Before the End, After the Beginning

by Dagoberto Gilb

  I went ahead and pushed the door open.

  “What are you doing ringing the bell? Just come in! You live here!”

  I kind of nodded and muttered a thanks, okay. They were at the table and it was that jug of wine. Maybe even another one just like it. It was hard to see them, though. There was a big glass window behind them, and the sun was out. I was afraid I would be looking funny at them as I got to the table.

  “How’d it go?” Aunt Maggy asked. She was wearing a one-piece bathing suit. She was a chichona woman and it was hard not to know that, especially when she was wearing a bathing suit. I still saw the Willows Village sign, which I’d just passed again, in my head, too. It didn’t feel right.

  “Pretty good,” I said. “I really think I’m gonna get one.”

  “¡Qué bueno!” said Aunt Maggy.

  “One doing what?” the other woman said. I knew it was Lorena.

  “Oh,” my Aunt Maggy said, “this is Lorena.”

  I shook her hand. “I’m Billy,” I said.

  “Guillermo,” Aunt Maggy said.

  “Doing what?” Lorena said.

  Aunt Maggy started laughing. “I didn’t even ask what.” She laughed and so did Lorena. They thought it was funny, and they each took another drink and giggled.

  “Do you want some wine?” Lorena asked. Beside on a rack, there were a few clean wineglasses on the counter near the kitchen table and she reached over and got one and poured me a glass.

  “He doesn’t drink wine,” Aunt Maggy told her.

  “I’m sorry,” Lorena said.

  “I can.” That made her feel better. I sipped some. I didn’t really like wine, I guess.

  “So, tell us,” Lorena said. “What kind of job?”

  “Car salesman.”

  I think they wanted to laugh. Maybe. Except they didn’t.

  “Is that what you want?” Lorena asked.

  “I think you can make good money at it.” I almost was going to tell her about my friend in El Paso. I didn’t really like the wine, but I drank some more.

  “Good for you,” Aunt Maggy said. “I think they’ll be lucky to get you.”

  We clinked the wineglasses. We all took drinks for a toast and Maggy refilled Lorena’s, then hers.

  “I bet you’re hungry,” Maggy said to me.

  “I’m hungry,” said Lorena. “What can we make?”

  “There’s so much,” she said.

  There was, too. The kitchen was so full of everything.

  “Let’s just get takeout. Chinese? Italian? How about subs?”

  “Yum,” said Lorena.

  We were all supposed to pick, until Aunt Maggy said she’d get three kinds and we’d share. She got on the phone and she was ordering.

  “What about you?” I asked Lorena. “What do you do?”

  She didn’t answer quickly. “I fight for a woman’s rights. I fight against dirty husbands.”

  Maggy, still on the phone, made eyes at her and shook her head.

  I decided not to ask.

  Lorena was in a bathing suit, too, but she had a towel bathrobe over her. Hers was a two-piece, a bikini, because once in a while it opened. It was a good bet that all of her figure was good, too. She had an accent. I couldn’t figure it out. It might have been Mexican, but if she spoke Spanish, then they would be speaking Spanish. Her eyes were hazel but also green. Maybe her shoulder-length hair was dyed. It was brown with yellow in it. I thought her hair should be dark brown. She was my age, give or take a few years.

  Off the phone, Aunt Maggy took another gulp of wine and got up and then so did Lorena. Too much to look at, so I looked down and out the window to the big backyard. I listened as Maggy took out plates from a cabinet and brought them to the table. Lorena went to the sink and came back with a dishrag and wiped the table. Both of them brushed up against me when they came back. It was that I was in a chair that was in the way, the one I sat in without thinking when I walked in. I considered moving.

  “Would you rather have beer with your sandwich?” Lorena asked me. “If you really don’t like wine.”

  I decided I had to look up when I answered and she was very close to me, her robe loosely closed, and she was standing, and I was sitting. It was hard to keep my eyes steady. “Well,” I said, “. . . no I think I should stay with the wine.” I finished my first glass and then she leaned across me and got the bottle and filled it back up. The jug was almost empty, so then she put the last of the wine in hers. She was warm.

