Daniel Thomas, Ph.D.
41
Time: Monday, May 15, 10:54 PM
To: Dominga Saavedra
From: [email protected]
Subject: Hi from your dad
Dear Sandy,
How’ve you been? Sorry I haven’t written much lately. Things have been busy at work. And with other things…
I’ve been trying to read your website when I get the chance. It’s kind of confusing but I did see some of your articles and thought they were good. You have a biting wit that I envy. Wish I could write as well as you.
Hope to see you soon. Hope you’re doing well. And your mother.
Love,
Dad
42
It’d been another long working weekend. Now that Toro vodka was officially an Elite Sponsor, Sandy was obliged to attend their functions and be videotaped, wearing a different borrowed dress and coming up with creative, not-obviously-sponsored posts to write each time. She’d figured out that the best method was to drink one Pure NRG water for every two Toro vodkas and to befriend the Toro girls, who gave her the best story leads.
It was still tiring, though. She’d flown to Phoenix on Saturday and then to San Antonio on Sunday for the Latino Literature Conference. Because, along with everything else, she was Nacho Papi’s designated literary expert. Which was ironic, in a way, considering everything.
Sandy was finding that she had come to rely on her weekly visits with the Chupacabra. For one thing, his advice was comforting to hear. The Chupacabra’s down-to-earth sensibility reduced the angsty-est problems to simple matters that were easily solved with a little bit of honesty and common sense. Listening to Tío Jaime dispatch their readers’ questions made Sandy feel what it meant when old people said, “This, too, shall pass.” It made her feel like everything was going to be okay, like it was possible to take a break from your problems and enjoy simple things, like gardening. Or lemonade.
Adding to this was the setting. Something about Chupacabra Country, with its long green horizon and constant mild breeze, made Sandy feel at peace. It was funny—she’d already known that, of course, but wouldn’t have thought that it had translated to the videos she made for the site. Obviously it did, though. Her readers commented on it all the time and joked about buying homes next to the Chupacabra’s.
The week before, when she’d missed their appointment because of the hipsters, Sandy had reviewed all the previous “Ask the Chupacabra” episodes. When she watched them over again, she saw just how different they were from the rest of the content on the Nacho Papi site. They formed a sort of oasis from all the gossip, the criticism, and the “hate-o-rama,” as Mr. Levy would have termed it. She could see why those hipster boys had driven out to find the Chupacabra. She totally understood what they’d been looking for.
And she was the one who’d shown it to them. But for now she was the only one who knew how to find it. And she’d try to keep it that way, for the old man’s sake. She didn’t want to upset him. She couldn’t afford to, of course. If she stopped doing “Ask the Chupacabra” she’d take a considerable hit to her page views, and therefore to her salary.
She’d felt a little bad about the T-shirt thing, which didn’t even count toward her page-view credits after all, because it had gone against Tío Jaime’s wishes. But it turned out that the first week of sales had been a fluke. They’d sold a few hundred Chupacabra shirts, and then their fickle audience had dropped them like last year’s G-Phones, moving on to Francisco’s bumper stickers that read KEEP AUSTIN WIRED. So it was almost like the T-shirts had never happened and Sandy didn’t have to worry about it anymore.
As she drove, her mind worked in Shuffle mode. Thinking of work made her think of the e-mail Daniel had sent her after she wrote the Lawrence Villalobos breakup post. It was funny to her that Daniel had finally started reading her Nacho Papi posts after all this time. Of course he had; he wanted to see if she’d make reference to him, the way he alluded to her in his classes. She almost wished she hadn’t made that crack about breakups in her post about Lawrence Villalobos. It’d brought her down to Daniel’s level. But she hadn’t been able to resist. It was a hilarious post. Even her dad thought so. And he almost never e-mailed her for anything.
And, really, as long as Daniel never found out about her personal blog it was no big deal.
Maybe it was time to take it offline, she mused. Or at least remove all the entries about Daniel.
