Before the End, After the Beginning

by Dagoberto Gilb

  Which did the job of irritating me. Pissed me off. Jennifer didn’t move to slow me down even a little as I turned away to leave.

  “Wait wait wait,” Phil said. Then, slowly, “Wait, wait, wait.”

  I stopped. I was outside his front door.

  “Look,” he said. He tried to reach his arm around me, but I dodged it. “Look,” he said. “Listen.” He was drunk, trying to sound like he was just cool. “You shouldn’t go. You shouldn’t, man.” Did he wink? “Look. Nat. You know? You know, man, you know! She likes you.”

  “Your wife likes me,” I said.

  “Come on, man. You go with her, you know. She wants that. You’ll like her.”

  I was about to laugh. I had enough time to bounce around what to say. I mean, I might choose to have sex with this man’s wife, though not right then, and not interested at all, really—but whatever, it wouldn’t be as much for his pleasure as mine in fucking him over by doing her.

  “I’ll take care of Jen,” he said.

  My ears heard that faster than I did. So did my arms and my hands and my voice. “Fuck you, you asshole!” I straight-armed his chest with both hands, tumbling him into the front door loud and hard.

  “What are you doing?” he yelled. “Are you out of your mind?”

  As he steadied himself—“Wait a minute, hold on a ­minute”—it seemed like he was coming toward me aggressively, not backing away. It could have been to reach out kindly. Who knows? I didn’t care. I hit him solid—first a left to stun him, and then a right that, I’d have to admit, punished and slammed him.

  Both the women were at the open door screaming. I couldn’t say if it was at me or about him. His nose and mouth were bleeding. I went home.

  And yes, I was mad. No doubt that had something to do with my bad reaction when I walked in and saw those two dopers in the house again. They were standing in the living room when I asked, probably too loud, what they were doing here again.

  “I don’t have nothing to do with it,” Ef said, backpedaling from all of it completely.

  “It’s me,” said Richard. He stood up straight, which he didn’t do so often. “I’m the one who told them. It’s cool, Nino, honest.”

  “It is, vato,” the blond said to me. He was wearing a torn T-shirt, his beads over that. “We got the message. Seriously, reallys. Like today, just now, we didn’t park outside your house. We parked below the arroyo, and we hoofed it up. The little kids thought we were maybe desert aliens. It was cool.”

  These two walked a half mile through the peaceful family neighborhood, as inconspicuous as two ice-cream trucks. Quickly I traveled beyond mad into controlled and steady. This was finished, it was time to move along. Even before Jennifer came home, I was packing. She was still dealing with what happened next door, which, it was true, seemed to me a less-important past already. She was so furious at me, she said, truly embarrassed by me. Even as she was going on, though, I caught fascination growing in her voice, the thrill of a ride. Here was an adventure she had witnessed and lived through. The Old West! Her Chicano boyfriend when she lived on the frontera! I’d loosened two teeth, not broken his nose, even though it took a while for them to stop the bleeding there. We even started smiling.

  “God, I would never be with him,” she told me. “I can’t believe he even thought it was possible.”

  “Glad to know it’d be okay if I was with her.”

  “She is a turn-on,” she said, giggling. “Pretty hard to not want to get naked with her.”

  It had never crossed my mind what she might be thinking. Talking about the colorful incident and about sex-starved Natalie made Jennifer, still a little drunk, affectionate. In bed, whatever I wanted to do was fine with her.

  “We got no choice now,” I said. “We have to leave. They’re out of control.”

  “We’ll go to my place,” Jennifer said.

  “You mean you still have the apartment?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Where did you think I did my work? When I slept? Here?”

  “I guess I assumed you gave it up once you lived here.”

  “When you’re at work, those crazy hours you get, I’m there. I’m there a lot.”

  “Here I thought you were at the college.”

  “I wouldn’t get in this bed if you weren’t in it.”

  “Never thought about it once.”

  “Such a strange man you are. You read too much.”

  “All the time you could have been with Phil.”

  “Or Natalie,” she said.