  “Open another if you want,” Maggy said. “Open this one.” She handed Lorena a smaller bottle and she looked around for the wine opener. Lorena handed it and the bottle to me.

  The truth is, I wasn’t sure how it worked. It had the curled screw but also something else. I don’t know if they watched me, but I pulled the cork out the only way I knew. “So you guys went to, like, the beach?” I asked. I left the bottle on the table because all of the glasses were full.

  “My neighbor Paula has a pool,” said Maggy. “You want to go swimming? I’m watching it for her while they’re away.”

  “It’s delicious!” said Lorena. “It’s so nice over there. You have to go.”

  Ready for the food to arrive, Aunt Maggy started cleaning the kitchen. “I don’t know how I get such a mess all the time,” she said.

  Lorena sat down again, looked over at me, drank wine, and sighed. “Are you as hungry as I am?” she asked me.

  I was trying to be quick to answer.

  “Don’t be so shy,” she said. “Just say yes.”

  “Okay,” I mumbled.

  “Yes yes yes,” said Maggy near the sink. “We say yes!”

  “Yes!” said Lorena more loud. They laughed. Then Lorena got up from her chair and put her arms around me and hugged me. “Please don’t mind us drunk women.”

  “What did she say?” Aunt Maggy asked over there.

  “I told him not to mind us drunk girls.”

  “Mind us? What man is going to mind drinking with us? Right, Guillermo? You better say yes!”

  They laughed staring at me. I made myself laugh along with them, but I wasn’t sure what else to do. I was doing more than sitting there but it couldn’t look like much. I drank more wine and was feeling it, not noticing the taste so much. I was thinking of how warm Lorena was when she hugged me and I still felt her breasts pressing on me, too, stuck to me like that sign was.

  The doorbell rang. As I turned back to look, Aunt Maggy yelled, “Hello!” It was a young delivery guy and he was holding a white bag. The door was wide open, not because he opened it but because it was wide open. I guess I forgot to shut it.

  Maggy came around the corner from the kitchen. “Come on in!” she told him. She was in the kitchen and then went through another door. “I can’t find my purse!” she yelled.

  He stopped near the table. Lorena took the bag from him and was pulling submarine sandwiches out. Lorena’s robe wasn’t even tied anymore. I was standing for a minute and then I sat, but I moved my chair, making more room to pass. The guy didn’t talk. He was staring, blank. I wondered what he was thinking about them in their bathing suits. Maybe he was more used to it than me.

  Suddenly Lorena yelled. “It’s over here, Maggy!” She held the purse, which had been in the corner.

  “I am so dingy,” Aunt Maggy said when she came back in the kitchen. When she opened the purse, it exploded money like a jack-in-the-box. Bills popped out everywhere, a fountain of crumpled greenbacks. Maggy made a loud sigh and an “¡Ay, Dios!” and rolled her eyes, like it was the fault of the purse. Lorena picked up the cash and I helped, too, and when Aunt Maggy started counting out a few—“How much?” she asked the delivery guy—I was already making a neat stack of mine. I was going to do the same thing with what Lorena piled on the ta
ble but I didn’t. They were of all kinds of denominations and I thought they could be sorted, too, but I didn’t do that, either. When the guy left, Aunt Maggy stuffed them right back without a second thought and clicked the purse closed.

  I knew I was going to get one of those jobs. I mean, I applied at more dealers, too, but my gut feeling told me that it was going to happen with those first ones interested in me. I was trying to figure out which would be better money, used cars or new car sales. I didn’t have enough information about either, so I just thought about it. One strong guess was that the new car job would require better clothes. Maybe a suit, but at least a couple of good coats and pants, and for both, some dress shirts. Ties, too. I felt it even more when I dropped in on them again telling them I was still looking, still hungry for this work. I think they both liked me, but I also felt like they might have seen that I was wearing the same white shirt and tie. I could not go there again in the same shirt and tie, and if they did call, I had to have something else, no matter what. So I stopped at a store afterward and bought another of each. They weren’t the most expensive, but I was almost out of money, and that wasn’t good. I needed to buy a few shirts. And the rest. I could get some money from home, from my parents. My wife, Suzie, was living with my suegros, her parents, so we wouldn’t have to be spending on rent.