But then she remembered Kristy telling her how much she’d enjoyed Sandy’s parodies of Daniel’s work. She remembered all the comments she’d gotten from readers on those entries, too. Those were some of her funniest, most heartfelt entries.
Why should she take them down? she asked herself. It wasn’t like she’d used Daniel’s actual name. And even if she had, she was well within her rights to discuss her own life and describe things that had happened to her, wasn’t she? Daniel was free to start his own blog and tell his side of the story if he wanted.
But he never would, because he considered himself too good for that. And that was ironic, because the genre he found so lowbrow was what had won Sandy a bigger audience than Daniel’s poetry ever would have.
It wasn’t her fault that people wanted to read about her life, in her down-to-earth writing style. She was giving her fans what they wanted, and she couldn’t help it if Daniel hadn’t found a way to do the same.
Having neatly reasoned her problems away, all within an hour-long drive, Sandy pulled into Tío Jaime’s driveway with a clear conscious and a light heart.
43
What’d you bring me this time?” the old man asked as she emerged from the car laden with snacks.
“Jalapeno sausage kolaches and a Peppermint Coffee Cooler.” Sandy handed him one of the two drinks she was carrying and took the bakery box to the small table on his porch.
They ate and chatted a bit before beginning the interview. Sandy vented a little, telling Tío Jaime about a couple of readers who’d started to criticize the Nacho Papi staffers’ writing and suggest that they, themselves, would do a better job for less pay.
“Well, m’ija, you know how people are,” Tío Jaime said, sitting back and taking a sip from the drink she’d brought him. “They’re like crabs in a bucket. The minute one crab starts to climb up, the other crabs reach up and try to pull her back down. You know what I’m saying?”
Sandy nodded. She definitely knew what he was saying, and had met plenty of crab-like people lately.
“You kids don’t realize how lucky you are, though,” he said. “Back when I was young, nobody even thought about writing anything or trying to be on TV. Your aunt, for instance…” He paused and looked up, as if at something flashing over his head. At his feet, Cano lifted his ears. “That reminds me. I’ve been trying to remember to give you this forever.” He got up then, and went back into the house. Sandy stayed seated, not knowing whether she was supposed to follow. Sometimes, lately, Tío Jaime had sudden memories and walked into the house, only to come out after a few minutes as if nothing had happened. At first she’d assumed he was going to the bathroom, but now she wondered if his memory was starting to erode.
This time, however, he returned to the porch with a book. Actually, Sandy saw as he slowly moved closer, it was a journal.
“Here,” he said, handing it to her. “I’ve been wanting to give you this. It was your aunt’s.”
Sandy took the book from his hand. It was bound in dark green cloth, so old that the corners were rubbed bare and the cover itself had buckled slightly. The yellow-edged pages had numerous gaps, indicating things tucked between them. “What,” she said. “When…?”
“It was her journal. The only thing of hers I wanted to keep. But I’ve never read it. I didn’t feel right.”
Sandy ran her hands over the journal. She was torn between wanting to open it right then and wanting to hold it safely closed, within her hands, forever. She had never really known her great-aunt—hadn’t met her m
ore than two or three times—but already she felt that this journal contained an identity. It radiated warmth and—Sandy felt cheesy for thinking it—also a life of its own.
“Are you lending it to me?” she asked.
“I’m giving it to you. I’ve been meaning to give it to you ever since you first came up here. Your aunt should have been a writer, and she was always proud that you became a writer, and I know she would have wanted you to have it.”
“Thank you.” Sandy felt warmth and then moisture rise to her eyes. She didn’t know if she could really believe Tío Jaime—he might have been exaggerating a little, to be nice—but it certainly was a comforting idea to imagine her late aunt being proud of her accomplishments and passing down a heritage, so to speak, in the form of a desire to write. “I think I’ll wait and read it when I get home,” Sandy said.
Tío Jaime waved dismissively as if he were already through with the subject. “Do whatever you want with it. Read it when you’re ready to.”
