by Aura Xilonen
“Motherfucker!” yells Chuby as he runs to help him. “You really fucked him up, puto! Chingafuck!”
“Well, they didn’t fucking tell me anything, not a goddamn thing,” I yell back.
Loco writhes on the ground, wailing about his nubbins. His eyes are rolled back. Yorkie and the earringed chrome-dome climb into the ring. I hear the guys down on the floor yelling at me, “Fucking asshole! Asshole! Asshoooole!”
They splash water on Crazy Loco’s face and put a cloth around his neck. Chuby the mollusk starts flexing the fighter’s legs to bring him back around. He’s so worried that I almost expect him to stick his tentacle down the vato’s shorts and fondle his precious golden eggs. Slowly the dude’s color starts to come back; he goes from a retina-searing red to a feverish, beany, eye-snatching blue. All I can see is the commotion that’s been stirred up.
“Pendejo!” Chuby shouts at me, kneeling next to his campeón, now fanning him with a little towel. “You box with your hands, pendejo, not with your feet, pendejo. This fucking business is with your fucking hands, not your fucking feet.”
“And how’s that my fault?” I retort. “Nobody told me that. But that’s fine, let’s call the whole thing off. We’ll just leave things right here and I’ll get the hell out of this place.”
“No way,” El Crazy Loco says for the first time, still lying on the ground. “You’re not going fucking anywhere because I’m going to break you in motherfucking half,” he says, his tongue out of place, fumbling, bile oozing at the corners of his mouth.
“Easy there, campeón,” I say with my heart in my throat, “you find your balls first, and then we can get into it.”
I take off my mask and drop it onto the canvas before turning to leave. That’s enough; I’ve had more than enough today. I’m fed up with this shit. I bite at the gloves’ laces to untie them from my hands. I can’t do it; the mollusk knotted them too tight. I’m still gnawing on the laces when I feel a colossical twinge in my back and hear a viceversal shout:
“Fuck you, goddamn pinche raggedy-ass Indian, I’m gonna kill you!”
Fucking Crazy Loco is on his feet and working me over with his fucking chloroformeous gloves again. Yeah, he hits hard, real hard, like I’ve never been hit before. I feel a numbification in my ribs that almost brings me to my knees. I spin on my axis and see that the vato’s possessed; his eyes are the eyes of the devil himself.
Chuby and Yorkie are still kneeling on the canvas. If he clocks me again, he’ll send me ass-over-teakettle to hell. If he clocks me, he’ll send me to wonderland, where everything’s out of whack—I intuit this before I can think it, because there’s no time to think during a beatdown. During a beatdown, thoughts are like sparks—there’s no time for anything, just intuiting what might hurt the most and focusing all your rage there as a precise target, focusing all the unruly strength inside you on a single point so you don’t end up dead, because you have to survive at any cost.
Fucking Crazy Loco sails at me to hammer me again with what looks like another powerful, devastating blow; he comes at me like a nuclear missile, vaporizing all the air in his path. He’s like a comet of light and heat. Automatically, utterly without thinking, my feet leap backward, and, as if my cells have turned into microscopic springs triggered by fire, I bash out, driving all my molecules into the exact center of his glove. Zooooooom!
Our two fists collide at the speed of light. Furious. Interwoven by fire. We explode because there’s no tomorrow. Tomorrow doesn’t exist in brawls. And there, in that precise instant, I feel his wrist, millimeter by millimeter, cell by cell, shatter like a chain that always breaks at the weakest link; I see the flesh at his wrist swell up like a balloon when it collides with my fist and then collapse as if it’s been punctured. A splinter of bone pokes through the skin in his wrist, and his whole arm goes limp as if it were dead, stringless, demarrowed.
Immediately I’m back on guard, keeping a watchful eye in case El Crazy Loco tries to pull a knife on me the way they’ve done so many times before; but no, the vato stares at his fucked-up limb and lets out a howl that echoes up to the stratosphere, beyond the cosmos, where our cries are steadily accumulating and will one day tumble down on us like a rainshower of rancor.
