by Manuel Munoz
In all the commotion of the harvest boom, most people don’t notice that the girl is no longer walking the streets to work. At the lunch hour, she’s nowhere to be seen over near Chester Avenue, where her apartment is. But at the shoe store, she’s there sure enough, dutifully stepping from the back storage room when Mr. Carson snaps his fingers and tells her the sizes he needs. She never says a word unless a Spanish-speaking customer comes in: this is why she was hired. Mr. Carson cannot refuse the potential business from these customers and leaves the girl to tend to them, stepping away and occupying himself with other business. The girl points to several shoes—she never used to do that!—and smiles boldly at the Spanish-speaking customers, bringing out boxes and boxes for inspection.
Enough word has gotten around town about her eye for beautiful shoes, for high heels that don’t necessarily strain the arches, for knowing a budget without having to ask. She moves with confidence and assurance, even if she is not allowed to ring up the sales on her own. She stands nearby to translate, and you handle the money: you, the girl who should be trusted, the kind of girl that should end up with a man like the one she has.
She is no longer walking the streets, but riding around with Dan Watson, her elbow resting on the truck door while they drive with the windows rolled down. The two of them at the café for lunch sometimes, the waitresses acting as if nothing could be less ordinary. The two of them stepping out of the record shop several times a week with brown-papered packages stuck under his arms. People saying, by late September, that she’s picked up a second job, serving drinks to the patrons over at Las Cuatro Copas, the place where her boyfriend tends bar, and the owner of the rival place across the street is peeved because even the white crowd has trickled over there just to get a look at her.
Las Cuatro Copas isn’t the best cantina in town, but if you go there, you would do well to put on your best long skirt, the wider the better because there’s good music for dancing. Farther up Union Avenue is a grander space—a real nightclub—with a terrazzo dance floor so smooth you have to hang on tight to your partner to keep from slipping, and gorgeous dining rooms off to the sides with a full wait staff and a Los Angeles menu of roast beef and rib-eye steaks and Cornish hens. But Las Cuatro Copas does just fine by itself. It welcomes everyone, the little tables crowded as people sit to eat and drink until the kitchen closes at eight thirty. All the while, that girl comes around with plates of chicken legs and taquitos and bottles of beer, along with the check on a green slip of paper with her neat handwriting, and she collects the bills and brings everything over to Dan Watson, hurrying people along with their meals because the tables get put away for the dancing. Not enough space for a wide skirt to flow out full, and a wooden floor that sends up dust, but it’s dancing all the same. Friday nights or Sundays or Wednesdays, she’s there, handing the green slips of paper over to her boyfriend and waiting for the change, the two of them running the place smooth as smoke.
But you don’t have to go to the cantina to see all of that if jealousy gets to be too much. You can avert your gaze as they exit the supermarket, where he comes out holding two paper bags stuffed full of food. Or pretend not to see them loading boxes of tequila into the truck bed over at the discount liquor store. They show up everywhere: just a little west of Bakersfield, just far enough away from the city lights, is the local drive-in theater, a line of cars idling at the dusty entrance at sundown. A concession stand sits in the middle, and everyone goes there for big striped boxes of popcorn and hot dogs and candy, cradling everything close so only one trip is necessary. Horns beep whenever a car pulls in with its lights on, even though the sky is still lit orange with sundown and the double bill nowhere near beginning. Music comes in over the speakers, old big-band numbers that no one listens to anymore. Some couples sit out on the hoods after the engines have cooled down. The people returning from the concession stand darken to shadows as dusk finally breaks into night and the first feature starts, always something of mild interest: a monster movie with a beautiful blond raising her hands to her ears and screaming, then a pursuit with gunfire popping through the speakers all up and down the drive-in lot. Laughter carries across several cars, friends having spotted each other and walking over to say hello. Car trunks pop open quickly for six-packs to be brought out. By the end of the first film, night has settled in deep, and the drive-in lights up once more to help people make their way to the concession stand and the bathrooms, where the girls walk together in threes and edge for space at the mirrors, everyone finding out who came with whom.
