The Skull of Pancho Villa and Other Stories

by Manuel Ramos

  “Whoa.” The writer held up his hand. “You can take my book however you want. What readers get is not always what I intended.”

  “There I go again. Sometimes I say too much, too quickly. I have to, to get a word in with him.”

  The professor fidgeted in his chair. He clinked glasses together, dropped his napkin on the floor and made a production out of retrieving it. His hands did not stop moving. Finally, he blurted, “Tomás, you will have a good, good crowd tomorrow night.” His voice was a decibel too loud. “Your signing has attracted a lot of attention. It’ll be a late night. Una noche maravillosa.”

  Mónica groaned. “You don’t need any more late nights,” she said. “And I can’t take any more with you.”

  “And if you don’ make it, so wha’?” the professor growled.

  “You can flirt with your students without looking over your shoulder, that’s what.”

  “You’re embarrassin’ me and yourself. Have some respect for Tomás.”

  “Keep the dirt to myself, is that it?” Mónica turned to Tomás. “Have I embarrassed us? Or you?”

  “I’m only concerned about tomorrow,” Tomás said. For a second he considered saying something about watching an Albee play. “Is everything okay? Anything I need to do to help?”

  “What you mean,” she said, “is will this borracho be in any shape tomorrow to pull this off? What do you think, Alberto? You going to be too hungover?”

  “Don’ worry ’bout me.” The professor’s head tilted downward and he spoke to a stain on the floor. “I’ll be ready. And so will my students.”

  He stood up awkwardly and excused himself. He muttered something about the baño.

  Tomás finished his drink and assumed that the evening was over. He needed a good night’s sleep.

  “Alberto won’t be able to drive,” Mónica said. “He’s never handled his liquor well, especially tequila.” She squinted at him over the salty rim of her drink. What he could see of her pupils glistened. The writer attributed both effects to the syrupy drinks. “He drank much more tonight than he’s used to. He must have been trying to impress you.”

  “I didn’t think he drank that much.”

  “Lately,” Mónica said, slightly slurring the words, “when we go out we usually end up calling a cab, or bumming a ride. Some mornings we can’t remember where we left our cars.”

  “You surprise me,” he said. “I have to rely on you. If he can’t function tomorrow, where does that leave me? Why bring me out here just for this? ”

  Mónica looked away. She said, “I’m sorry. But I think he will be all right. He does recover remarkably well, as long as he gets enough sleep.” She sipped her drink. “We’re such bad hosts, and you, the guest without a car or friend in this city. Qué mal educados somos.”

  “I’m a bit tight myself,” Tomás said. “But I’ll drive if you think that would be better than either of you. You will have to tell me where to go. I have no idea where I am or how to get back to the hotel. Alberto picked me up and I didn’t pay attention to landmarks or street signs.”

  The squinting had increased and Tomás thought she had closed her eyes altogether. She asked, “What time do you have to be on campus?”

  “Alberto said that he would have someone at my place around nine forty-five to make it to his office by ten thirty for the eleven o’clock class. Then I stay on campus for the rest of the day, meeting with different student groups and some faculty. Hang around until the book signing at the bookstore. I guess eating is somewhere in the plan.”

  She tried to laugh but it did not quite happen. “He’s not a detail guy. At least he thought about getting you to campus in time for the class.”

  Alberto appeared at the side of the table. He wobbled. His hair was wet and the front of his shirt looked damp. His eyes refused to focus on Mónica or Tomás.

  “God, you’ve gotten drunker,” Mónica said. “We should go, Alberto. We have to get Tomás back to his hotel.”

  Ortiz fell to his knees. The writer looked at Mónica for direction, but all he got was her disgust. Tomás grabbed the professor under the arms and tried to help him stand. Ortiz jerked away. “Le’ me go!” he blurted.

  Tomás released Ortiz and moved away from him. Other customers were staring, some laughed nervously, some glared.

  The professor’s shirttail hung outside his pants and the laces of his right shoe were untied. Spit dribbled from his lips. “Mónica, I . . . I.” He slumped forward.