Nobody says anything.
Everything seems to have come to a standstill.
Nobody moves.
There’s only silence.
The vato lifts up his arm, but the glove, with the fist and wrist inside it, dangles like a red pendulum that stops time; his eyes roll back and in that moment, with the veins on his forehead all swollen, clogged with asterisks, he crashes backward.
“Shit,” says the earringed gorilla after an eternity, still filming.
Then everything starts moving at a dizzying pace.
Yorkie races to the campeón’s side. He takes the towel from around his neck and wraps the mangled forearm like a sausage.
Chuby raises his hands to his head and shouts, “You fucked him up now, you little bastard, you fucked him up, fuck, fuck, fuck! You fucked him up!”
The dudes swarm up and haul El Crazy Loco out of the ring.
“Get ’im to the hospital,” Yorkie exclaims, his balls no longer dragging the floor in his haste.
They manage to lift El Crazy Loco up, pass him through the ropes, and hurry off, carrying him like a bullfighter who’s been skewered by the bull.
The earringed gorilla trails after them, glued to them like a fucking paparazzo, while Chuby pulls out the keys of his boat to take him to the hospital.
I run after them, but instead of following them, once I’m out of the gym I speed off in the opposite direction. “Don’t stir shit up, you asshole,” I mutter to myself as I move away from where they’re loading the guy into the car and everything’s in turmoil, a string of mayhems battering my eyes and ears.
They all push and jumble; they elbow one another and shout. Several of them clamber in like flies and start up the boat. The tires squeal at top speed as they take off and disappear around the corner.
I move quickly off toward the freeway overpass with the graffiti and the dogs and the scruffs penetrating their veins with pipe dreams. “They’re gonna come after you,” I tell myself, punching myself in the forehead with my gloves. “And if they come after you, they’ll beat you up and put a rocket in your ass to launch you into another galaxy.” And if they launch me to another part of the universe, I’ll die. I’ll die, simple as that, I’ll die—because I won’t see the chickadee ever again, ever again Aireen. And if I don’t see her, I’ll die. I’ll die.
I don’t know why I start crying. I don’t know. I don’t bawl, I never bawl, but tears come leaking out on their own, as if my head belonged to somebody else, as if my eyes weren’t my own. Tears spill out and run into my mouth and dribble uncertainly down to my heart, salty, flayed as the ocean. I can’t even wipe them away because of the fat gloves I’m wearing. I’m a goddamn blotch wandering around Fuckedville. There’s nothing worse than seeing the love of your life every day and not being able to touch her—yes, kiss her, yes. Yes, hug her, yes. Yes, pull her body on top of mine so she can do with me what she will.
I start walking slowly, very slowly, to bring it all to a halt, as if my steps marked the pace of all the world’s clocks. I need time, time I no longer have, time I sense is going to run out on me soon. Once they nab me, there’ll be nothing left; I’ll plunge into a vortex of sorrow and drown there at the bottom, alone, dying of love outside myself.
The afternoon starts slipping away between my legs. I reach a bench somewhere, who knows, and collapse onto it. My tears start to go staccato, like ellipses between me and the wind; I smear them with my forearm and jaggedly breathe in, gulping envenomed saliva. I sit there staring at nothing, like it doesn’t matter what I’m looking at. The world is turning and I’m not there. I’m a squatter exiled from everywhere. Across the street is a run-d
own house with a desiccated yard; I watch some flea-sized kids playing with a ball. They’re so small they can hardly stay upright. One of them kicks the ball to the other, and it hits him in the belly. They laugh, they’re laughing. They don’t need anything else. They run after each other; they chase each other around and tangle and disentangle. I watch them with interest. They wallow in the leaden dust. They laugh again, softly, loudly, down low, up high—in every cranny of the dry blades of their dead grass. Who cares? Who cares! Life is also those little things that cannot be measured with the hands or grasped with the peepers, that cannot cling to roots and leaves.
I get up. Who cares! Who cares! If I hurry, I might still find salvation for the things I harbor fatedly inside me, before they hollow me out and leave me bearing a tomb wherever I go.