She’s there, that girl. You looked for her among the faces surrounding the bathroom mirrors, but she was nowhere to be found. But you know she’s there—you spotted Dan Watson’s beautiful form gliding across the dusty lane toward the concession stand. He returns now to his pickup, just ahead, holding a box of popcorn in his hand and sporting a cowboy hat, his jeans taut, everything lean and hard the way he glides from one end of the windshield to the other before disappearing into the cab of his truck. That girl is the other shadow. He is handing her the box. Ten minutes later, the lot darkens and the second feature begins—a detective story. You can tell by the hat the lead actor is wearing. No one wears hats like that around here, unless they’re from Los Angeles. On-screen, a beautiful girl screams before a pair of anonymous hands close around her neck and she collapses as if struck by a sudden urge to sleep. She did not scream as terribly as the beautiful blond who was attacked by the monster in that other movie, but somehow it was more real, more probable, and enough to make you turn your head away and look out past the edge of the drive-in’s lot, the stretch of oil fields, the ring of mountains to the south and east of Bakersfield, to Los Angeles. Is that where the movie is set, where something like this could happen?
No one seems to care about questions like that, not by how the shadows in the cars ahead begin to blend together, one by one. Some stay separate, but most don’t. There’s been beer and slugs of whiskey and lipstick applied in the bathroom mirror and cigarettes and sweet talk. Hands on knees and short whispers and legs shaved that evening, baby smooth. All over town, getting ready, everyone knowing—or hoping—the evening would come to this, a lot of sweet talk in a dark car and the squeak of the vinyl as your polite date slides over. The taste of the beer in his mouth, slightly bitter, but sweet, too, the surprise that men taste sweet inside. All of them. Rough but sweet. Your hand on his cheek to feel the itch of his whiskers, what you can’t see but can feel. Forceful but sweet, and it’s that sweetness that calms the alarm about where his hands move, sometimes above the knee or underneath the hem at the back of your blouse, just two fingertips in that hollow space at the bottom of the spine. Forceful but gentle at the same time, his mouth moving to your neck, the smell of his hair, Prell shampoo just like your own. A moan escapes from your mouth, uncontrollable, because his weight is delicious and so is the thought that he’s leaving that sweet taste of his mouth on your skin. He reaches over to turn the knob down on the speaker, and the movie goes mute and you watch the screen while he’s occupied, the detective at a desk saying something into a phone, how you have to guess what he’s saying, the way you have to guess at everything in life—what you see and what you make of it, what you know for sure and what you have to experience, what others tell you and what gets confirmed.
You can see Dan over in his pickup truck. His shadow has merged with the other one, slipped into the same space, the passenger side of the cab. It is that girl. It must be. She knows that sweet taste, too, what that space in the hollow of his back feels like. A moan comes out of your mouth just from thinking about him, and here, in this dark car, this boy—earnest but inconsequential, strong but too sweet—hears your moan and lets his hands glide up, cautious, to the unworkable bridge of the bra hooks. There is patience and inexperience all over the drive-in, some hands retreating in defeat, and then there are others, like his, that manage and move quickly before being denied. On-screen, the detective lights a cigarette and seems to look
out at all the cars. There is a woman whom the detective loves, too, but in the movie, you already know he’s going to have to wait to get to her. And still, it won’t be this, an earnest but inconsequential boy who is sweating at the brow from nerves and delirium, his mouth impatient at each nipple. He has never felt a pair of breasts before, not by the way his hands clamor underneath your bra. He has to learn to open the blouse completely first, how to caress buttons. He has to learn to be gentle and enjoy the feel of skin, give pleasure instead of just taking it. But right now, his eyes round out, dewy and unblinking at his first sight of rosy nipples. He is twenty-three but still a boy. He puts his mouth on each nipple and has to have his hand guided to your other breast. You reach down to feel him because this is what he wants, what he needs, and there’s just the sound now of months and months of his desires finally being met. He’s doing the moaning now, the teenage voice from years ago stuck in his throat as his thick cowboy belt buckle gets undone for him and the top button released. He wore brand-new underwear—the elastic is too tight—and there is his warm thickness. It’s enormous and probably beautiful, but he’s too young and inexperienced to know that yet. His stomach is coated with that familiar stickiness and he rests his forehead on the car door while he’s fondled. Who can tell what he is thinking, a soft hand stroking him hard enough that he actually has to pull away, but keeping his forehead on the door as if he’s ashamed? The detective on the screen is giving chase along the dark streets of a city, but no one cares about the pursuit. A car just ahead is bobbing ever so slightly. There is nothing wrong with wanting like this. Even better with a young man of twenty-three, still mired in shame: he won’t be bragging to anyone, still thinking what he’s doing is dirty, and you can go back to work at the shoe store with no one ever gossiping about you. His hands have to be brought down to the wet warmth that he’s never come close to, even in his imagination, his fingers guided around and inside. He’s a sweet boy, but you know, after he drops you off, that he’ll be smelling those fingers all the way home.
