Joaquin’s handwriting was simple, clear, without any affectation. Tom and Rick had witnessed and dated it two months before he had died. He stared at the paper, then handed it back to Tom. “He shouldn’t have left me that kind of money.”
“Why the hell not? It’s not exactly a fortune.”
“For us, it was a fortune. It makes me feel bad.”
“Because he wanted to leave you with something?”
“I don’t want anything.”
“He loved you.”
“I can’t take it.”
“You’re a real pain in the ass, you know that?”
“Why don’t you just leave me alone, Tom?”
“I can’t. I’m trying, but I can’t.”
“What if you’re not wanted?”
Tom walked away from him.
“Come back here,” Jake said. Tom kept walking toward the kitchen. Jake followed him. “I was joking,” he said. He smiled at him. “It’s hard for me,” he said, “I won’t forget what you’ve done—what you did—for him—for me. I won’t.”
Tom nodded. “And will you promise not to be so cold with your brother—will you promise to be good to him?”
“Yes.”
“Are you really going to move in with him and his wife?”
“He insisted. They both insisted.”
“When?”
“Any time I want. I’m going to take care of stuff around here. Maybe a couple weeks.”
“You’re actually going to take something from someone?”
“He’s my brother.”
“There are lots of us,” Tom said.
Jake said nothing.
“Will I see you?”
“Of course you’ll see me—you’re my doctor.”
Tom poured himself a cup of coffee. “Lots of people at the funeral,” he said awkwardly. “People loved him.”
“Yeah,” Jake said. “I just remembered—”
“What?”
Jake walked out of the room and returned with a jacket in his hand. “He wanted you to have this. He said he lent it to you once, and you looked good in it.”
Tom took it carefully. “Thanks.”
“Thank Joaquin.”
“I wish I could, Jake.” Tom finished his coffee without trying to say anything else.
13
AT THE TOP of the steps that went nowhere, Diego and Mundo sat among the powdered pile of bricks and drank their beer.
“What a strange day,” Diego wrote.
Mundo laughed. “Makes me feel good.”
“Not me,” Diego wrote, “if I had more days like this, they’d have to put me in a mental institution. My nerves are shattered.”
“Look, ese, you gotta learn to fight back. See that shit of a detective—he hates me. He hates me, but he respects me—just like your boss. They’d love to see me get blown away, but they hate you, too, Diego, got that? They hate you maybe even more than they hate me. They’ll never like us—so where the hell does that leave us? Screw ‘em, that’s what I say. All we can do is fight ‘em till they’re as worn down as we are. They want somethin’ from me, then they’re gonna have to fight me for it—the same way they make me fight for what I want from them.”
Diego stared at the expression of anger on Mundo’s face—but there was more than anger—something better than anger. “That was great,” he finally wrote, “what you did to my boss—it was one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen.” He broke out laughing.
Mundo laughed with him, laughed and stomped the ground. Chugging his beer, he opened up another one, and took a swig. “We gotta let ‘em know,” he said. “You sure got a loud laugh for a deaf guy.”
Diego nodded. “Too bad I can’t hear it.” He finished his beer and Mundo handed him another. “You think he’ll fire me?”
Mundo shook his head. “That chickenshit won’t fire you. He won’t screw around with the gangs—he doesn’t have the balls to screw with us, you’ll see. I’ve met a lot of guys like him, talk big but their balls shrink real fast. Next Monday you’ll still have a job, you’ll see.”
“I hope so,” Diego wrote. “Who the hell’s gonna hire me?”
“Hell, lots of people would hire you.”
Diego nodded, but he didn’t believe him.
Mundo chugged his second beer and crushed it in his hands. He threw it down the steps and followed it with his eyes. He scratched at one of the bricks he was sitting near. “Look at this, Mr. Diego, they just fuckin’ fall apart when you touch ‘em.”
Diego reached over and touched one of the bricks. It crumbled in his hands. He played with the red dust and let it run through his fingers.
Mundo opened another beer. He crushed another brick.