  Tomás reached for him but he was too slow. The professor’s hand desperately clutched the tablecloth. Glasses, silverware, carafes and blue liquor tumbled from the table and crashed on the restaurant’s colorful tiled floor.

  Mónica jumped to her feet. “¡Bruto!” she screamed. “I’ve had it!”

  She turned and bumped a waiter who had rushed to help. He fell against a woman waiting for her plate of food to cool. The plate and the food landed in the woman’s lap. Mónica stumbled out of the restaurant.

  The writer had to use his credit card to pay the four hundred dollars demanded by the restaurant manager.

  Tomás propped the professor against the side wall of the restaurant until the taxi arrived. He squeezed Ortiz into the back seat, then climbed in next to the professor and shouted the name of his hotel to the cabdriver.

  “That’s gonna be tough tonight,” the cabbie drawled. His black skin absorbed the light from the restaurant’s entrance.

  The writer could see the driver’s eyes but not any specifics of his face. “God, now what?”

  The driver said, “Your bad luck. The 405’s locked down. A high-speed chase on the freeway—dozens of cops and one suicidal white man from up north. But the real problem is that the chase caused several accidents includin’ one where a semi jackknifed. Son-of-a-gun blew up. Must’ve been carryin’ some nasty shit. You could see the fireball over in Long Beach. Traffic’s stopped for miles. Your hotel’s really not that far away, but gettin’ there is gonna be a bitch. I’ll have to go around, use the 10 or the 110, maybe some of the side streets. It’s a ripple effect when this sort of thing happens. Everythin’ gets messed up. Sorry, pal, but this could be an expensive ride.”

  Tomás shook his head. “Never mind. Take this guy over to Cal State, L.A. This is a map of the building where his office is. You can leave him there—a security guard or someone like that will take him in. I don’t care what you do with him.” The cabbie’s face turned even darker when he frowned. “They know him over there,” Tomás quickly added. “He’s one of their professors. He’ll be okay. Here’s seventy-five bucks for your trouble. It’s all I got.”

  The cabbie hesitated and did not accept the money. “Gee, pal, that’s dicey. It’s late to be drivin’ around the campus.” He stared at the writer. “And what you gonna do?”

  The men were bathed in bright white from headlights. Mónica stuck her head out the window of her car and hollered, “Tomás! Come on! Bring that asshole with you.”

  Tomás stuffed all of his bills in his pocket except for a twenty, which he handed to the cabdriver. He loaded Alberto into Mónica’s car. He paused before he sat in the front seat but he did not have an option. He listened to her furious condemnation of Alberto on the way back to the hotel. She drove through the residential streets with practiced precision but more speed than Tomás wanted. She avoided the freeways and had Tomás at his hotel in less than a half-hour.

  Somewhere during the ride, Alberto woke up. He mumbled incoherently. He tried to apologize but he could not finish a sentence. He passed out again.

  “I’m not driving him anywhere,” Mónica said when she had parked the car in the hotel lot. “Take him with you, let him sleep it off in your room.”

  “You think that’s a good idea?”

  “It’s the only idea. I’ll help you.”

  They struggled with Alberto through the parking lot and hotel lobby. In the elevator, Tomás said, “That booze hit him hard. He shouldn’t drink if this is the result
. Getting drunk I might understand, but he’s practically comatose.”

  “It’s not just the alcohol,” Mónica said.

  They lifted Alberto and dragged and pushed him to the room. They dumped him on the floor. Mónica sat on a chair and Tomás sat on the bed.

  “Why did you say it’s not the alcohol?”

  “It’s everything.” She slumped in the chair. “Maybe I don’t know what it really is. Being in the film business is so important to him. And his medicines. That started with his bike accident and the broken leg. He denies it but he can’t stay away from the damn pills. And I think his so-called energy shake makes it worse. Who knows what’s in that? He makes a new batch every morning, as if it was doing him some good.”

