“Don’t explain yourself,” he says. “It’s not necessary.”
“I want to explain, because you don’t get it.”
“Not necessary.”
“I love you.”
“Pulleeeze.”
“You don’t understand.”
“What’s love got to do, got to do with it?” She looks aside. A tear rolls. “Come on, come on.” She cries, and he says, “You just got done horsefucking a wacko in the dirt. Did you do the old guy too? He’s unpredictable and dirty. He might not need you, but he could use you.”
“You don’t know anything,” she blubbers.
“What’s to know?”
She pants, “I only did it with him because he insisted!”
“Oh. Stupid me. Why didn’t you say so?”
“And I wanted it too. You asked for it.” She liked it more than she thought she would, it was so primitive with hardly a squish before the squirt. She insists the sex is nothing but cries in contrition for being turned on. She realized after the first few times that she loved it and knew something had to give, but she couldn’t help giving.
“Kee-riste,” he says. She says Charles changed. “Duh.” She says Charles achieved something rare.
He says insanity is a condition, not an achievement.
“The old man wants to kill him,” she says.
“You’re lightweight loony,” he says, “which is to loony what middle class is to class.”
She says the more Charles follows, the more Jorge demands. “Charles knows he’s demented but says they’ll become gods. Like in the legend.”
“So?”
“The legend of two guys who burn themselves up.”
“How do you know the legend?”
“Charles told me. He doesn’t care if he dies. He says, ‘Suspend. Suspend.’ Jorge’ll say ‘green cheese,’ or ‘itchy feet,’ and Charles gets excited and mumbles green cheese and itchy feet for an hour.”
Tony wants the sauce but can’t get up. She gets the sauce, pours it deep and blows her nose. “They’re going to burn themselves. Charles is the sun. Once he’s dead, Jorge is supposed to burn and become the moon. That’s why I took you up there,” she says. “I need help.” He laughs, that he suspected harsh truth and bitter love.
“So Charles wants to kill himself?” She nods. “What’s that got to do with fucking him?” She smiles scornfully; he doesn’t get it.
“We have a tragic potential here.”
“Yeah. You’re the potential and I’m the tragedy. You go up the mountain to bang a lunatic while I’m supposed to be open-minded and help him out of a jam.”
“Did you ever know anyone who killed himself?”
“Yeah. Big deal. You croak now. You croak later.”
“Did you feel like it could have been your fault?”
“I could have prevented it. I could have called and said, ‘Hey, let’s go get a drink.’ I could have thrown a party, a celebrity roast where we made jokes about her goddamn depression. But I didn’t, so she smoked herself on Tuesday instead of Thursday.”
“Charles is a wonderful man. He’ll kill himself.”
“No he won’t. You’ll save him,” he says. With the magic salve, he doesn’t say, she’s sobbing so hard again, and he’s pouring again. What does she expect, anyway?
XII
A Real Nice Place to Raise a Family
You can’t call her a bad woman because of an impulse or personality disorder. She brought Tony Drury home one night just for fun, maybe hoping for more, but what’s the crime?
The day passes quietly. He sleeps mostly between analyses and possibilities. Inez shows up, and life goes on. She eases tension with her cheerful outlook and is given a toothbrush, floss and lessons. Tony suspects a greater give, an example of fair play, an act of love that will allow kissing the new maid before mounting her, before understanding the blessings of tolerance. Or maybe Heidi hates the unflossed side of romance and wants to practice on Inez before heading up the hill to brighten Charles’ smile. Or maybe she’s expanding her aid to underdeveloped nations.
They drool and froth, getting up in there where the gingivitis takes hold. Inez giggles when Heidi says gingivitis and spews a baby blue VanDyke onto her little brown chin. Cleanup takes a mop; not to worry. But Inez declines the floss; it seems unnatural, possibly ritualistic. Heidi calms her and says, “Liremi.” Inez heard of loco gringo custom but never believed it. “You got to get the crud out,” Heidi garbles. Inez pursues the crud and gets stuck. She whines like Heidi, who doesn’t floss enough. Floss-jammed and tugging, they pry with knives and more floss until their sad smiles unravel. Inez says it hurts. Heidi says yes, sometimes it does.
