It was a question that had never occurred to me. “Later, as we walked toward the airport, he suddenly stopped. ‘Espérate.’ He spotted a garbage can, looked around, reached in his pocket, took whatever was left, and threw it in. Then he reached in his waistband and pulled a gun.”
Xochitl said, “Wow.”
“He wrapped it in a handkerchief and also tossed it in the garbage. ‘Can’t take that on a plane.’ We bought tickets and waited at JFK until the last flight of the day back to Chicago.”
Xochitl was still seated on the dead tree. She patted the spot next to her, and I sat.
She put her arm around me. “Did you guys ever talk about that again?”
“What would there have been to say?”
Xochitl shook her head and passed her hand over my cheek. “Tú eres tan humilde. That’s growing up too fast.”
I put my head on Xochitl’s shoulder. We stayed there for a while and watched the brook flow.
Xochitl and I headed back along the same trail, trying to beat the rain back to the car. The gray clouds finally delivered a light shower.
“I don’t think we’re gonna get back before it gets worse,” she said. “We’ll be soaked by the time we get there.”
The water thickened. Droplets popped against the leaves and stirred the smells of the forest. Lightning flashed, and seconds later the thunder. I recalled the trees that I had seen that day that appeared to have been struck.
“Maybe we should pick up our pace.”
We hustled, but by the time we got to the car, it was really coming down. Xochitl and I sat in the car, wet and cold and shivering, yet excited from the brisk walk. We drove for a while and held hands, without music, without the radio or conversation, just the sound of the windshield wipers, and the occasional moan of distant thunder.
Xochitl squeezed my hand. “You ever think about writing some of those stories?”
“Which ones?”
“Any of them. Like the ones you told at the museum. The guy with his teeth showing through the hole in his cheek.”
I twisted my face. “People are sick of prison tales.”
“How ’bout the one about your father and the Camaro? Maybe you should keep a journal.”
“Why?”
“To preserve it.”
“Sounds like homework. I told you I dropped out of high school, right?”
Xochitl turned the Lexus down Lincoln Avenue. Without warning, without putting on the signal, she pulled into a motel parking lot. My heart began to move. She shut off the engine and jumped out into the rain.
“Wait here,” she said.
She ran into the office. A minute later, Xochitl came out of the office and headed for a room, but did not look in my direction. She let herself in, and left the room door wide open.
I exited the car and ran to the room, trying to avoid the puddles. I locked the door behind me. Xochitl was already in the shower. I sat on the bed, then got up and sat on the chair next to the small table. The walls were a queasy pink, like the carpet in my room, and the carpet was a very faded orange. The cover on the bed looked like something left over from The Brady Bunch. The bed itself was big. I wondered if Xochitl wanted me to join her in the shower, then figured she would have waited, or she would’ve come out by now and said so. I felt cold.
I changed the thermostat and the heat came on full blast. The room warmed up quick. I checked myself in the mirror. There was not much I could groom.
The TV got bad reception, except for channel 3, where two women did a 69. I flicked it off as soon as I saw that. The radio worked fine and I went up and down the dial, but found nothing that felt right.
I heard the shower shut off, killed the radio, and scrambled to sit in the chair and find a pose that said that I was ready, but that I did not expect too much. Xochitl came out of the shower with a white towel wrapped around her torso and another one fashioned into a turban on her head. She rushed over to the bed and jumped under the covers like she didn’t want to be seen. She pulled the covers up to her chest and finally looked at me.
“Go take a shower.”
Once in the bathroom, I saw that Xochitl had written the word “Hurry” in the water that condensed on the mirror. I let the hot water run over me, and soaped myself, and thought about the parts of Xochitl’s body where the same bar of soap had been. My stomach stirred. I felt nervous, but something bold coursed through me.
I washed myself and dried myself more thoroughly than I ever had, and when I was through, I wrapped the towel around my waist and looked at myself in the fogged-up mirror. It would have been nice to have a toothbrush and toothpaste, but nothing is ever perfect. I walked out.
Xochitl sat on the edge of the bed now, wrapped in the white towel. Her hair hung loose as she dried it with the other towel. I stood next to the entrance to the bathroom.
“Ven.”
I swallowed my anxiety and walked over and stood in front of her. Xochitl looked up at me with an expression that I had not quite seen since our first encounter on the dance floor. She put down the towel she used to dry her hair and stood in front of me. Her fingertips and nails traced over my arms and across my chest, light and slow. She followed the lines of some of my tattoos.
Heat licked up my spine and into my throat. I kissed Xochitl and pressed against her there, next to the bed, and the soft warmth of her exposure slipped across my bare chest. Our tongues were inside each other’s mouths, as far as they could go.
Xochitl stepped back. Her eyes hooked into mine. She uncinched the towel around her torso, let it drop to the floor. She climbed into the bed without any shame about her nakedness. She pulled the bedsheet up to her nipples and looked at me with something other than a smile.
I stood wordless.
Xochitl tilted her head in that sly, cocky way of hers. “Quítate la toalla.”
I removed my towel and dropped it.
Xochitl smiled. “Bueno,” she said. “Now shut off the light.”
