there is no sound. “I wonder what it feels like,” she says, looking at me.
My eyes fill with tears and she goes out of focus.
“I told you to shut the lid!” Hi-Lo yells.
The tears roll down the sides of my face and I can see her again.
Using both hands, Maylin lifts her top and shows me her breasts, moving her chest both ways so I can get a good look. Behind us, a car horn blows in short bursts. Her skin is very white in the flashing high beams.
“Shut the fuckin’ lid!” Hi-Lo’s screaming.
She pulls her top back in place before she goes out of focus once more.
“Now!”
The lid drops shut.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to the LZ Francis Foundation for endowing the Bakeless prizes. Special thanks to Francine Prose, Brandy Vickers, Jayne Yaffe Kemp, and Janet Silver. By welcoming me to the republic of letters, they have given me more than they will ever know.
Bread Loaf and the Bakeless Prizes
The Katharine Bakeless Nason Literary Publication Prizes were established in 1995 to expand Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference’s commitment to the support of emerging writers. Endowed by the LZ Francis Foundation, the prizes commemorate Middlebury College patron Katharine Bakeless Nason and launch the publication career of a poet, fiction writer, and creative nonfiction writer annually. Winning manuscripts are chosen in an open national competition by a distinguished judge in each genre. Winners are published by Houghton Mifflin Company in Mariner paperback original.
2005 Judges
Philip Levine, poetry
Francine Prose, fiction
Edward Hoagland, creative nonfiction
About the Author
GONZALO BARR is the winner of the 2005 Katharine Bakeless Nason Prize for fiction, selected by Francine Prose and awarded by Middlebury College and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. He lives in Miami.
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Footnotes
1. My mother knows a bunch of stupid sayings in both English and Spanish. One of the benefits of growing up in a bilingual home is that you get to be lectured in two languages.
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2. My mother feels that tucking me in and giving me a good-night kiss on the forehead is her maternal duty. This feeling no doubt stems from a deep-rooted sense of guilt due to the fact that her mother, my grandmother, Nana, raised me from birth until she died when I was thirteen. During that time, my mother billed mega-hours and made partner at her firm and now is totally dissatisfied with her career. She’s making up for it by infantilizing me, trying to experience what she missed. I should put an end to this practice, but I don’t want to cut her off cold turkey. There’s no telling what kind of trauma doing that would cause her.
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3. Proof that my mother and I couldn’t be more different lies in the fact that she abhors lists, is totally allergic to them. Her grocery shopping is a cappella, resulting in uncountable containers of iodized salt, canned soup to survive a thermonuclear war, fruit punch to fill a lake, and toilet paper to stretch from here to one of Jupiter’s moons.
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4. Brother Richard, our Religion teacher, sent Rolly to the principal’s office last month when he ridiculed the idea of God. “Knock, knock,” Rolly said, getting up in the middle of class and opening the door to the hallway. “See? No one there.”
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5. From my previous one and only boyfriend, and from Mr. Hackett’s Biology class the year before, I knew that by putting my hand on his thigh I was signaling my acceptance of his advance. Mr. Hackett said, “Don’t fool yourselves, guys. It’s the female of the species that’s always in control.”
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6. In freshman year, Gloria and I once skipped class after lunch and took the train to the mall. We chose an empty car. No sooner had Gloria put her feet up on the seat across from her than a voice boomed over the loudspeakers telling her to take her feet down. “I’m talking to you, young lady,” the voice said. That freaked us out. I think God’s like that, without the speakers.
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7. Having a car, in high school anyway, is what economists call an “intangible value.” It raises a person’s value in the eyes of his peers. Mr. Núñez says it’s the unpredictability of human behavior that keeps economics from being a real science, like physics. If human beings were only more rational, he says, economists could run the world efficiently. Mr. Núñez wears clip-on ties that don’t always match his short-sleeved shirts. One of his favorite words is “pomposity.” Driving a big SUV is a pomposity, he says. So is paying athletes millions of dollars to play children’s games. One day, he got into it with Alvaro Aróstegui. Alvaro is the school’s best pitcher and running back, and he’s pretty good at track too. Everybody says he’s going to be a big star one day.
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8. Mr. Filisberto Núñez, AP Economics Class, Room 702, Academy of Saint Thomas the Apostle, Miami, February 23, 10:42 A.M.
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