Diego thought of Mary, her purple fingernails digging into his memory. The sun was setting, and the blue sky around the edge of the mountains was turning pink. He watched Mundo’s hands, his blue veins popping out. His hands were alive, Diego thought, so alive.
“Thanks,” Diego wrote. “Thanks for helping me out. Now, I owe you one.”
“Friends don’t owe,” he said. It seemed strange to Diego that Mundo’s eyes could turn so angry then be so soft. The eyes he looked at now seemed incapable of violence. “But don’t think about it too much, Diego. You think too much about things. I had a good time today—but I didn’t like seeing La Mary that way. It’s bad luck to see dead people like that, Dios la tenga en paz. My old lady always says things like that—I guess it sort of rubs off on us, huh?” He took another swig from his beer. “I should have bought more than just one six-pack.” He looked at Diego with his black eyes. “How come you gave Mary your last name? She’s a gringa—she ain’t no Ramirez.”
“I told you I didn’t think anybody should be buried without a last name.”
“Why yours?”
“I didn’t have anything else to give her. Besides, I told you: I liked her. She wasn’t really my girlfriend—she wasn’t a jaina or anything like that—I just liked her.”
“You shouldn’t go around liking too many people. Things happen—and then you’re fucked.”
Diego shook his head. “It’s good to have friends.”
“Yeah, well, I ain’t saying it ain’t good to have friends, but god-damnit you don’t have to pick all the fucking locos in the pinche world, do you?
“Well,” Diego wrote, “you going to tell me your friends aren’t crazy?”
“Just some of them,” he laughed.
“You’re crazy,” Diego wrote, “and I picked you, didn’t I?—picked you right out of a garbage can. Of course, I should talk, huh? Look at me, my only hobbies are walking the streets, reading in a library, and writing a suicide note.”
They both broke out laughing. “Yeah, I don’t care what you say, I don’t believe it—I ain’t no pinche loco. I’m just tryin’ to get by, that’s all. Different people play different games, and I like to play my games out on the streets. I ain’t crazy. You ain’t crazy, neither. You just think about things too much.”
“You would too if you were deaf,” he-wrote.
“Maybe,” he said, “but Mary—she was crazy. I mean she was really crazy as they come.”
“I don’t think Mary was that crazy. I think she was pretty smart.”
“She thought she was the Virgin Mary! You call that smart?”
“Sort of, I think.”
“Maybe you’re crazier than I thought.”
“Yeah,” Diego wrote, “I can’t explain it. I just think she was very smart—she knew lots of things.” “Like what?”
“She wasn’t afraid to touch me. She wasn’t afraid that my deafness would rub off on her.”
Mundo didn’t say anything after that. The sky was a bright pink; the edges of the mountains grew red like the color of the bricks. “In a minute,” Diego wrote, “I won’t be able to see your lips.”
“Yeah, and I won’t be able to read your handwriting.” Mundo finished his beer. “Look, I’ll come by your place tomorro
w.”
Diego nodded. “Will you come to Mary’s funeral?”
“Sure.”
“Can you bring some friends?”
“Yeah, I’ll bring some of the T-Birds.”
“Can you get some of them to be pallbearers?”
Mundo laughed and shook his head. “Yeah, I can handle that, no problem.” He turned around and walked down the steps. Mundo wished Diego could hear the sound of his walk. He stayed among the bricks and watched the red of twilight turn to deep blue then black. He walked back to his apartment.
He took out his suicide note and read it. He thought about his sister. She really wasn’t that stupid, Diego thought, but he hated her because she could talk—no, he hated her because she’d left him, left him alone, and never wrote back. The last letter he’d written had been returned with a note on the envelope: NO LONGER AT THIS ADDRESS. He wondered what she looked like now. He wondered what Luz looked like now, too. Maybe she looked different in Chicago, maybe she’d changed. And then Mary jumped into his head—Mary—she would have looked pretty in her white dress. Pretty Mary.