I move forward sybaritically, blotting my plump tears as I go like a striding amanuensis. I bound over bushes. I roll under cars. I leap up to the clouds to hasten the rain. I penetrate the city’s megalithic walls. I race through parks and gardens. I hang from trees and lampposts, and by the skin of my teeth I arrive just in time to wait for the chickadee to come back from work in the wee hours, on that midnight bus that drops her off amid the swell of scruffs. I get there to wait for her, on my knees, and tell her how much I love her; how much I carry her inside me; how much I can’t live without her, sí. Without you, Aireen, mi amor.
“Jesus, you shit-dribbling little twerp, you’re a hard one to track down. Where the hell were you? I looked for you everywhere! Pinche pain-in-the-ass kid. And what happened to your bookstore? Did it get totally trashed?”
The lady gets out of the white truck she’s left parked with its headlights on in front of the steps where I’ve been waiting for the chickadee for a while now.
“Are you coming with me, then, or am I going to have to beat you up?” she says, braying with laughter like an indigestive donkey.
“If you touch me, señora,” I say, pointing at her with the fucking gloves I still haven’t been able to gnaw off, “I don’t usually hit old ladies, but I’ll take care of you good.”
“Ha!” She emits a loud cackle, like a macaw at a rolling boil. “Tranquis, kid, I’m just messing with you. Mind if I take up some space there with you? I promise not to touch you, won’t even brush you with a goddamn flower petal.” She moves closer and tries to sit down next to me, but I don’t budge so there’s no room on the step. She’s wearing baggy sailor pants, sandals, a cowboy hat, and a bandana around her forehead. “Scootch over or I’m going to sit on your lap, got it?” But before I can respond, she’s already perched on top of me. “You’re super-bony, kid!” I try to push her off, but my gloves are as useful as fucking crab pincers. “Hey,” she says, “stop prodding my tits with those lumps.” I lay off pawing at her and try to push with my pelvis to make her get up. “Come on now, little punk, don’t you think we should at least introduce ourselves and make out a little first? Or do you want to just go for it?” I stop shaking her pelvis with my pelvis and remain motionless, withered, wavering between her body and my thoughts. I feel her ass crushing my willy and her back pressed against my chest. “What are you doing out here all by yourself?” I don’t answer; I’m pissed. “Come on, papi, answer me!” she says, cheekily wriggling her ass on my balls.
“What the fuck do you care?” I say so she’ll stop moving.
“All right, kid, just don’t yell at me—you’re acting like you’re in love or something!”
I seethe with rage.
Seeing that, she starts chatterboxing, sounding like she’s got a few quarts of glue in her throat.
“Come on, kid, you can’t fool me—you’re in love. Anyone could see it, you skinny as a shoelace and throwing down like you’re some beefy buffer. Who’s the lucky girl?”
She bounces on top of me and shifts her hectoliters of flesh to my abdomen.
“I can’t breathe,” I tell her.
“Don’t play dumb,” she says bluntly. “Love suffocates but it doesn’t kill.” She turns her face toward me and our noses almost touch. “Oh, kid,” she shrieks suddenly, wrinkling her nostrils, “you stink.” She immediately leaps to her feet and, now on the vertical, adjusts her cowboy hat and hikes up her pants. “I’m Wendoline.” She holds out her hand to shake.
“Crazy old broad,” I say.
“At least give me five, kid. You should never leave a lady with a dick in her mouth,” she says, still holding out her hand. “One . . . two . . .” I bump her with my left glove. “That’s the spirit, campeón.” She guffaws. Then she gets serious again and starts yammering questions. “(1) Are you left-handed? (2) Have you started taking boxing clases so they don’t pummel you again? (3) Why are you wearing boxing gloves this time of night? And (4) what’s the name of the girl you’re in love with?”
“What do you care?”
She looks at me as if I were a dustbuster.
“Well, we can work that out later! I want to conversate with you about a few things so I was going to invite you to get something to eat, but now I see where we’ll be doing it.”