The pickup truck is absolutely still—or is it moving? There is no telling what they are or are not doing in there. Who could push away Dan Watson? Because the speaker is off, from way over in the distance a girl’s furious moans carry along the dirt lane, then some quiet laughter from people sitting on their hoods, watching the movie. Whoever heard that laughter—how people react when exposed to that kind of desire, with laughter or disgust or disapproval—might stop what they were doing. But it’s happening all across the darkness, panties slipping off and resting playfully on the gearshift, on the radio knob. Yours is twenty-three and doesn’t know what he’s doing and he admits that he’s a virgin in a terrified voice. He thrusts and it feels good only because you close your eyes and picture yourself in the pickup truck instead, the way Dan walks, the waitresses who feel dirty for thinking of him that way because they knew him when he was a little, little boy. They know his mother. You close your eyes and think of Dan but concentrate on this boy, holding him at the hips when he begins rocking too fast, getting carried away to a point when he won’t be able to control himself. He’s sweet in his earnestness—he truly is—and he stops when you tell him to do so, his face covered in sweat. He looks like he is about to cry.
Car engines begin to turn on even before the movie is over, and horns blast at the disorder—some people want to know who committed the murder, who made the beautiful girl scream like that. The pickup truck stands absolutely still, the silhouettes hard to pick out now because of the shifting lights and shadows. It’s time to sit back up in the seat, since people are watching now, and adjust bras, close blouses. More and more cars begin to pull out, so many there’s actually a line for the exit. It is better to wait. The twenty-three-year-old boy is in love. You can tell by the way he sits there, his pants back on, but the bulge straining. He wants a kiss.
That is the difference between him and a man like Dan. This boy hasn’t yet learned the power of wielding his body—giving it over—like a little boat on an ocean, the thing you cling to, getting rocked to sleep by the waves. He thinks he’s in love.
And why shouldn’t he, after a night like that? It’s easy to think that’s what love is, after being naked in front of someone for the first time, as if it truly were an act of tenderness, of sacred honor. In truth, love crumbles into something else, an answer to lying awake at two in the morning, when the body demands one thing and one thing only. The cars drive back into the sleepy streets of Bakersfield, letting off dates at the porch-lit houses, last kisses before the neighborhood dogs begin to bark at the idling engines. Soon the boy will start the hand-holding and the flowers—cheap grocery-store flowers, not Holliday’s, but flowers nonetheless because that’s what sweet, earnest boys do.
After October, the drive-in closes for the winter. Saturday nights become a slow circle around a little stretch of Union Avenue, the streetlights glimmering off the new wax jobs. Cars stop over at the Jolly Kone hamburger stand or at the edges of the dark city park. Winter fog keeps many people home, as if the cold were unbearable. Still, as the weeks go on, the bars begin to do substantial business, especially the ones that serve a little food early enough to draw a crowd that stays the entire evening. Traveling bands arrive in Bakersfield for special appearances, the bars competing with one another for the best of Los Angeles, sometimes even selling tickets in advance at the record shop.
