I took it for what it was: a warning. The heart—in all its infinite wisdom (with some backdoor bribery from the hormones)—was totally edging in on this Vargas boy situation, and the heart didn’t know the meaning of terminado.
Chapter 6
Emilio Vargas was officially a no-show.
Papi, Pancake, and I had waited for two hours the following morning before I finally grabbed the keys and zoomed us all down to Duchess.
Forget summer theater. I was starring in a lovely little production from the comfort of my own head.
All the world’s a stage!
“Here to complain about the kid already?” Duke looked up from his magazine and smiled when we approached the service counter. “Ain’t even been a week.”
“Just wanted to look at some accessories,” Papi said. He’d agreed to let me handle this since Emilio and I seemed to “hit things off.” Yeah, I was about to hit things off, all right. Starting with his head.
Duke directed us to a row of shelves stocked with chrome bike parts and dusty manuals that looked like they’d been there since the Industrial Revolution. Or at least the eighties.
“Is Emilio working today?” I asked.
“Yep. Go on back.” Duke nodded at the glass door. “Just stay close to the wall—too many loose parts and sharp edges back there.”
I didn’t know whether he meant the bikes or the boys, but I heeded his advice and pushed through the doorway. All eyes were on me as I scanned the crew. No sign of Mr. No-Show.
“E!” one of the guys yelled. “Tu novia está aquí.”
Your girlfriend is here? I can’t believe he told them about that.
“Ro-milio, Ro-milio!” one of the other guys said. The rest giggled. They were worse than Zoe and me on a Pixy Stix bender.
Emilio entered through a propped open door at the back of the garage. He punched the first guy in the arm as he walked past, and I let out a big ol’ sigh, totally rocking my poker face.
There was only one problem.
Freaking Ro-milio wasn’t wearing a shirt.
He nodded when he saw me and turned to grab his T-shirt from the back of the blue Honda I’d seen him working on that first day. He had a tattoo on his left shoulder, black words and numbers, too far away to make sense. There was a nasty scar on his lower abdomen and another on his right shoulder. An accident, probably, and I wondered what happened, but I looked away when I realized the Romilio-calling guy was totally watching me.
What a creeper!
I mean, the guy. Not me. Obviously.
Emilio yanked the shirt on in one fluid motion. “Duke know you’re back here?”
I forced myself to focus on the shiny tools spread out near the Honda. “He said it was okay.”
“Cool. So . . .” He rubbed a hand over his bandanna and all that “I’m about to hit off his head” stuff evaporated.
“Where were you today?” I asked. “My father waited for two hours.”
Emilio shook his head. “I ain’t on with you till day after tomorrow.”
“You aren’t?” I pulled out my phone calendar. “I must’ve gotten the dates mixed up. I could’ve sworn . . . No, you’re right. We ain’t—aren’t—on again until the day after tomorrow. Which is when we are.”
“You sure about that, princesa?” Emilio’s eyes held a playful spark. “Maybe you should write it down on paper this time.”
Behind him, three of the guys whispered to one another in Spanish and laughed, which only magnified the mortification. It was obvious they didn’t know I could understand them, and the one guy kept saying how hot I was and if Emilio screwed it up, he’d be happy to mend my broken heart. And then something something something naked.
“Oh, Ro-milio!” one of the guys squealed. The high-pitched whir of the big drill muted their chuckling, but Emilio was unfazed, still staring at me with that mischievous glint.
“I don’t like you,” I said. “Just so we’re clear.”
“Did I do something wrong?” he asked. “Did I offend you?”
“No, I—”
“I’m not good-looking enough for you?”
“No. I mean yes. I mean . . . I don’t like you that way.”
“What way?” He smiled.
“The way your friends think I like you. Because I don’t.”
“Funny.” He rubbed his stubbled chin and stared at the ceiling as if he were pondering the world’s problems. “Someone must’ve hacked your Facebook account.”
“Huh?” It was all I could croak out before my throat closed up. Seriously, it was like anaphylactic shock up in there.
