Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

  On Sunday mornings, I would write. He would read. In the afternoons, we took turns reading our favorite passages from our favorite novels to each other. Javier would talk about the passages with a fierce intelligence that almost always made me smile. He began to understand what that smile meant, though at first he thought I was merely being condescending.

  “What is that smile?”

  “Nothing. I’m smiling. I’m listening to you and I’m smiling.”

  “Because my insights aren’t intelligent? Because I’m amusing?” There was an edge in his voice.

  “That’s not what my smile means.”

  “Explain it.”

  “No,” I said.

  Somehow he accepted that. We tried to learn about each other without explaining ourselves too much. We became each other’s favorite books. We were obsessed with reading each other.

  The winter left, though not without a fight. It seemed to want to stay, but finally gave in to the inevitable. Changes come with difficulty. Even for the seasons. In the spring, I became obsessed with the novel I was writing. Javier would read what I wrote. But there was a rule: no discussing the novel.

  One Sunday evening in the middle of the hottest day of July, we were both reading a book. I was reading Bolaño and he was reading the short stories of J.G. Ballard. I was sitting at my reading chair and Javier was lying on the couch.

  I put my book down.

  “Will you move here, Javier?”

  “Here?”

  “With me.”

  “You mean we don’t live together?”

  “You live in Juárez. Move here.”

  “I don’t have papers. You know that.”

  “We can start the process. You already have a visa.”

  “It’s to visit. Your country doesn’t want me to stay.”

  “Don’t get wise. And what does it matter what this country wants?”

  “Countries are bigger than men.”

  “Fuck countries. I hate all of them. You are the only country I want.”

  He didn’t say anything. But then a smile ran across his face. “You read the newspaper this morning, didn’t you, Carlos?”

  “The killings are getting worse.”

  “I’m safe.”

  “Safe?”

  “Safe enough.”

  “Move here.”

  He sat up and put his book down. “I can’t leave Juárez.”

  “Why not?”

  “You know why not.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “What would happen if everybody left?”

  “Then the city would die.”

  “That’s right, Carlos.”

  “But what if you die?”

  “I want you to stop reading newspapers.”

  “I can’t do that, Javier.”

  “Nothing will happen. We can live like this forever.”

  “Then I’ll move to Juárez.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “You belong here.”

  “I belong with you.”

  He smiled. “You’ve never said that before.”

  “I can tell you every day of my life that I love you. I can. It would be true.”

  “You don’t have to tell me what I already know.”

  “Then I’ll move to Juárez.”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “What if something happens to you?”

  “What will happen?”

  “You know what I’m talking about.”

  “And you know what I’m talking about.”

  We wound up yelling at each other. He had never yelled at me. And I had never yelled at him. The only way to end the conversation was by having sex. Afterwards, we lay there in bed and he whispered, “I can’t be anymore than I am, Carlos. This is who I am.”

  I was not his only love and never would be. Perhaps he loved Juárez more than he loved me. But he was right about me. I was not a jealous man. He could love his Juárez. And he could love me too. That was the way it would be.

  “We can live this way forever,” I said. It was more heaven than I deserved.

  12.

  The last Friday in August, I called Javier on his cell. “Are you driving?”

  “No, I’m waiting for the Consul to finish his lunch meeting.”

  “When are you off?”

  “I won’t be off until around seven. It’s a late night. The Ambassador is in town. I have to drive him to Chihuahua on Sunday.”

  “Okay. Then let’s meet at the Kentucky Club for a drink after work. My turn to stay at your place.”

  I knew he was hesitating.

  “Javier?”

  “Yes, perfect,” he said.

  Walking across the bridge, I noticed the emptiness. When I was young, the Santa Fe Bridge had been teeming with pedestrians. Avenida Juárez had been packed with vendors and people from El Paso who were more than ready to unwind after a long week. But those days were gone now. The bridge was nearly deserted. I made my way past the soldiers with rifles slung across their backs, soldiers who more closely resembled highschool boys than men. When I walked through the front door of the Kentucky Club, Javier was sitting at the bar.

  We touched each other with our eyes.

  “Have you been here long?”

  “I just got here.”

  “I ordered a margarita for you.”

  “I hate margaritas.”

  “So do I. I thought we’d have one anyway.”

  That made me laugh.

  We took a seat at a table in the corner.

  “No one comes here anymore,” I said.

  We drank our margaritas. He was quiet but I was talkative. I told him stories about how I used to come here as a young man, about how, once, I had been propositioned by an older gringo who was too drunk to talk. “He could never have gotten it up to have sex.”

  “You must have been very handsome.”

  “I never gave it much thought.”

  “Why?”

  “Since when is being handsome a virtue?”

  Javier studied me. Like he always studied me.

  “You know,” I said. “I didn’t like thinking about what I looked like. I don’t think I liked having a body.”

  “Why?”

  “Someone hurt me. When I was a boy.”