  This time I got in late. I took a long drive once it got to be afternoon, got stuck in a lot of freeway traffic I didn’t know how to get out of, and I had to go to a few stores to find the shirt and tie once I found a mall. I had to put gas in my car, too. I went to a drive-through and got a large soda and stayed parked in the lot a while. It made me feel bad that I would have to borrow from my parents again. My mom, anyway. She wouldn’t even tell my dad. It was nice sitting. I needed it. I even turned off the radio. I think I was there a long time. I thought of going to a bar, but it didn’t seem right to buy beer, too. And there was plenty of beer and wine at Aunt Maggy’s. I missed home and wished this would stop. It was getting dark. The automatic lights were already on the Willows Village sign when I drove in.

  “Did you get a job?” Aunt Maggy asked.

  “No, not yet.”

  “You’re so late. I thought maybe you found one.”

  Lorena came to the kitchen from her room. She looked concerned, too.

  “Are you hungry?” Maggy asked.

  “What’d you buy?” asked Lorena, interrupting. I had the shopping bag in my hand. “Let me see,” she said, reaching for it.

  “It’s just a shirt and tie.”

  She already knew it because she took them out before I answered. I don’t think she thought much of them.

  “You have to be hungry. Sit with me.” Aunt Maggy sat down at the kitchen table. It was full of all kinds of stuff, not only the wine bottles and glasses, but a stack of folded towels and women’s colorful underwear, top and bottom. Even a full grocery bag not unloaded. “Lorena, can you serve him that Chinese food? I think there’s a lot.”

  “I can do that,” Lorena said. “Of course.” She kind of stepped into the kitchen like it was too dark to see, even though the bright panels of ceiling lights were on. “Where is it?” There was so much everywhere.

  “It’s there. Somewhere. Maybe I put it in the fridge. I don’t remember now.”

  Lorena opened the refrigerator door and stared, then she stuck her hand in like touching any one thing wrong might tip over something else. “Way in the back somehow,” she announced. “But it is here.”

  “Are you okay? ¿Todo bien, Guillermo?”

  I guess I was grouchy. For one, I felt like being called Billy. “I think I’m a little tired is all. I’m fine.”

  Lorena was trying to get to the microwave. She had to move lots of things.

  “You have to put it on a plate,” said Maggy. “Those take-out boxes have wire.”

  “I already know. I already have it on a plate.”

  Maggy stared at the mess on the table like it was someone’s fault. “Do you need your clothes washed?”

  “I was going to ask. I sure do.”

  She picked up the tie I just bought. It was on the table, too. “Do you need some ties? Jim has so many ties. I think he has some shirts that would fit you, too.”

  I couldn’t believe it! “That would be so great, Tía,” I told her.

  To make room on the table, Aunt Maggy had Lorena take the towels and underwear and my two things upstairs. I really liked the Chinese food. It was the best I’d ever eaten.

  When I woke up I couldn’t think of what else to do really. I had gone to every new and used car dealer in Santa Ana and north, south, east, and west. All those streets and neighborhoods that looked exactly like each other, passing so many tract developments that weren’t named Willows Village but could be. So many restaurants to stop at or drive through and eat so much food in, so many stores to shop in, so many gas stations to get gas. I wore the new shirt and a tie Aunt Maggy gave me, even a sports coat I told her I would only borrow, and I’d gone back twice to those dealers and one more that I thought maybe about, too, but nobody called back. My good mom sent me money by Western Union fast, no questions. I didn’t need it that way but it was what she wanted. I felt bad about it. I didn’t like it. She didn’t want me to have to borrow or take anything from her sister. I think she felt jealous and she didn’t want Aunt Maggy to think she didn’t have plenty, too. I felt bad asking for help, but what could I do? I did really believe that, especially that one used car place, that guy wanted to hire me. It was about me speaking Spanish. He didn’t, none of his salesmen did. He said they really needed that because they got so many Spanish Mexican people. That’s how he said it. He called me Guillermo and I thought that was fine if I got the job. Then again I wasn’t sure of anything, since he hadn’t called or the other place, either, when I felt like it was such a sure thing.