“You can’t take Internet security for granted, Jude. If someone hacked your account, you should report it. People could misunderstand your intentions. Get the wrong idea about you and me.”
I coughed and glared back at him like all the mountain lion warning signs on the hiking trails instructed. Make noise. Stare confidently. Make yourself appear larger than you are. “There’s no idea about you and me. I don’t like you. Not as a boyfriend. Not as a friend. Not as anything. Okay?”
“Okay. So . . .” He loosened his bandanna and retied it, pulled it snug. “Why are you here again?”
I stamped my foot on the concrete floor, totally five-year-old. What was my problem? I’d been around boys forever—kissed a lot of them too, and not just Dylan Porter. Granted, the others were for school plays, but still. Composure, people. I had it in spades.
The drill let out a few short chirps and I jumped. Being in the garage was clearly affecting my brain—the chemicals and lack of sunlight and probably noise pollution had something to do with it too.
“I came to clarify a misunderstanding about your schedule,” I said, “but obviously the concept of adult conversation is foreign to you, so I’ll leave you to your motorcycles and expect you the day after tomorrow. And I don’t know what kind of health codes you’re used to violating here, but at my house, you will wear a shirt.”
The tu novia guy—Samuel, I thought someone had said—laughed. “Chica loca,” he told Emilio.
I flashed him a wicked grin, straight out of the Mari Hernandez Complete Guide to Melodrama. “I’m a crazy girl? Is that right?”
All the mechanics turned toward me with dopey boy-grins like they’d bought front row tickets to the show. But they had another thing coming. I was not there to be anyone’s matinee.
“Si quieren ver una película, traten Netflix,” I said. Then I poked Emilio in the chest. “Pasado mañana. No llegues tarde.”
Day after tomorrow. Don’t be late.
If I remembered the Spanish phrase for jerkoff, I would’ve added that too.
“¡Adiós!” I pushed past him and marched back into the shop.
Duke looked up from his reading. “Forgot you were back there, hon. You all right? Boys didn’t give you a hard time, did they?”
I shook my head and returned his smile, but something was off. . . .
Papi. Pancake.
“Where’s my father?”
Duke looked around the shop. “Huh. Must’ve stepped out.”
I paced the entire floor, even though it was obvious Papi and the dog weren’t there. Duke checked the restroom, but that was a dead end too. I stuck my head back through the doorway into the garage. “Has anyone seen my father?”
The guys shrugged and looked around, but Papi wasn’t there. He wasn’t anywhere. He must’ve wandered out while I was arguing with stupid Emilio, who now looked at me with a mixture of curiosity and mild alarm.
I bolted out the front door.
“He can’t be far.” Emilio was right behind me, scanning the sidewalk in both directions. “Bookstore and Grant’s that way and the ice cream place down there—those are the most likely spots.”
“How do you know? He could be anywhere.”
Emilio raised a hand to shield his eyes from the blazing sun. “Those are the best choices.”
“It’s your fault he took off in the first place. If you weren’t
so busy trying to show off—”
“Jude.” Emilio grabbed my arms. “Let’s find your pops, okay?”
I wanted to tell him I was certainly capable of finding my own father, but clearly I wasn’t, and Emilio had already taken off toward Uncle Fuzzy’s Creamery.
“Papi!” I almost collapsed as the worry dissolved into relief. “Where were you?”
Papi strolled up the sidewalk with Pancake and Emilio, spooning mint chocolate chip ice cream into his mouth. “Felt like a sundae. I didn’t know how long you’d be with the boys.”
“You scared me!” I smeared the tears leaking out of my eyes. Emilio must’ve thought I was ridiculous, crying on the sidewalk on a beautiful sunny day because my father—a grown man who’d once ridden a motorcycle all over South America without a GPS or anything remotely like a plan—had walked two blocks down the street with the dog.
Papi put his arm around me and hugged me close, his hand cold from the ice cream cup. “I’m sorry, Jujube. I didn’t mean to worry you.”
“You can’t do that, okay? You have to tell me. You can’t—”
“I’m okay. I’m all right, querida.” He patted my shoulder once more and trotted over to a bus stop bench with Pancake to finish up his sundae.