  We were on our way for the last few boxes two weeks later when, as I was about to turn into the street, I caught sight of the buzzing hive of police cars in front of the house. Phil stood out like a rodeo clown. I was driving slow enough that I could straighten out the turn.

  “We’ll know in a minute, but I don’t think they saw us. I don’t think he did, either.”

  “My camera’s still there!”

  We headed back to her apartment.

  “I can’t believe I left it there. I don’t want anyone to take it.”

  “You can get it back if they did.”

  “I can’t believe I left it. I don’t know why I brought it last time.”

  “To document,” I reminded her. It’d been the first time I ever heard that phrase used. “Us here, this time and place on the Texas border.” I remembered it like a book title.

  “I already took most of the pictures I wanted. It’s why I forgot it.”

  At her friend’s apartment, we waited on news. I didn’t think it was such a good idea for her to call and ask Natalie. After a few hours, I finally reached Ef’s sister. Everyone at the house was arrested, at least nine people. It was four ounces of cocaine and a good stash of marijuana. The coke deal was arranged by a friend of a friend of Richard, who was really a narc. What she understood, they had a warrant for me. At the least, it meant I’d be picked up and need to have a lawyer, with all the jail time and expense between. She didn’t hear anything about Jennifer’s name.

  “What?” I asked. She was as upset as I’d ever seen her.

  “One time he asked,” she said. “And I told him.”

  “Names?”

  “Everybody’s. Everybody who lived there. Yours, and mine, too. Last names. It seemed like harmless conversation. That he was curious, the same way I would be.”

  “That’s all you told him, though?”

  “Yes,” she said. But she wasn’t done. She wasn’t quick with it, she wasn’t done. “I talked too much to Natalie.”

  “He’s not the narc, but he could have called it in.”

  “Me, too?”

  “He was pissed off at me.” I was thinking, and she was crying. “But just as likely dealing with those payasos Richard let in.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, Nino; I’m scared now.”

  “We’re all right, especially here.”

  “You think they’ll be looking for my car?”

  “There won’t be an all-points bulletin.”

  She was on full alert. “They won’t know where my apartment is. I never told her about that.”

  “Jennifer,” I said, “cálmate, take it easy.”

  But she couldn’t, or she did in another way: She had her girlfriend and the boyfriend of get all her things from the apartment, even the camera from the house—it was still there—and she was gone in three days, driving to California, or Maryland, or somewhere, she couldn’t tell me, even as she kissed me goodbye. I quit my job at the motel, which is to say I never showed up again, not even to get my last check. I had her apartment free for the next three months, until I got worried by the second angry letter—not from the landlord but from her grandfather, who was still paying the rent but said I would have to leave or else. Or else? He’d s
top paying. Her? He didn’t say he knew, but he knew I was there, he knew my name to mail the letters. I never heard from Jennifer again.

  And so rested the twenty-five-year-old memory of the rich girlfriend way back when I’d never imagined using airports and rental cars. I’d been to Phoenix a few times, but it was already years ago. I didn’t like it then and still didn’t. Sedate as it was, the hotelish lobby layout seemed hard to follow. Maybe it was why retired types were hired to nice it up to people like me who looked lost. A half hour before takeoff, I was afraid of being late for the flight. The old man in the blue vest at the elevator who came over to me seemed more like a Walmart greeter.

  “No,” I said. “I’m fine, thanks.”

  “But what I’m saying . . .”

  “It’s all right,” I said, rushing an escalator. I thought I heard what sounded like my name, but I dismissed it. Since I had ­frequent-flyer-premium advantages, I got through what would have been a long screening line fast, just in time to hear the explanation that the flight would be delayed for about forty minutes.

  Which was okay. I bought a turkey and Swiss sandwich from the mexicanos working there, asking if they were miserable in Arizona because of the new law. They both laughed when I said how it wasn’t fair that pretty papers covered turkeys and big cheeses so fast and for so little coin. I found a vinyl seat across from the gate, near two East Indian Americans and a man from Dallas who knew one of them: This afternoon flight was always late. Nobody thought there should be weather issues, but there was rain here, wind there. Like almost all, only a few of them women, each had a computer open on their lap, the Dallas man with his Bluetooth earpiece blinking, him talking, typing, both.