He calls them fools for flossing without modern implements and shags his loops from his dopp kit. They’re stuck to the brown stuff that forms on dopp kit bottoms, along with the ancient Band-Aids and rubbers, but they peel off easily. He has them looped in no time and with a gentle touch he works them free.
Heidi looks down and concedes, “I don’t floss like I should.” She looks up and says, “Oh, well,” on her way with a few bottles, a new bag of Michoacan and another bag of cukes. He offers floss for her date. She ignores him, saying her home is his and she can’t care for him better than that. He calls out that she can and asks if the new maid is supposed to take the edge off her guilt. She calls back, “That’ll depend on whether you score.”
She tells Taco to look after the place because Jorge also sees Taco as warm and tender—and falling off the bone to a hot tortilla. Tony thinks she leaves the dog for loving, in case Inez won’t. He thinks continuing contrition proves her guilt.
Sure, Inez’s threadbare dress clings to her shapely hips and presents her ripe papayas to advantage. And flossing and brushing brings her up sociologically. And maybe a bit of the antidote can cure the funk, she’s so young, so innocent, so happy. But you can’t romance a third-world teenager, especially a Catholic, so he doesn’t. It wouldn’t work anyway, not as a cure or a romance.
He watches her clean. He reads. He walks. In the afternoon he offers her a drink. “Oh, sí!” she says and moves casually for drinks. Muscles stretch across her shoulders as she reaches for the bottle and the glasses to serve the drink he offered. He stands beside her and only traces the flex with his fingers. She coos. He asks, “Is that from tension?” She nods, not knowing tension from burritos. He presses the knot. “Why?”
“Many things.”
“Many things. Money, romance, the future.” She smiles meekly. He lets it go; enough of trouble for awhile.
“Come.” He slides her chair over to ease her knots, giving like Heidi. He leans close for the smell of her, which isn’t like Taco sniffing a burro’s ass, not really. Taco is only playful and smart enough to know he can’t fuck a burro. Tony isn’t playful these days but is more open-minded than most dogs.
Her smell isn’t wrong but isn’t right. It isn’t flowers but earth and flesh. She doesn’t stink like nicotine, liquor and monkeyburger. She wafts innocence and dirt and an eagerness to please. She sits still when he tells her to esperante for a minute while he fetches Heidi’s whore bath—Danger, Outrage, Poison, Hazardous Waste, Eat my Heart, Raw Lust—Heidi has the flavors. Inez doesn’t know the difference between whore bath and playing in the sprinkler, but that’s okay, she so loves guidance in the ways of the other world. She titters when he dabs it on her neck, coos on her chest, chirps near her armpit, murmurs under her breast, whimpers around her nipple.
She giggles. He licks it and finds himself nearly blissed again, retrenched among the living. Taco barks and jumps around. He loves to watch people fuck. It’s that simple, like life; Inez and Tony are on like it’s been on all along. Sure, she could say no, but she doesn’t. Why should she, when the negative includes but is not limited to deprivation, denial and endless working for the pale-skinned people? She says sí, Dios mio, oo la la. The antidote appears to be mutually effective in the short run.
Her boyfriend
is dispatched in the first minute of ficky fick when a man knows that he can never get enough, and a woman is in control. “What about your boyfriend?” He’s kidding, kind of, but she whimpers again and says Chico cannot be her boyfriend, because now Señor Tony is her boyfriend. Sure, she’s putting it out there for a ticket to room and board, shelter and clothing, an easy gringo ride. She says she loved him from the first minute, and so on. He knows about first minutes but believes her because it’s easy. And what if she’s lying? What’s the difference? Different cultures, habits, values—none of that matters either because this is therapy, luck, timing or all of the above. Free will in a free world brought them together by chance. The moment is the meaning and the meaning is love, not exactly the real love he envisioned, but nothing works out neatly as planned. He’s a buckaroo. She’s a Mexican beauty. Yahoo, mi guapa.