“You okay?” Emilio asked. “I gotta get back.”
“Yeah, I . . . sorry I snapped.” I kept my voice low, eyes on Papi. “I’m supposed to watch him. He’s . . . I should’ve been more careful.”
“What else?” Emilio asked.
I shook my head. “Just that I’m sorry.”
“Nah, you wanna say more. I can tell. Your lips press together when you’re thinking.”
“They do not.” I clamped my mouth shut, then immediately opened it. Closed it. Opened it. Then I didn’t know what to do because Emilio was probably right and that thought drove me nuts, so I just stood there with my lips slightly parted.
“Jude?” Emilio stepped closer, his body blocking out the sun, eyes serious, and my heart sank. I couldn’t handle it again. The looks. The whispers. The overbearing silences that crept in whenever people figured out that something wasn’t right with Papi. I didn’t even know Emilio, and I could already see it happening.
He put his hands on my shoulders, and I braced for the letdown. Sorry, Jude, maybe next time. . . .
“We cool?” he said. “For the—”
“Sorry,” I said again. “The Facebook thing . . . my sisters . . . They don’t . . . um . . . live in town,” I finished up.
Random!
“That’s . . . nice. I’m talking about the bike. Still on for Wednesday? Shirt required?” Emilio smiled, and it was like, stubble, dimples, scar.
Damn.
“Wednesday,” I said with a firmness that I hoped masked the awkward. “Shirt required.”
Chapter 7
I was still rubbing the morning from my eyes on Wednesday when I caught Papi’s silhouette in front of the patio doors. GLASS DOORS. → → → SLIDE OPEN BEFORE WALKING OUTSIDE.
He turned toward me, squinting like I might be a shadow, and I took in his outfit: Gray pants with a crease above each knee from the hanger. Pale-green button-down, cuffs undone. Shiny black shoes, untied. His cologne took a moment to register.
Cologne. That’s what had woken me up, I realized. The scent had become unfamiliar, a near stranger in our house revisiting after months away.
“Papi?” I stepped into the light. “¿Hacerte un café?” It was his favorite old joke, the power of suggestion he’d wielded for years when my sisters were still around. Get yourself a coffee! In other words, Make me some coffee!
But he didn’t smile this time, didn’t wink and wag his finger like I’d finally beat him at his own game.
“No.” He looked at his hands, forehead creased with concentration. “I’m . . . I think I’m late for something. An appointment?”
“Your appointment is tomorrow. See?” I directed him to the dry erase calendar we kept on the fridge now. “You got the date wrong, that’s all.”
He checked his watch and looked back out the doors. Pancake nudged his leg and gave a short yelp.
“No big deal. I did the same thing the other day with Emilio, remember? I thought he was late and—”
“There’s a staff meeting.” Papi’s face was pained with the effort of searching, seeking something that would never be found, and when I finally figured out what it meant, a dark ache bloomed in my chest.
He wasn’t confused about his doctor’s appointment tomorrow. He’d gotten ready for work, same as he had every weekday for thirty years until a few months ago when they kindly suggested he take an early retirement—a diplomatic way of putting him on disability.
“You don’t have that job anymore,” I said gently. “Now your job is to hang out with me all day.”
He probably just needed a break. A day to mellow out, avoid the crowds of Old Town, take his mind off Valentina’s problems.
“How about a Scrabble rematch?” I said. “You up for getting your butt kicked, mi viejito?”
Papi stared at me so long I thought he was trying to place me, to remember where he’d last seen my face. I’d been careful about giving him his medications, taking him for walks in the sun when he was up for it, just like the doctors instructed. But this was the second major misfire this week.
He was getting worse.
“I think I’ll watch some TV, maybe have some coffee. Okay?” He smiled, but his eyes were glassy. A blush seeped into his cheeks, and I turned to the pantry, DRIED AND CANNED FOODS ONLY, and rummaged for the coffee filters as if I hadn’t noticed.