  Tomás rubbed his eyes.

  “If he drinks,” Mónica continued, “this is what can happen. And sometimes it does happen, although tonight has been the worst.”

  “Why in the hell does he drink then?” he asked.

  “Why does he do stupid things? Why can’t he grow up? When will he stop his pendejadas, his flings and personal disasters? I can’t answer those questions. Believe me, I’ve asked them.”

  She shoved her face in her hands and cried. Hard sobs shook her shoulders and neck.

  He escaped into the bathroom and stayed there until he heard her moving around. He flushed the toilet, rinsed his hands, threw water on his face and walked back in the room.

  “I feel like an idiot,” she said to him as soon as he appeared. “You must think we’re crazy. I don’t blame you. We are nuts.”

  He knew that he should tell her that it was all right, that everyone has a bad night once in a while, that tomorrow they would laugh about it.

  “I need to get some sleep,” he said.

  “Yes, of course,” she said, nodding. “You have to be ready for all the students and fans.”

  Tomás shrugged. “This movie talk. Was that all it was? Just talk?”

  “No, no. We need some time. And money, of course. Getting you on board gives us the talking point we need for the people who have to back this type of project. But it takes time. It always does. We will be another step closer after tomorrow. With the right luck we can do something important. It’s all about luck out here.”

  She picked up her purse. She paused at the doorway.

  “I could stay,” she said. “He’s out cold, dead. I can leave early in the morning. He’ll never know.”

  “You should go.”

  She left.

  Alberto’s snores filled the room. Tomás slept fitfully and finally at five in the morning he gave up. He called the front desk and asked for a taxi.

  “Certainly, sir, where to?”

  “The airport.”

  “Checking out a day early, sir?”

  “No. Someone’s here, still using the room. He’s paying for the room, so I hope you don’t mind.”

  The desk clerk was all business. “Certainly not, sir. The room is reserved and paid for until tomorrow. As long as you don’t break any laws you can do whatever you want.”

  “Good. And I’ll need to talk with someone about changing a flight. You got any coffee?”

  THE TRUTH IS

  1989

  “The truth is, he was a pig.” Doris gulped her drink, sucked on her cigarette and tapped blue fingernails on the bar’s counter. Carl, the bartender, nodded in agreement and pulled two bills from the stack near her glass. “A filthy, good for nothin’, two-timin’, blood-suckin’ pig.”

  “Like I said, he was just another customer to me. You two were in here plenty. He never gave me no trouble.”

  “Yeah, sure. What do you know? You never went home with the guy. You never introduced him to your friends, you never planned nothin’ with him, you never, oh hell, you just never.”

  “Whatever, Doris. I guess I never. You ought to call it a night. It’s almost last call anyway.”

  She tossed most of the money in her purse, checked for her keys and walked out of the bar.

  She could hear the telephone ringing through the door to her place. The key wouldn’t fit. Her glasses slipped down her nose and she couldn’t see. The ringing continued. She dropped her purse and bent over to pick it up, but the floor rushed up to grab her and she fell face first onto the gritty, dusty hall carpet.

  “Oh, crap. Where’s that key? I’m comin’, damn it, I’m comin’. Don’t hang up.”

  She groped for her glasses, found them and twisted them around her ears. On her knees, at eye level with the keyhole, she maneuvered the key into place, turned it and the door swung open. She moved forward, still on her knees, and jerkily made her way to the chair where she normally threw her coat. She used it to help her stand up. The ringing continued.

  She rubbed her eyes, tried to clear her brain. She flicked on the light, and her eyes squinted from the glare. She could see the red telephone on the kitchen table where she had left it that morning, after she had carried it to every room in her apartment, dialing the number then pressing the recall button again and again. There had been no answer.

  She stood over the ringing machine, her hands shaking. She lit a cigarette, threw the match in the ashtray. The ringing continued. She walked past the table and opened a cupboard. She took out a tall glass, opened the refrigerator, grabbed ice cubes and her bottle of vodka, and made herself a drink. She sat at the table and watched the telephone ring. She sat through the night, drinking and smoking until she fell asleep.