She whispers gratitude to Jesu Cristo and an assemblage of prior deities for luck as promised, or at least as indicated by heavy ablution. She also thanks the hombre between her legs, for his stroke is deliberate and kind.
Once the stuff flows and he’s had enough, she gets up, gets him a pillow and gets to work—windows, floors and counters—because she came to serve, like Heidi but less complex. He loves that and wants to give back, but not just yet. For now he sinks to real sleep, the deepest in days and nights, the sleep induced by the antidote.
Inez makes dinner. They eat with the sparse talk the rancho inspires and proceed to the common country pursuit. Lights out, they crawl in together and curl up flush. Something comes up but she makes it go away. He momentarily wonders how she got so good and then he drifts. “Don’t you have to go home?”
“No,” she says. He wonders if this is it, flowing into slumber. They dream of each other.
Up as the cock crows, out feeding the burros and chickens, gathering eggs and setting the place in order, Inez awakens her mentor with coffee; the roasted aroma in first light with no hangover makes it a dawn to remember. He sits up and feels plunked down from outer space to Don Diego de la Vega’s rancho for a long weekend with a Mexican juniper berry. With plenty frijoles and tortillas, cukes and limes on hand, another day passes in weightless comfort. And he still has a few bucks if they need to head in for supplies, Inez and Tony, dos improbables.
He suspects this fantasy is marginally framed but should weather another day or two. Tony D is grateful for many things but mostly for composure; he could worry about sudden interruption, or worse: that this is it, that Inez will soon be fat and then fatter, pregnant and then pregnanter and then pregnant again. But worry no màs, not now in a warm embrace, with cold roads ahead. A new series of moments begins with perfect eggs over easy, rice and beans. Inez has a way with coffee, Mexican-style, and a morning of idle talk over too much caffeine leads to energy crisis by noon. Sexual lyric and siesta feel poetic for two people getting acquainted. He avoids the fear that takes a man down—even on the down side of middle age when the woman is vibrant, alive and unembittered. Inez leaves no doubt that this is it, that happily ever after lies dead ahead, all the days in a row. Why can’t it be so?
Well, it can, except for the nagging questions of family, friends, a social life, education gap and those things you can’t leave behind like you died just because you go shack up with a road-worn gringo or because you really enjoy fucking the maid. Wrong again. Inez says her mother will be happy to learn of the lovebirds nesting. Simple as that; then she pulls off her dress and jumps in the sack to prove it. He’s still a gamecock but a new fear displaces the old fear; a couple go-rounds yesterday and last night and another just after brunch left both him and Lord Jim far more responsible than when they couldn’t get enough. He and Jim wonder if she expects three times a day. But this fear vanishes fast as the first fear, maybe faster. She says she wants what he wants. He wonders how she knows what he wants and wonders what it is. She can’t understand oral sex, she says, especially in post-floss stress syndrome, but she’ll try it soon, because the gringos favor it most of all. She giggles at the thought of it. What a woman.
Next thing you know it’s day three, or four.
And on a clear blue dawning of another glorious day, she says, “Sí,” in general, soft affirmative that this is it, testimony to the happiness her mother will feel for her and Señor Tony. She sighs and nods. “Sí.” And so will the happiness be felt, she says, by her children and grandchildren. He thinks she means her mother’s children and grandchildren. He gets corrected. She radiates over the love he will feel for the dark-eyed bambinos, they’re so beautiful and full of life. Her timing is impeccable, waiting a few days until body temperatures match and contentment breaks down the resistance innate to all men of spirit. She knows what she’s doing, delivering the news while experimenting with what gringos favor most of all. Her talent seems natural there too, with so little practice.