  Yeah, it was strange to be in the pink girl’s room. At first, to be polite, I didn’t want to make any moves, any changes in it. The cute little pink and red and white pillows stayed in the bed with me when I slept. Then I stacked them in a corner of the bed, and then I left them in a pile off the bed, though I kept a couple, sort of extra cushions, for my feet, my head. I finally picked the TV up off the floor and put it on the sewing machine cabinet. Once, I started opening makeup compacts—she had so many in this one box. I was looking in the little mirrors when I started laughing at myself. What if someone saw me? Very very funny! I wondered what it’d be like to have to stare at my lips putting on gloss. I looked at the lines in my own lips. Funny! I pushed boxes around and made room for my suitcase, but I was neat, tried to be. My own clothes looked heavy and dark in the room on the floor. Even my socks. I’d spilled a perfume, or something like it, and the room really stank of it. At first I was embarrassed that I’d gotten it on the rug. But it didn’t stain. Aunt Maggy didn’t say anything about it. At first I kind of didn’t like the smell, but then I did. By now I was sick of it, tired of it being in my nose when I slept. I thought it would go away fast, but it never seemed to. I even worried that I might have the smell on me or in my clothes, so one day, before I took off, I went into Aunt Maggy’s bedroom when she wasn’t there and I borrowed some of Jim’s men’s spray. I saw a couple of bottles on his dresser there when she took me up for ties and shirts. I was sick of that perfume smell in my room but what could I do?

  I woke up and I didn’t feel like going out there, so I fell back asleep and it was later in the morning. It was the first time this late in the morning that I was still here. When I woke up this second time, a couple hours later, I needed to pee. I opened my door and, across, Aunt Maggy’s doors were both open and she was standing near the king-size bed completely naked, drying her hair, looking toward the long mirror I couldn’t see across the set of sinks on the wall over there. She didn’t hear me open the door—she had a radio on—and so I closed it. Not all the way. I left it
open enough to see. Oh my God my aunt was a Playmate of the Year! It was shocking to me, and I couldn’t believe it. She was too much. I couldn’t stop myself from looking, even though I knew it was sick, or something kind of bad, but I didn’t want to not watch. She finally rolled her hair into the towel and then she sat to put panties on. Then she stood and put on a bra, kept playing with this or that around her breasts, but she didn’t like it, so she took it off and dug in a drawer and then she found another. She kept this bra on, and when she went toward the sinks and mirrors, I closed the door and breathed and shook my head quietly for at least a minute. I didn’t know what it would mean that I just watched my own aunt so much and so naked. No way she was an older woman! Though I felt like I’d done something wrong and gotten away with it, or maybe because I’d gotten away with it, I felt kind of good. Better than I did before, a lot. I made noise this time when I opened the door. The cabinet near the bathroom, where there were bath towels and linens, was open, so I took one out and closed the door hard and then I closed the bathroom door and I even took a shower. When I was out, she had closed one of the two doors, though the other was open like normal. I heard her downstairs, a TV set on, talking to Lorena.

  I saw this guy painting a house a few houses from the ­Willows Village entrance and he said yeah, it would be great if I worked with him, so it was me and this Gabe. It was his mom’s house and it was for sale and he wasn’t really a house painter, either, but while we were working, first one, then another woman, in this village stopped and asked if we wanted more work. We both looked at each other and said sure. He bid what seemed to be a ton and we agreed to split it. We were knocking out his mom’s so fast it was amazing. It’s because the house was a single story and there wasn’t that much brush or roller work. It was 95 percent compressor. Three days is all it took and when we did the next one we both knew it would only take two, because now we knew how to do it and we had the drop cloths and all of it. The two-story we said yes to, also—but even that, well, we’d have to rent an extension ladder or maybe a scaffold, but after that, nothing to it, either. It wasn’t like I was going to be rich, but it felt good to have some money and more coming. I even told Suzie and she felt better about me being out here, too. I didn’t usually tell her anything that wasn’t good, because I didn’t want her to worry or to worry her parents, either—they didn’t want her and their grandchildren to leave El Paso. I told her I was sure we’d get another couple before we finished and that soon I’d get a real job. I wasn’t ready to give up. I just wanted the opportunity to make more money than I knew I ever could there.