Clint Eastwood was a familiar guest in our living room, and his signature rasp and gunslinging badassery blazed a trail through my skull all morning. After A Fistful of Dollars, I slipped out onto the front porch for a slightly less blazin’ coffee break, leaving Papi to watch his favorite—The Good, the Bad and the Ugly—for the hundredth time.
I’d been out there a couple hours, drifting in and out of half sleep in the golden butter sun, when a once-familiar sight pedaled up the driveway. I thought I was dreaming, ten years old again, waiting for Zoe to get here after dinner so we could run down to the Animas and wash our dusty feet and Kool-Aid mustaches.
Zoe parked her bike alongside the house and clomped up the porch stairs with her backpack. I blinked at her in the sun, still halfway between awake and asleep, the hazy dreamworld where anything was possible. Is she really here? I scanned her face and silently counted her freckles, an old habit.
“Morning, sunshine!” Zoe beamed as she fished a stack of papers from her bag. “It’s the script! Help me read? I have to make notes and—”
“You see, in this world there’s two kinds of people, my friend,” Papi and Clint Eastwood simultaneously warned through the open windows behind me, the TV volume shooting up exponentially. “Those with loaded guns, and those who dig. You dig.”
Papi howled with laughter. It was his favorite part, right near the end.
“Hope you don’t mind a little competition on those lines.” I stood from my wicker chair and stretched. “This is a really good part. Wanna watch? It’s the end, but it’s funny.”
“No, but . . .” Zoe’s eyes darted around me to the window, and when Papi cackled again, she took a step backward. “Isn’t your dad, like, working on the bike? Where’s the motorcycle guy?”
“In the barn.” When Emilio arrived after breakfast, I’d sent him out back alone to give Papi his TV break. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now that Zoe was standing on the porch with all those questions, I wanted to be out there with him, passing him tools and listening to the sound of dust collecting on the old boxes.
“Zoe, it’s Papi,” I finally said. The guy who built our tree fort and called in sick to work to camp out for our Angry Hermits tickets. I let the thought float silently between us and watched Zoe crunch the numbers, predict the possible outcomes. They’d played out across her face in the span of eight seconds, and by the time
we hit nine, I was reaching for the door without her.
“I’m coming.” She slipped in behind me, and then she was through the entryway, marching toward the kitchen, straight past Papi.
“Hey, Mr. H.,” she called once she got herself situated at the kitchen table. It was a safe distance away. He didn’t hear her.
“I know she’s supposed to be this total psycho,” Zoe was saying, “but I’m holding back until the end. Do the super-polite thing all along, and then, BAM! Bring out the crazy. Totally unnerving, right?”
“Totally.” I dumped a box of pasta into a pot of boiling water as Zoe scribbled notes in the margins of her script.
“What about the off with her head bit? Like, should I go, ‘Off with her head,’ or, ‘Off with her head’? Or maybe, ‘Off with her head’?”
“Maybe the second one?”
“Off. Yeah, that’s what I thought too. What about—”
“Hey, girls,” Papi called from the living room. “Did you know they call these movies spaghetti westerns?”
“Yes,” we said in unison. It was the third time he’d made the proclamation and the whole reason we were having spaghetti for lunch—Papi’s request.
He muted the commercials and shuffled into the kitchen. He’d shed the dress shoes after breakfast and was rockin’ a pair of Mom’s slippers, which were too small on him and covered in peach and yellow roses. “In the sixties the Italians made all these cowboy movies. They filmed them in Italy and Spain, and if you look closely, you can see some of the actors speaking Italian. They recorded the English after. Isn’t that something?”
“That’s awesome, Papi,” I said.
Zoe buried her face in her notes, scribbling and scrawling, deep in thought, and Papi shuffled back into the living room. Gunfire broke the silence once again.
I slid open the GARBAGE ONLY—NO DISHES OR CLOTHING trash compactor. A glossy, magazine-size pamphlet glared at me from beneath this morning’s coffee grounds—I must’ve been too worried about Papi to notice it before. There was a white-haired couple on the front, hands clasped over the woman’s knee. Behind them, a woman not much older than Lourdes smiled awkwardly, her hand on the man’s shoulder.