  Moments before the first-class boarding call, the old man greeter approached. Many people were already standing near the gate.

  “Excuse me, sir, but do you have your documents?”

  I was not prepared. Some seconds passed, and people sitting around within range both stared and looked away. I stood with my bag.

  “You don’t remember me?”

  I had no choice but to walk toward him to get to the gate.

  “Probably better that you don’t recognize me,” he said.

  I’d passed by him, but it wasn’t like I could go too far.

  “It’s Phil,” he said from behind me, pausing. “Felipe. Of Felipe and Natalie.”

  I turned. It could not be the man I knew. He was so old. Overweight, he was fragile, beaten.

  “We’ve been here for years,” he said maneuvering closer to me. “She’s had cancer. It’s been tough, on both of us.”

  His teeth were from a museum or an archeological dig. I moved to the other edge of the business attired—dress shirts and silk ties, pleated slacks and shined dress shoes that never scuffed, executive leather briefcases—waiting for my time in the line. I was so not interested.

  “Nino, are you doing . . . better?” People stared at him, then me. It wasn’t true, but it seemed the only conversation. “And Jen? We still think of her. You both.”

  My group was next. “I didn’t mean to make you mad. It’s Arizona.”

  He was pathetic, and I knew others felt bad for him, that I was heartless. I was relieved when I finally handed my boarding pass to the airline attendant, who ran it over the laser beam and thanked me. I was almost in the chute.

  “I’m sorry,” he said louder so I’d hear.

  On an aisle seat, alone still, I was cramped anyway. Was he sorry about Arizona, or possibly about what happened back when in El Paso? I wished I could have upgraded. I rubbed my closed eyes and planned to sleep. I knew I would never see him alive again.

  HACIA TEOTITLÁN

  The last time Ramiro Areyzaga was in Mexico was so long ago it was more like a fairy tale. That was Coyoacán, which is Mexico City but which isn’t anything like it. He was seven years old and had traveled with his mother and his sister and brother, which also made it such a happy memory. A place of lush green shade, both a forest of trees and a jungle of huge waxy palm leaves, and a zócalo of marionettes and dancers, musicians and painters, with toys and balloons for the little ones and shawls for his grandparents. And of course the church, like none he’d ever seen since, all the cool stone space, and God—which he never got over, so much so it stayed inside him, quietly, the rest of his life, like it was the word México itself. And there were candied apples and cups of fruit for sale everywhere, like piña, coco, granada, papaya, mango, guava, and the sweetest juice squeezed from the ugliest oranges. It was his sister who was so afraid of them, because their peels seemed faded and blotchy and had black spots and were small, nothing like they were from the markets at home, where they were polished and bright as plastic. She refused to drink any, so he and his brother loved it even more just to torture her. Though they talked about going back whenever they were together, none of them ever did, and now he was the only one still alive.

  What he did first to come back to Mexico was go online. He thought of Coyoacán, and when he looked, it was that there were so many possibilities, there were too many. There was only one ad for a room in Oaxaca, misplaced, it seemed, in the Mexico City listings. It was written in a less-than-perfect Spanish, which he could tell even if he’d lost so much of his own first language. He knew very little about Oaxaca, really—better said, he didn’t know anything but the name—so he read a little. What he liked was that the weather was said to be consistent all seasons, ideal, and that was it: decided. He wrote a query and in a few days came a reply. It was a departamento owned by a Sra. Noemi Luisa Campos Villegas. She lived with her daughter. It was in her house. It was newly carpeted, with a single bed, a sofa, two chairs, a table, and a lamp. He would be allowed to share her refrigerator and kitchen. It was very nice, she wrote, and, yes, it was still available.