So on another wave the morning overwhelms what looked impractical at first blush, because the world is only practical, with women having babies who grow up and have babies, and life goes on for years. A good life makes more life, and then comes cleaning, cooking and sowing, gathering hearts and minds with practicality. Inez is twenty-nine, she says with a straight face, unflinching when he scrutinizes for a secret thirty-six. She has three daughters, seven grandchildren. If he likes, he can have some too. They lie quietly, contemplating the facts, and in awhile she rises to make her excellent coffee. He laughs at a stray recollection and tells her that just out of high school, he applied for a job at the Gas Company. And to think, he could this very minute be a vice-president. She laughs at the insane wonder of it all and serves coffee. Then come the chores, or the chores won’t get done. She knows this about gringos so she cares for the chickens, burros and rocks. He tells her the chickens have bounteous bugs. She says yes, but if given a handful of scratch in their boxes they’ll lay there. The burros will hush if fed on schedule, and any land likes having its rocks cleared.
Tony Drury has a few rocks to clear, and he ponders some practicalities of his own. He gets up, dresses, goes out and watches Inez. He feels lucky, looking up the road and seeing no trucks, yet he does want to tell Heidi about Inez, and he wonders if Heidi, Inez and he will one day clear rocks together and then make ficky fick. He wonders if three can be practical and open-minded. It’s just a thought.
Maybe Heidi justifies a long absence since she left him with a new playmate. How could she be so mean? Still and all, he must be having more fun. He knows he’s eating better, still rice, beans and tortillas but with more elbow grease and condiments now before adding water. As he ponders the menu for din, up the drive comes his sweet piñata with her apron full of eggs. She needs some things from town, she says. But how can they get to town with no car, he asks. She laughs, “Hombre. Porque los burros?”
Oy vay.
What will he say? That Inez and he are enjoying a long weekend together while Heidi humps Charles up the hill so Charles won’t have to die for our sins? That culturally disparate persons can achieve cohabital bliss, once they accept their practical needs? That Inez flosses and brushes every few days, and she’s open to foreplay? She sees him thinking. She thinks about it too. He asks her what she will tell her friends. She says she will tell them, “Hola.” She asks what else she could say.
What a woman. What a country. He hopes she’s only getting fat. But what’s he thinking? They’ve been conjugal less than a week. So either it’s fat, or hombre numero uno he ain’t. Perplexity lines his brow until she touches his cheek and kisses it. She prepares for town. He knows that God in His Third-World Heaven allows happiness to the hapless who can receive it. So he looks forward to another day of fun, an outing if necessary. But bliss thickens with practical momentum. Her family will be happy, she says, especially her mother, who will love the ranch.
What?
Hay caramba, she wants to bring them out to visit for a few years, to fill the empty rooms with life, to encourage the births of many more burros and perhaps babies, to gather many eggs, to
clear the many fields of rocks and to sow for abundance. Oh, she’s not shy about efficient management with such good fortune at hand. Because isn’t love the biggest blessing after all?
He explains that we cannot have by simply wanting, because the place isn’t mine, and even if it was, well, you should … you should … well. She sadly smiles and walks away. He feels stuck again in a mental suburb but finds Heidi’s reefer tin under the bed and rolls a four-wheeler for better traction out and up and away.
He smokes another on foot, walking to town with Inez, Taco and the burros. This outing feels close to the ground and then some. But difficulties are internal for two hours until they reach her sister’s house. Inez grew up here. Little evolves here, but life is a step ahead of decay; wastewater flows out drainpipes from recent washing or flushing. A pervading scent of old coals and shit lingers behind the midday meal on the fire. She speaks too fast for his gringo ear but the women here, like those on the road, eye him up and down.
She tells them the love story over corn, tortillas and beans. He needs rest and light refreshment, but prospects for either seem slim until a little boy leads him to a little bed in a little room with crooked walls and a little window. A beer sits on a little nightstand. Inez and the women shriek with laughter in the courtyard when she demonstrates flossing. Taco wanders into the little room to gnaw on the boiled skull that only a gringo dog could hope for. He is happier than his friend, Tony Drury, who thinks this is the stuff dreams are made of and wonders how good it can get.
Don’t worry is all he has to do. He finishes the beer and wants another and an exit. This little shit-smelling hovel isn’t the problem, and prospects for a rancho full of Mexicans seem slight. No, the problem is himself again. He needs a drink and maybe a talk with Kensho and Cisco. That’s it. At least knowing what he needs eases him into reverie as Taco works the eyeholes.
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