Sandy tucked the book carefully into an inner pocket in her bag, among the tools of her trade.
The old man said, “That reminds me. You probably shouldn’t visit me next week. My nephew Richard is coming to town again.”
“Really?”
“He’s staying for a while, but not at my house. He says he can’t go without air conditioning, so he’ll be at one of those big hotels in Austin.”
Sandy let her curiosity get the better of her. “Why is he coming here if he’s not actually going to stay with you?”
Tío Jaime shrugged and made a face. “His mother makes him check up on me, I think. But he probably has some work to do with lawyers here in town, too. Otherwise I don’t see him coming all the way out from California just for me.”
“Where in California does he live?”
“Los Angeles. The big city.”
“What does he do there? I mean, what kind of lawyer is he?”
“Immigration law. But he mostly works with people from England and Bermuda and the Middle East, so he’s making good money. He’s single. I would try to set you up with him, m’ija, but he just broke up with someone a year ago and I think he still needs time to get over it.”
Sandy quickly demurred. She hadn’t meant to seem interested for that reason. “Well, I hope he doesn’t get angry about our interviews. If he thinks you should get paid for them, I’m willing to—”
Tío Jaime interrupted. “Don’t worry about that. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. I’m not so old that I need other people making decisions for me. I know I can trust you not to write anything embarrassing about me or do anything wrong.”
And that, Sandy thought, settled that. “Well, in that case, I’ll go ahead and ask you this. Tío Jaime, would you be interested in appearing on a TV show with me? Doing the same thing you do now, answering questions and giving advice, but on TV instead of on the Web site?” She didn’t like springing it on him like this but figured there was no time like the present. Angelica had suggested it, and Sandy knew from experience that Angelica’s suggestions were actually polite demands.
“I don’t know, m’ija. I like answering your questions and visiting with you here, and I don’t care what you do with the answers, since I don’t have a computer anyway. But I’m thinking a TV show would be too much for me.” He looked out into the distance and shook his head. “I don’t want to be famous.”
After their visit was over, Sandy drove home and reflected on what the old man had said. He had the right idea, she thought. Being famous, even just a little bit, wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
Yes, it got you free drinks and free clothes. And fans and compliments. And, most importantly, recognition for your hard work.
But it also got you things you didn’t expect. Like people who definitely weren’t fans criticizing you in public. And you had to worry about every little thing you did in case someone was watching. There’d always be someone with an ax to grind and anonymous access to the Internet.
However, for Sandy, the benefits outweighed the inconveniences. She was just famous enough to have plenty of fans reading her work but not yet so famous that anyone would ever write articles about her.
And that, she decided, was the ideal balance. That was the way she planned to keep it.
44
Sandy walked into her regular nail salon, which was tucked into an obscure shopping center on the north side of town. Now she felt less like a carefree bird than a weary carrier pigeon with a weight dragging in the bag at her side.
She was carrying an invitation, and not for another club opening or media party. It was the invitation to her father’s wedding.
There was nothing else in the envelope—no letter, no note, not even a scribbled explanation on the card itself. Just the same impersonal invitation hundreds of other people must have received. As if Sandy were just one of hundreds, no one special.
She took the massage chair the white-coated ladies indicated, letting them remove her sandals without speaking. The smell of acetone and the whine of tiny belt sanders applied to fake nails barely reached her consciousness. Sandy sat back into her chair’s noisily vibrating tough love, closed her eyes, and tried to remember the last time she’d even heard from her father.
It’d been a few days ago. He’d left her a quick voice mail asking if everything was okay and if she needed any help making her student loan payments. And that was it. No mention of his upcoming wedding.
Of course Sandy could have gotten more information from her mother. But she’d been avoiding Mrs. Saavedra as much as possible, not wanting to hear any of that news from those lips.