The pictures in Diego’s mind kept spinning around. He saw Luz laughing, throwing her head up toward the sky, and Mundo grinning. He asked himself if they had ever thought of suicide. He’d read somewhere that everyone had some kind of death wish—something in everyone wanted to die. He picked up his pad without thinking. He saw his fingers moving across the paper as if he were watching somebody else’s hands: Do I want to be dead? Other people were alive, at least it seemed that way to him—other people. Mundo and Luz and Crazy Eddie and Mary. Mary had been alive. His head pounded. He saw Mundo drinking a beer and crushing a brick; he saw Luz clapping her hands and Crazy Eddie pointing his finger toward God. He saw Mary’s bloody body and a white hat that never got to see the inside of a church. He tried to read his suicide note again. Luz said everybody needed someone to fight with. “You have your letter.” But you can’t buy a hat for a letter—letters don’t wear hats. He shut his eyes and dreamed that he and Mary were sitting in a church. The light from the stained-glass windows made them look like figures in a coloring book. His mother watched them sitting there.
In the morning, Mundo came by, and they walked to La Fe Clinic. By then, it was almost noon, and Carolyn told Diego that everything had been arranged. “I’ve seen to a Mass at the cathedral—the whole nine yards.” She smiled at him.
“Are you Catholic?” Diego wrote.
She nodded. “Not a very good Catholic, but good enough to give street people decent funerals. Don’t ask me why—it makes me feel better.”
Diego smiled at her.
“I know one of the priests at St. Patrick’s,” she said.
“Is he your confessor?” Diego asked.
Carolyn laughed as she read Diego’s question. “No, I don’t have a confessor.”
“Don’t you have any sins?” Diego held up the note and laughed.
“If I had a confessor,” she said smiling, “then the poor guy would be overworked.” She looked at Mundo. “I’ll bet you could use a confessor.”
Mundo grinned and nodded.
She was surprised he didn’t have a retort. He seemed almost nice today, something soft in his eyes.
Mundo kept smiling good-naturedly, nothing lecherous in his look. She was surprised by the warmth she sensed in him. “Don’t get sloppy. Carolyn.” She looked at Mundo and laughed. “Why are you smiling so much?”
He shrugged his shoulders. He seemed almost shy.
“I don’t always got something to say,” he said finally, “sometimes I just listen.”
“And you smile when you listen?”
He nodded.
Really, he was very beautiful, she thought. He couldn’t be any older than twenty-two—just a little more than a kid. She shrugged her shoulders and laughed to herself. Carolyn took her eyes off Mundo and looked straight at Diego. “The funeral’s scheduled for Thursday morning at ten. She’s going to be buried at Concordia. That’s where they bury them, the people who don’t have anybody get buried at a section of Concordia. At least they’re still saving spaces in the ground for the Marys of the world.”
“You knew her?”
She nodded. “I used to give her clothes. I also …” She stopped. “Never mind. The funeral home wants to know if you have any clothes to dress her in. There’s blood all over the dress—they’re keeping it as evidence.”
Diego handed her a note: “No clothes.”
“I’ll find something,” she said.
“It’s not too much trouble?”
“Diego, if things were too much trouble, I’d quit my job.” She looked at Mundo. “So are you guys a team now?”
“You wanna join?” Mundo asked.
“You handing out T-shirts?”
Mundo smiled at her. “Yeah, sure—you want T-shirts, you’ll get T-shirts.”
She avoided his smile and looked straight into Diego’s eyes for a second, and nodded. “I’ll be at the funeral.”
Diego touched her hand, then squeezed it.
“You have nice eyes,” she said.
“What about me?” Mundo asked.
“Those eyes of yours are too damned mean to be nice.” They’re nice, too. She looked at him. “Thanks for helping Diego out.”
“I owe him.”
“At least you pay your debts,” her voice was soft. She cleared her throat. “See you at the funeral.”
“You’re very nice,” Diego wrote, “very kind.”