In the newspaper, a little ad appears in mid-November, a curious drawing. A dark-skinned woman stands in front of a microphone. “La Reina,” says the ad. “Este Domingo.” And below is the address to Las Cuatro Copas. It is a drawing, not a photograph. It is that girl. Undeniably. There is something provocative about the advertisement, something deliberate about its simplicity, the fact that she is a local talent. Customers from the shoe store will surely recognize her. You leave the newspaper on the storeroom counter, conspicuous, to show her that you’ve seen it, but she says nothing about it. In the drawing, she stands in front of the microphone with her lips open, but who knows what might come out of her mouth. The advertisement appears again later in the week in an evening edition, same bold type, same language, same held note. At the shoe store, you swear people are peeking through the windows to get a glimpse of her. It isn’t surprising when, on Sunday night, Las Cuatro Copas is packed, not one table unoccupied.
People arrive dressed as if it were a Saturday, all fine ties and shiny boots and dresses. No one licks their fingers after eating the chicken legs and taquitos, the plates carried away just as quickly as they arrived. Conversations float by in Spanish—all of them in Spanish. Some of the Mexican men have even come with blond American women, heedless of the hard glares. These couples have little to say to each other, though sometimes the women jabber on to fill the quiet space between them. Here, everyone is out in the open—it is clear who brought whom, who is being distracted, who is being worn away by jealousy, and who is going to be brokenhearted. It is not the drive-in, where the darkness lulls everyone into thinking that lust is an easy, clean jump over to the wide path of love on the other side. In the dim club, the true complications of being in love show themselves in flashes, like a wedding ring catching a burst of light. A dark-haired woman drinks too much for so early in the evening and you can tell she’s trying but unable to leave the man who brought her. A very young couple sits over near the back, sitting so close together they seem almost afraid of being affected by everyone around them, and the way the young man nods at the girl when she comes around for an order—nods but doesn’t say much of anything—you can tell that neither he nor his young date speak English. He is surprised that the girl takes his order in Spanish with ease. That man over there gives another woman the once-over, his hand distracted on his own date’s back. Both women notice and look away in hard, granite anger.
Who knows, really, why they came tonight, if they’ve been paying attention to that girl and noticed her comings and goings. Who knows why they thought this evening warranted ironing a fresh shir
t instead of just airing out the one from the night before, damp as it was from dancing and smoky when you put your nose to it. But here they were, their tables cleared but not stacked over in the corner as they usually were on dancing nights. Maybe later, but now just their clean tables and their chairs to sit in and a last round of drinks, the girl gone to the back of the club and the lights dimmed even further, so dark the crowd actually goes quiet and focuses on the small halo of light at the center of the cantina. So quiet you can hear the boots of the bartender boyfriend against the wood floor as he approaches the light, guitar in one hand, a microphone stand in the other, the cord snaking behind him. Someone rises from the crowd to pull over a blue velvet stool for him and Dan says thanks, tapping his fingers against the microphone. “Uno, dos, tres,” he says, perfectly, which prompts an almost nervous laughter from some in the crowd. You think: He knows how to speak Spanish. He might understand what people have been saying. The microphone in working order, he waves off to the side, and out of the dark comes the waitress girl, out of her serving apron and wearing instead a beautiful cowgirl dress. Baby blue satin with white fringe. Of course, you notice that she’s wearing what look like last season’s brown boots, and you foolishly try to make her see that you’ve noticed, but your face is lost in the dark. The boots don’t match the dress, but it’s too dark for anyone else to really care. All eyes are on the gorgeous satin, the way it catches what little light there is, the arrow detailing beginning at her shoulder and descending, circling each breast, the silver lacing deep inside the fringe, which sparkles to attention when she adjusts the microphone.