  He got into a van from the airport, which filled with workers, men with new and old straw hats, and a young couple. All of them were so short. Ramiro was tall, as Mexicans go, and his legs were so badly confined behind the driver’s seat that he had to pull the left one up with his hand so it wouldn’t cramp. A younger boy—he was maybe nineteen—was there, too, and asked him where Ramiro was from. The boy was from a pueblo, on the mountain below the ruins of Monte Albán. The pueblo had a name Ramiro couldn’t exactly understand, even though he heard the word twice. The boy had been in Santa Maria, California, picking strawberries. There was so much work, he said, and he would be going back in a week. He was proud. The boy would have liked to talk more, but Ramiro didn’t. Not to be impolite. It’s only that he wanted to be quiet. He started listening to the couple sitting behind him. Sometimes it did sound like Spanish, but also it didn’t, not all the words—even the words that did, didn’t really. Soon these other passengers were dropped off and the driver found the address of his rental near Tinoco y Palacios, off Quetzalcoatl. The taxista was kind and carried one of his two bags down a rock pathway where they could see numbers. They found it. Ramiro tipped him big with a twenty-peso bill.

  Sra. Campos came down her stone steps, greeted him without much emotion, and then led him to a few more steps and opened the padlock for some arched, wrought-iron gates. Then she pushed open a wet, tired wooden door to show what was now his home. It was a basement in every way, with a faint scent of mildew and dust. The carpet was indoor-outdoor, and was probably not old, though it was hard to see it in the darkness. She had turned on the two switches. The small, clear bulbs were maybe 25-watt. She showed him his bedroom, his bathroom. A frayed towel was there for him, and there was a tiny square of soap, wrapped, nameless, from what was probably a hotel. At the small wooden table, with two chairs, where she had also put a bouquet of assorted flowers to welcome him, he counted out the agreed-upon rent money. She smiled to herself like it was a reward. She led him over to the interior stairs that climbed up to another door. That was the entrance to her home and the kitchen he could share. They went i
n. Her home was spacious, with tile floors and modern furniture, high walls with many picture windows, and even original artwork on her interior white plaster walls. Her daughter, Elda, was there. She was unbashfully excited, as though Ramiro were a new friend. What is your name? Where are you from? What does that look like? What do you do? She was learning French, not English, she told him, but she wanted to learn English, too. Ramiro could see that Sra. Campos wanted Elda to be still, but resisted saying too much these first moments. She apologized, explaining that Elda was eight. Now she told her that she needed to calm down and go to her room, and, pouty lips aside, she disappeared.

  The kitchen was modest and cramped, and so was the refrigerator. Sra. Campos made a small space for what he wanted in it. She showed him where there was a Teflon pan for eggs and where he could get a plate. She was very specific, very precise. There was a washing machine and a dryer, and she patiently showed him all the necessary plugs that would need to be unplugged and plugged, then plugged and unplugged, and the hoses that would need to be hooked and unhooked, and so on. These were all opportunities, he knew right then, that would not be good to share with Sra. Campos—better to find a restaurant, a laundry. He thanked her and said good night and found his stairs back down.

  There was so much in his life he wasn’t sure of anymore. He was tired, he wasn’t really tired. Was he hungry? He could be, and he could skip it, too. Mostly skip it. There was still one thing he really planned, and that was walking. He wanted to push himself, walk like never, to drop from that tired if that’s how it was to be. And he began, a long way down Tinoco y Palacios until it changed names a few times, and then a long way back up, on the raised sidewalk, a cool night, alongside the buses and cars and taxis and motos, all the way down the two-lane street, the doors of both homes and stores closed and locked, dodging here and there the protrusions of wrought iron or cement sill around a window, careful not to step inside a hole or trip on a chipped curb. The night was already so uniquely dark that he wanted to walk with his eyes upward, until he heard what sounded like a parade coming toward him from up the hill. Students had gathered next to Santo Domingo, lighting rocket fireworks that whistled and blasted so loud they set off car alarms, and were joyous about what seemed like marching music led by a tuba—they sang and danced along to many that were their favorite hits. Ramiro sat long after they all left.