“Not to everyone.” She looked at Mundo, then back at Diego. “Keep him out of fights and trash cans.” She laughed, walked away, and took a patient into one of the doctor’s offices.
Mundo nudged Diego. “She was nicer to me today, don’t you think?”
“You were nicer, too,” he wrote.
As the two men walked out of the clinic, Diego spotted Tencha sitting at her usual post. He asked her if she would go to the funeral. “Pobrecita,” he wrote. “No tiene a nadie. No podemos dejarla sola ¿verdad?”
Tencha stared at his note and agreed. “Claro. Mire, Señor, tengo una comadre que me puede cuidar el puesto mientras voy a la misa. Nadie debe irse al otro mundo sin ser acompañada. Tenemos que encomendarla a Dios.”
Diego smiled at her, and thanked her for agreeing to attend Mary’s funeral. He was happy she would be there.
Diego made his way to Fifth and Oregon, Crazy Eddie’s usual post. He wasn’t there so Diego waited for him. About twenty minutes later, Eddie showed up, he and his worn Bible. “Will you go to my friend’s funeral?” Diego asked. “She was very holy.” Crazy Eddie stared at the note.
He pushed his glasses up, and they slid back down, “Yes,” he said with his thick lips. “Funerals are important. To pray for the dead is a good thing.”
Diego shook Crazy Eddie’s hand and gave him a note with the time and place of the funeral. He turned around and saw Mundo standing across the street. He walked over and handed him a note: “You been following me?”
“Yeah, just checking out your scene, got it? I was wondering when you were gonna spot me. You know, someone could kill you easy. You got to pay attention, you never know when someone’s out to get your ass.” He paused, “and you know something else? All the people you talk to are nuts, just like I said—nuts.”
“Bring your friends to the funeral.” he wrote. “You got the pallbearers?”
“Yeah, I got ‘em.”
“Good—and don’t make fun of my friends. And tell your T-Birds to dress nice—they’re going to a lady’s funeral.”
“Look, after the kind of clothes you wear, you’re telling me to dress nice? We’re all gonna look sharp, baby, like brand-new knives waiting to be used.”
“I’m going to dress sharp, too,” Diego wrote, “you’ll see.”
14
EDDIE SAT IN HIS living room holding open a book of poems and reading it half to himself and half out loud. His son was in a basket next to him, and occasionally he would lo
ok down and smile at the sleeping infant, rock him, then continue reading. Jake sat across from him. He was reading an old newspaper. They had been sitting there for hours only stopping to change or feed the baby. Jake watched his brother change, touch, and talk to his son, a son who could not hear voices. Already, he was learning to crawl, trying to escape the grasp of his father. “Where you going?” Jake asked. “Nowhere to run, kiddo.” He picked him up, swung him in his arms, then placed him back in his basket.
Neither of them was in the mood for speaking. Sometimes, they asked each other a question or two from across the room, then continued reading.
“Is that what passes for conversation in this house?”
Eddie and Jake looked up at Maria Elena.
“This is public space,” she said. “Can’t we just talk to each other?” She grabbed the book away from Eddie’s hand and shut it. “Your brother is sitting over there,” she said. “Talk to him.”
Jake smiled nervously at Maria Elena. She smiled back. “You can talk, too,” she said. “This house has been too damned quiet. If you’re both going to be so mopey, then I’m going to dress you both in black.” She walked across the room, took the newspaper away from Jake, kissed him on the forehead, and held it up in the air.
“You’re a madwoman,” Eddie said, “I married a madwoman.”
“I think we should all talk about something.”
“Is this like a planned activity at camp?”
“I wouldn’t know—I never went to camp.”
“You’re a reverse snob, Nena.”
“Honey, you would be, too, if you were me.” She took the baby out of his basket and placed him on the floor. He began crawling back and forth between his parents.
“Are we talking now?”
“No.”
“Pick a topic, then, Nena.”
“Houses.”
“Houses? There’s a topic. Past houses? Future houses?”
“This is the only house I’ve ever lived in.”
“Really, what about when you were growing up?”
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