  Javier studied my face. “You didn’t deserve that.”

  “Take me home,” I said.

  13.

  His place was small—a bedroom, a small living room, a kitchen, a bathroom. He had plants and books everywhere. There were photographs on the walls. And a picture of me in his bedroom. There was a kind of stark elegance to his apartment that reminded me of his smile.

  We didn’t make love. We just held each other.

  I woke in the middle of the night and undressed. Javier was in the next room reading one of my novels.

  “Why are you doing that?” I said.

  “I’m in love with the author. Did I tell you?”

  We didn’t sleep the rest of the night.

  We made love like boys who had just discovered the wonders of sex.

  The next day, we had breakfast with the two women who lived next door. Magda and Sofia. They were schoolteachers and activists and they spoke with sadness about what was happening in their beloved Juárez. I found it strange and illogical and moving that these lovely people could be so faithful to a city that had not earned their love. But they were happy and loved working with children who had next to nothing. I promised to bring them some children’s books. “Will you read to them?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  They both smiled at me. “So you are Javier’s Carlos.”

  “Yes. I am Javier’s Carlos.”

  We spent the afternoon reading to each other. In the evening, he walked me to the bridge. I wanted to kiss him. But that was impossible. He hugged me. We might have been old friends.

  He promised to call me when he got back from Chihuahua.

  On Tues
day evening, he called.

  On Wednesday, he texted me: Te adoro.

  I texted him back: See you on Friday.

  He texted me back: Take me to a movie.

  On Friday, I waited for him. He never came.

  14.

  I kept calling his cell phone, but it had been turned off. I paced my apartment, trying to remember the last time I talked to him. I tried not to panic. I had the number to the embassy but it would be closed. It was no use to call them.

  I walked across the street to the corner grocery store and bought a pack of cigarettes. The first one tasted like a pigeon had shit in my mouth. But I didn’t care. I smoked another. I poured myself a drink.

  I didn’t sleep all night. I kept running different scenarios through my head. I was, after all, a writer. Maybe he was having an affair with another man. Unimaginative as that scenario was, I insisted upon it. Because it meant Javier was alive.

  By six o’clock, I was knocking at Magda and Sofia’s door. By the look on their faces, I knew they weren’t surprised to see me.

  “You look terrible,” Magda said as she pushed me toward the couch.

  Sofia went into the kitchen and came out with a cup of coffee. She offered me a cigarette. I took it. I listened to my own lungs take in the smoke. “Tell me what happened to Javier?”

  “We didn’t have your number. We didn’t know how to contact you.”

  “What happened?”

  “Thursday night—,” Sofia looked at Magda.

  Magda nodded at her.

  “They came.”

  “Who?”

  “Some men. They had rifles. Or maybe not rifles. Weapons. We heard them. It wasn’t dark yet. They were dragging Javier out into the street. They were rounding up all the men from the neighborhood. They must have been looking for someone in particular. So they took them all.”

  Magda lit a cigarette. “She wanted to stop them, but I didn’t let her out of the house.”

  I nodded and looked at Sofia. “You’re a lion. But they would have killed you.”

  “Maybe they haven’t killed anyone.”

  “You believe that?”

  Magda looked down at the floor. “They were looking for someone else. It was all a mistake.”

  “Do they let their mistakes live?”

  15.

  I drove to the U.S. Consulate. They were closed on weekends but there was always someone there. I managed to get the attention of one of the chauffeur’s who was sitting in a car inside the gate. “I’m a friend of Javier’s,” I yelled.

  He walked to the gate. I introduced myself. He gave me his name. Manuel. He shook my hand. “Javier reads your books,” he said.

  I nodded.

  I told him what Magda and Sofia had told me.

  He shook his head.

  He let me in. I sat alone in a waiting room. Manuel walked back into the room and asked me for my cell phone number. He walked out of the room. A few minutes later, I got a call from a man named Neil who worked at the consulate. “Manuel told me what happened to Javier. Can you tell me the story again?” So I told him. “Oh no,” he said. I could tell he had some respect if not some affection for Javier. He told me they would do what they could to find out what happened to Javier. I don’t think he was lying. But they would find out nothing.

  The consulate never received any information regarding Javier’s disappearance. And if they did, they did not share it with me.

  For a week, all I did was search. I spoke to Javier’s neighbors. No one said anything. Everyone was afraid. Some of them had lost their own men in that raid. Their sons. Their fathers. One woman told me to go back to El Paso. Y no vuelvas. Nadie sabe nada. Y si saben no te van a decir. She was right. No one was going to tell me anything.

  I went to the police.

  The police told me that they’d received a phone call from the consulate and that they were looking for Javier. “He’s probably just running away from his wife and his responsibilities.” That’s what I was told. I didn’t bother to tell him that I was as close to a wife as Javier would ever have.

  I went to the newspapers.

  I talked to lawyers.

  I talked to human rights activists.