CHAPTER 21:
AFTERGLOW
Our clothes were cold and damp from the rain, and we wore them over our musty bodies. Xochitl focused on the road. She switched stations on the radio, and pretended, it seemed, that I was not in the car. I reached over and touched her hand. She didn’t remove it. But she didn’t really receive me either.
I went through her CD collection and found one by Ana Gabriel. “This the woman your family says you sound like?”
“Supposedly. Sometimes.”
I put it on. I think the song was called “A Pesar de Todos.” The singer hit notes that roughened her voice a little and I understood the comparison. Xochitl’s face seemed to grow longer.
“¿Qué te pasa?”
She bit her lower lip.
“Xochitl?”
“What?”
“You all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“You seem far away.”
She didn’t deny it. The rain stopped, the night had fallen, and the rain-slicked black streets reflected dimly the artificial lights of the city.
I shifted in my seat. “I wish we could’ve stayed back there longer.”
“I have to pick up my kids.”
I looked out the passenger window. The landscape of the city’s North Side scrolled past. I asked what I really wanted to know. “Didn’t you like that, Xochitl?”
She let out a deep breath. “Please don’t, Eddie.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t be so typical. You were there.”
I flashed to a moment at the motel when I was looking down at Xochitl and she was looking back at me with her mouth open. “So then? Why are you pulling back?”
“I’m not,” she said. “Let’s just let this be what it is.”
“I have no idea what you mean by that.”
She shut off the defroster. I killed the radio. It got very quiet.
I said, “Do you always carry condoms in your purse?”
“Do I need to justify mys
elf to you?”
Xochitl was right that she didn’t, but I did not have it in me to say so. Instead, I went through her CD collection. I found something that I thought might sugar the mood, but it made no improvement. I reached for Xochitl’s hand and this time she pulled away. I left it alone and pretended to watch the road.
Xochitl pulled in to the White Castle on Milwaukee. She parked and asked if I wanted anything.
“Is it all right if I come too?”
“Fine.” She slammed the door.
Inside, she ordered sliders, onion rings, and a Coke. I asked for the same and paid for both of us, which felt good. We took our identical trays and sat across from each other at an antiseptic-looking metal table, under fluorescent bulbs that felt more artificial than most. Under this light I noticed that Xochitl had washed off her makeup in the shower earlier. She chewed her little cheeseburgers slowly, as if she were so fatigued, she could barely raise her food.
“Is it really that bad, Xoch?”
“Is what so bad?”
I waved my hands around. “Whatever it is that’s cramping you.”
“Maybe you don’t know me so well.” She bit into a burger and looked away as she chewed.
I put my food down. “OK, Xochitl. You’re right. I don’t know you yet. Not really. But I want to. And I do know that you were in one frame of mind before we. . . Now you just seem upset.”
She looked at me. “You really wanna know?”
“I do. What’s wrong?”
Xochitl bit into her burger and chewed slowly. She looked slightly away and fixated on an invisible spot in the space next to my head. “A long time ago, at DePaul, I fell for this boy. He was black.”
“What did your parents think?”
“I tried to keep it a secret. He loved computers. Wanted to work for NASA.”
I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I felt a twinge of jealousy. I knew that was silly, so I bottled it. “You were pretty smart yourself there, Xochitl.”
“I was afraid to bring home a bad grade. One time in grammar school I got a D on this art project. My father beat me with a telephone wire.”
“Damn. So what happened with this boy in college?”
“I started going to his dorm after class. Pretty soon I got pregnant. I agonized what to say to my parents. I was throwing up. My belly was getting big. Finally, I told my mother.”
“How’d she handle it?”
Xochitl looked me right in the face again. “At first, nothing. Just nodding her head, looking to the side. When I told her the father was black, she lost it. It didn’t matter that he was brilliant. She cried like someone died. Kept asking me why I had done this to her. How this was going to kill my father. And then she said there was only one choice.”
“Shotgun wedding?”
“Abortion.”
“Oh.”
Xochitl lowered her head. “Before that, she always said it was a sin. Now, all of a sudden, she’s telling me that God sometimes lets us correct our mistakes.”
“You did it?”
Xochitl let the question hang long enough to make me wish I hadn’t asked.
“She made me feel ashamed. Like I was trash.” Xochitl looked me in the eye. “I never told her to stop. I never said that it was my choice.”
“You were young. She was your mother.”
“Maybe. Or maybe I just let her make the hard decision. I don’t know anymore. She rode the bus with me to the clinic. Took me inside. I never said no.”
I nodded and touched the back of Xochitl’s hand.
“My parents wanted me to go to college. Meet a white boy or an educated Mexican. Get married a virgin. They never let me go anywhere. I couldn’t stay at the dorms, even though my scholarship paid.”
“They were protective.”
The grown woman in front of me did not buy that.
“What happened with the astronaut?”
“I ignored him until he stopped trying to talk to me after class. I never told him.”
Tears welled in Xochitl’s eyes, but didn’t roll. I offered her a napkin.