  A few nights later Doris and her friend Jodi stumbled into Carl’s bar.

  “I thought you were all broken up, Doris. Looks like you’ve recovered.”

  Jodi said, “The fact is, Carl, she’s got better things to do than waste her time over that guy. You think she’s gonna sit around, waiting for the phone to ring? He was a pig.”

  WHY BOSTON IS HIS FAVORITE TOWN

  “I met him at the training camp they sent us to. So we would know something about the country before we got there. We had to learn how to act, what we were supposed to say, what local customs we had to be sure not to violate. We spent two weeks at the camp, in Chicago, then off I went to Mexico and he went to Africa. We wrote each other, you know, almost every day.”

  He could see her diligently putting down on paper the day’s events, maybe looking at his picture. He thought a letter from her would have to be funny; she had a weird sense of humor.

  She continued. “We got together when our year was up, in Boston. I felt good; he’s not like anyone I know. I feel good about us.”

  She drank from her gin and tonic and he saw her eyes reflected in the neon of the bar’s beer signs. He thought she had the most beautiful green eyes he had ever seen. He bought her drinks after work to listen to her talk and to watch her eyes in the smoke of her cigarettes. He liked the feeling of falling in love.

  “But did the two of you spend any time alone, together, you know what I mean?”

  “Well, sure, there was Boston . . . ”

  “That was only a week.”

  “And then I went with him back to Africa for the summer. What do you think, that I don’t know him? I know him quite well, if you must ask.”

  “Africa? What the hell did you do there?” Africa sounded wrong; that would not be where he would take her. Paris or Rio, that’s where she belonged.

  “Africa was beautiful. We started in the Ivory Coast and ended up in Morocco. I loved it. You can’t imagine what it’s like, especially the desert, the sun and heat. I’ve never known anything like that.”

  He imagined her sweating in the African afternoon, her white linen shirt pasted to her brown skin; her hair, almost blonde from the sun, smeared against her forehead in tiny spirals. He wanted to cool her with ice wrapped in a towel. “Yeah, well that must have been nice, just the two of you, on your own in the wild African wastelands.”

  “Well, his parents were with us, and my little sister, too. But, yes, that’s when we decided to live together. Of course, he had to finish school, he had another year
. I came out here to live with my aunt and save some money so we could eventually get a place together in Boston. Working as a Y.M.C.A. counselor in Mexico or Africa doesn’t put any money in the bank. It’s almost impossible to find an apartment in Boston that’s clean and cheap. We had to hire a real estate agent, really, to shop around for us. He says it’s nice, close to his job.”

  “He’s in Boston, waiting for you, so off you go next month to set up house. Cozy. What will you do, run the local Y?”

  She laughed. “No. That’s over. He’s got a good job in a publishing company. One of the guys he roomed with at college introduced him to his father, he owns the business, and now he’s an assistant editor or something like that. He’s great with words, you know. His letters cheer me up. They made me laugh in Mexico. It could be lonely there.”

  “You speak great Spanish. You must have made friends. I’m sure you weren’t alone.”

  “Oh, sure, I had friends. People at the Y, some of the teachers at the school who taught English. Don’t know why I said lonely. It was my first year away from home. I really liked it. It would be nice to go back and teach down there, but he never has liked Mexico, he says. Wants to settle down in Boston. Maybe I can teach there.”

  “There’s Mexicans in Boston, sure, but you got all those Puerto Ricans. Your talents might come in handy.”

  She was surprised that he thought she had talents. He ordered more drinks.

  “I can hardly wait, really. Boston is almost like home, my grandfather was from there and I stayed with him a lot when I was a little girl. He sort of raised me; he died last year. I miss him. I rarely saw my parents after the divorce, so I bounced around from aunt to aunt, and to him, when he had the time. He was very busy, a lawyer who knew Truman and the Kennedys and people like that, but he took me when he could. I miss him.”