  I talked to my congressman.

  No one really wanted to talk to me. I began to understand what it feels like to be invisible.

  I thought of looking in the desert, but where in the desert would I look?

  He was gone. Javier. And I knew I would never see him again. I was angry at my own heart that refused to give up hope despite the fact that I begged it to give up. I began spending weekends in Javier’s small apartment. Magda and Sofia told me that I was putting myself in danger. “I don’t care,” I said. “They can take me too.”

  I would call the consulate three or four times a week.

  I would visit the police station and ask questions.

  I kept talking to reporters.

  I would sleep in Javier’s bed and dream him back to life. The dreams were all the same. He was happy and reading a book. He was touching me. He was making love to me. We were walking down Avenida Juárez holding hands. I would wake to his books and to his plants. I always called his name and waited for him to answer.

  I never cried. There was nothing but the numbness of my angry heart.

  I stopped calling the consulate.

  I stopped calling the police.

  Months passed. I stopped writing.

  And then I stopped going to Javier’s apartment. I just stopped. It had been months. Winter had returned.

  One evening in December I got a phone call from Magda. “Come,” she said.

  I felt something in my heart. “Have they found him?”

  “No,” she said. “You have to stop hoping.”

  I nodded into the receiver.

  “Sofia and I have something for you.”

  I walked from my apartment to the bridge. I took a cab to Sofia and Magda’s house. Sofia offered me a glass of wine.

  I took the glass. Magda offered me a cigarette. “No,” I said. “It doesn’t help.”

  “I’m happy you loved him so much.”

  “I’m not,” I said. “What does love do except make you sad?”

  “Without it, we would be even sadder.”

  Sofia took something out from her purse. I could see what it was. Javier’s watch. The watch his father had given him. He never took it off.

  “Where did you find it?”

  “Some people talked to us.”

  “Who? Who talked to you? Who?”

  “It doesn’t matter who, Carlos.”

  “It does matter.”

  “You have to leave this alone, Carlos.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why.”

  I nodded.

  “They led us to where he was.”

  “You should have taken me.”

  “We went at night. It wasn’t safe.”

  “So he’s—”

  “He has gone to be with the women. With all the nameless women who have been buried in the desert.”

  I nodded and thought, He has gone to be with his mother.

  She handed me the watch.

  I found that I was kissing it. How banal. To sit and kiss a lover’s watch.

  16.

  I don’t remember leaving Magda and Sofia’s house.

  I vaguely remember walking down some half-familiar streets.

  I walked for a long time.

  I found myself sitting at the bar in the Kentucky Club.

  I had a drink and then another—and then another.

  I stared at Javier’s watch.

  I don’t know how long I sat there at the bar, drinking, trying not to think. Trying not to hate. Trying not to feel anything.

  And then I just wanted to go home. But where was home?

  THE ART OF TRANSLATION

  There were moments when I sensed my mother and father at my side, staring at me as if they were trying to sift through the wreckage
of a storm, trying to find my remains. My mother would touch me, hold my hand, whisper words to me, words I couldn’t understand. I felt as if I was no longer in control of my own voice, my own body. When my mother looked into my eyes and kissed my forehead, I stared back into her almost familiar face. I could see the hurt in her eyes as she whispered my name and I felt as if I had become a wound, the source of all her hurt.

  My brothers and sisters came to visit. I looked at all of them as though they were perfect strangers. I stared into their eyes, listened to their voices. I felt as if they must have all been hiding somewhere in my memory. I would look at my fingers and whisper their names and count them when I was lying in bed in the dark: Cecilia, Angela, Monica, Alfredo, Ricardo. One, two, three, four, five. And then I would repeat the names again and again and again. And count one, two, three, four, five. I must have loved them once, and I tried to remember that love but there was nothing there. Only their names remained and their expectant faces. Angela kept repeating, How could they have done this? How could they do this to you? But didn’t she know? She was eight years older. How could she not know how cruel the world was? No, not the world, the world was neither cruel nor kind. But the boys in the world—it was the boys that were cruel—that’s how they translated the world, with fists, with rage, with violence. And what good did it do to think about all these things, to ask why when there was no answer?

  And wasn’t their last name Guerra? And didn’t that name mean war? And didn’t that mean that they were born to fight? But being born to fight did not mean that they were born to win the battles they fought. As I repeated the names of my brothers and sisters and felt each syllable on my tongue, I wondered what their names meant and wondered if they had scars too, scars that they were hiding from me and hiding from my mom and dad and from the world. And wasn’t that the way it should be? Shouldn’t everyone’s scars be silent and hidden? Shouldn’t we all pretend perfection and beauty and the optimism of a perfect day in spring? Why not? This was America, the country of happiness, and we had come from Mexico, the most tragic country in the world. And the only thing me—and those like me—were allowed to feel was gratitude. The boys who had hurt me, they spoke a different language and it was not a language I understood and maybe never would understand.