“Excuse me,” said the woman in the seat next to her. She sounded annoyed, probably about something the nail techs were doing. Sandy stayed still and eavesdropped while her own tech drained the water in the foot bath below her. “Excuse me,” the woman said again, louder. “Do you work for the Web site called Not Your Pappy?”
Sandy opened her eyes and turned to look at the woman. “Me?”
“Yes. I recognize you.” The woman was in her mid-forties or early fifties. She had puffy brown hair streaked with blond and wore a brightly colored T-shirt decorated with what looked like graffiti and rhinestones. It clashed with the displeased look on her face. She turned toward Sandy as well as she could without disrupting the paint job going on at her feet. “You’re Sandy S. You wrote that article about Hispanic vampire romance novels.”
Sandy nodded, not sure whether to say any more. Who was this woman? Not a vampire fan, surely? And she certainly didn’t look Hispanic. So what was her problem?
She didn’t keep Sandy in suspense for long. “You made fun of Lucia San Lucas’s series, Hot-Blooded Suckers. You said reading it was a painful experience, and not because any ‘knock-off Lestat’ had bitten you. You called her writing ‘horrid’ and said her syntax was a ‘satanic force’!”
Sandy felt herself cringing in her massage chair as the woman’s voice got louder and louder. Those were the words she had written about that particular author, yes. But somehow they sounded much uglier coming out of this woman’s mouth than they had when Sandy was typing them.
On either side of them, customers and nail techs alike were turning to see what was going on. This, Sandy thought, was one crazy fan. She glanced nervously at the nearest technicians, who were beckoning to the salon’s manager.
“Listen, ma’am,” Sandy said in what she hoped was a soothing voice. “I understand that not everyone is going to agree with my opinions—”
“Lucia San Lucas is my sister-in-law!” the woman yelled. She was now trembling with passion and had pulled both feet out of her pedicurist’s reach. “She may not be the best writer in the world, but she’s a good person. She worked hard to get those books published, and she deserves all the success she’s gotten with them!”
“I’m sure she does,” Sandy began again, but to no avail.
“What have you ever written, besides a bunch of hateful words about peopl
e you’ve never met? My sister-in-law gets hundreds of letters from people whose lives were changed by her books! She’s a role model for young Hispanic and plus-sized girls. Can you say that? What do you do, besides criticize women who are more successful than you?”
“Well…”
What could Sandy say at that point? She did plenty. Maybe she wasn’t a role model, but she did inspire her readers, in certain ways. At the very least, she entertained them.
But even if she’d had a good answer to the question, this woman was obviously not in the mood to hear it.
The manager had come over and was now trying to soothe Lucia San Lucas’s sister-in-law back into her seat. Although the staff obviously didn’t understand why the woman was angry, they clustered around her and coaxingly murmured, “You get discount, okay? You get discount,” until her breathing had slowed back to normal. Finally she thanked them and handed over her credit card. Two technicians kneeled and gently eased her feet into disposable flip-flops. Then, with one last glare at Sandy, the woman got up and marched imperiously out of the salon.
Sandy couldn’t help noticing that her left pinky toe was still unpainted.
“You okay?” the manager asked her.
“Yes. Thank you,” Sandy said.
“You know that lady?”
“Um… kind of,” Sandy replied. She couldn’t think of a way to explain that would make sense to people who weren’t native English speakers. She imagined herself trying with “I write ugly words. She saw my words and got mad.” But there was no need. The manager was already moving on. “You get discount, okay? You pick color? That’s pretty color.”
Sandy sat soaking in discomfort and awkwardness for the rest of her pedicure. Around her, the other patrons kept glancing her way. The technicians below her seat spoke a steady stream of Vietnamese. Whereas normally she’d brush off suspicions that they were talking about her brittle nails or lopsided calluses, Sandy knew for sure this time that they were talking about her. Conjecturing about what she’d done to enrage the other customer. Or who knew? Maybe they, too, knew who Sandy S. was and what kind of words she wrote for a living.
Lone Star Legend Page 14