She crickets in front of me and claps her hands, plock, plock, plock. The lady’s completely bonkers, a total fruitcake.
“I’m busy!” I sulk like a dysfunctional pipe dream.
“Oh, are you? Doing what? Warming this stone with your rear end? All right, fine, that’s cool.” She hauls at my arm and pulls me to my feet, still laughing. “Look, devil’s snot, if you’re waiting for somebody, you’d best go get cleaned up first. Reeking like that, the only thing that’s going to jump your bones is fleas. Go on, get in my truck. Nothing’s going to happen to you.”
Something rumbles inside me because yes, I must stink to high heaven.
* * *
[That’s what Jefe used to tell me:
“Wash your fucking wingpits, you toxic prick—they can smell you all the way on the far corner of the last block in Patagonia! They should use your sweat to unclog plumbing—or, better yet, as fuel for weapons of mass destruction.”]
I hesitate in front of the lady, because whenever someone says nothing’s going to happen, something happens.
“Go on, jumbleputz, ugly and filthy ain’t working for you.” She drags me to the edge of the sidewalk and steers me in front of the passenger door of her truck. “Oh, pardon me, Your Highness,” she says as she opens the door for me, “you can’t even rub one out with those Q-tips on your hands.”
She gives a sweeping bow and steps aside to let me pass. I get into the truck and she slams the door. She walks in front of the vehicle, and the headlights illuminate her belly. She’s not very tall—quite the contrary, I’d say she’s short. She opens the door and climbs in.
“Can you even reach the pedals?” I ask, aggravated after everything she’s said.
“Ha-ha, you jerk.” She lets out another impish laugh. “I love it. You’re starting to feel comfortable.” She starts up the truck and we head down the street to the first red light. “What kind of music do you like, vato?”
I’m looking all around, especially behind us, to make sure we’re not being followed—maybe somebody’s just having me picked up so they can blood-sausage me.
“Calle 13.”
She leans forward and opens the glove compartment. She scrabbles around in the junk and pulls out a USB memory stick. Then she presses a button and a little screen comes out of nowhere, making a little noise like a fly: Bzzzzzzzz. She inserts the memory stick in the USB port, and the screen lights up. She searches and selects an album. The woofers and tweeters start rumbling like earthquakes, as if we were in one of those places I’ve only peered into from the outside; the only thing missing is the colored spotlights.
“Doesn’t my system sound awesome?”
“What?” I say because I can’t hear anything.
“Can’t you hear anything?” she asks.
“No!” I shout.
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“Great, I can call you a dick and you won’t even realize.”
“You’re the dick!” I yell, since I did hear her.
Both of us sit there for a moment, looking at each other, our eyes half-closed as if we were about to bite each other, and for the first time in a long time, I smile while she lets out a peal of laughter and a few fervent howls. She laughs unbuttoned, uninhibited, hazatious, while Residente from Calle 13 pounds our Eustachian tubes at six thousand miles an hour.
She turns onto Sixth and heads toward the hills of Palatine West. We pass the last strip mall, its parking lot crammed with cars. We take the exit and merge onto the freeway. She suddenly turns down the stereo, as if she needed silence to think, and her laughter now is only leaking out of the corners of her mouth like lava, afire from the dizzying blaze.
“I once went into your bookstore to buy some books, and the fat guy with glasses helped me; I assume he’s your boss. He ordered you to go up a ladder to bring down a book by Dr. Spengler, you know, that one about the urban tribes of warriors that live in some cities here in the border states. I needed it to get a handle on the language you kids use because I was writing something for the Sun—of course, this was when I was working for the Sun News. You might not remember me, because I still had hair back then and I wore skintight clothing all year round. But when you brought that huge book down and put it in my hands, you went dead or something, I don’t know, and you almost dropped it when your fingers brushed mine. You were so chiqui, you didn’t even have feathers yet! And the fat guy started cussing you out. Oh, I was so serious about things back then, and I didn’t do anything to stop him. I should have jumped in and volumetrically walloped that asshole, but what are you gonna do. A person never learns till she feels the yardstick she’ll be measured with drawing near.”