Xochitl took the hair out of her face and dried her eyes. “I don’t know if God punished me. I fell off track right away. Started smoking pot. Cutting class. Making out with whoever. I fell behind and dropped out.”
“How did your parents react?”
“I didn’t tell them. I left the house every day like I was going to class. Killed a few hours. Came back when I was due.”
“How’d you manage?”
“I roamed around for a few days. Went to some matinees. Window-shopping, daydreaming. But I had to do something. There was this man who my family knew. He was from the same town as my father. Pretty well-off. He had these restaurants on the South Side, taco stands that are always busy. It was known that he was looking for a wife. He was older, in his early thirties.”
I chuckled. “Over-the-hill, huh?”
“Remember, I was nineteen. I saw him at family gatherings. As I got older, I caught him staring. He would look away, but I knew. When I graduated from high school, he came by the house and left a present. A gold necklace with a small diamond. My parents were so pleased. My mother especially.”
Xochitl bagged her garbage. “I just looked him up. Called for him at one of his restaurants, found him, asked if he would come pick me up near the school, which, of course, he did. I started a relationship with him right then and there, on the spot, on purpose.”
“You seduced him?”
“It wasn’t hard. I told him I always liked him. That the necklace made me feel special. We went by the Lake and made out. I started doing this every day. Getting him real worked up, but never going further. He kept trying to spread my legs. I told him that was reserved for my husband.”
“And he bought that?”
“He’s still paying for it.”
“How did it go with your family?”
“He went to the house and told my parents that we were in love. That he wanted to do everything with respect. I would never lack for anything. If I wanted to continue in school, he would not be against it. He promised to buy me a house. When he asked for my hand in marriage, my father got up, walked across the room to a cabinet, took out a dusty bottle of tequila reserved for baptisms and funerals. They did a shot and the deal was done.”
“And now that’s your soon-to-be ex-husband.”
“The one and only.”
“What happened when he found out you weren’t a virgin?”
“Please. Men are so gullible.”
“Why didn’t you go to school? He said he didn’t mind.”
“We married that Christmas. I was pregnant by Valentine’s Day. At that point he was like, ‘Tesoro, a woman cannot go to school and work and be a good mother, ¿sabes?’ He insisted that I would never need to make money because of his businesses, and so the baby had to become my focus.”
“But after that, you had another child.”
“Some years later. It was the natural order.”
We tossed our garbage and went to the car.
“Did you love him, Xochitl? Ever?”
Xochitl looked past me, through the glass behind me, through the night even, like maybe the answer to that question existed somewhere near the moon. “I grew to appreciate him. He’s a good man. Hardworking. Self-made. Obnoxious sometimes, but a good provider. We have a couple Laundromats now.”
“But?”
“What do you want me to tell you?”
“The truth, Xochitl. Why did it end?”
She paused. Not like she tried to figure out an answer, more like she wondered whether I was worth saying it to.
“Was it the sex?”
“The sex was fine,” she said. “He’s very passionate. I just never felt like. . . I had to have him. And I came to a point where I thought maybe that was something I needed. And he as well. He deserves someone who feels the same.”
Xochitl looked at me and smiled. Not the mischievous smile, or a flirta
tious smile, or even the type of smile that indicates any happiness whatsoever.
“I’m sorry, Xochitl.”
“For what? It wasn’t your fault.”
No. It was not. The world is full of compromises, stupid choices, and shattered dreams. Everybody gets a taste of that. Some more than others.
I touched her hand again. “You don’t have to replay those old scripts, Xoch. It’s OK to make something new.”
Xochitl locked eyes with me for an instant, but didn’t amen or even nod. Instead, she turned the defroster down, put the car in motion, and drove.
CHAPTER 22:
NURSERY RHYME
I listened to the Bears vs. Green Bay. The Monsters of the Midway trudged through a rough patch and it was hard not to think of my run-in at the bowling alley with Coltrane and Johnson.
Their eyes ignited when they heard I had dirt on Pelón, but they pulled back fast. Maybe they only pretended not to be juiced on my offer. Maybe their complete blow-off of information in exchange for my money was simply lowballing, a negotiation tactic. But the cockiness in Coltrane’s voice, the look in his eyes, when he said I would serve up intelligence simply because it was the right thing to do? That made me wonder.
I spun circles around it in my mind. The seconds ticked off in the fourth quarter and the Bears resigned themselves to another unhappy ending. I heard a knock at my door.
I jumped off the bed and hustled to my table, where I picked up a steak knife. I moved quietly over to the side of the door. There was no point in pretending I wasn’t home—my radio was on and the volume was up. I put my hand on the lock and asked who it was.
“I’m looking for a hungry man.”
I tossed the steak knife on the table and opened. Xochitl held a pizza box in one hand and a shopping bag in the other. She handed me the pizza and kissed my cheek as she walked past. She placed the shopping bag on the carpet. I put the pizza box on the table. Xochitl removed her coat and held it in her arms. We faced each other in the center of the room.
“You should’ve called. I’d have cleaned up.”
“I wanted to catch the real you.” A purple sweater squeezed Xochitl’s chest. Black leggings outlined her hips and thighs.
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