In Perfect Light

  Mando turned right off Avenida Benito Juárez, and down some narrow streets. The streets were crowded, and they passed a lot of bars—or it least it seemed that way to Andrés. He had been to bars with his father, and he knew the look of them. Later, he was to learn that they had been in Calle Mariscal, the district where all the prostitutes made a living. He would learn the streets of this district better than he had learned the streets of his own neighborhood. But today Andrés only had the vaguest idea of what a prostitute was.

  On a small narrow street, Mando parked outside a house. It wasn’t a house really, not like the houses in his neighborhood, which all had fences or rock walls or walls that were made of bricks or cinder blocks, fences and yards and flowers and grass and all that. There was none of that in this neighborhood. These houses looked like one long house with doors and windows every few yards, a cement sidewalk for a front yard, a few sad trees trying to grow here and there. Each door, he guessed, was some kind of house. Like apartments, and so he asked Mando, “Are these apartments? Are we going to live in an apartment?”

  “No,” he said. “These are houses. Houses aren’t the same everywhere, Andy.”

  Mando walked up to a door that had the number 12 on it, and he took out a set of keys and opened the door. They all followed Mando inside the house. Andrés was the last to walk in. The front room was dark, but when Yolie pulled the curtains open, the room was brighter. But not beautiful. The walls were a dull gray and had water stains from a roof that leaked when it rained, and Andrés thought he smelled urine. There were holes in the wall that made the whole room look like maybe someone had fought a war in here.

  The floors were covered with old linoleum, pale yellow flowers and green vines running in patterns on its worn surface. It might have been very nice when it was new, but now it was old and pale and sad, and worn down from being walked on by the parade of people who had lived here. The front room led into a kitchen, and the kitchen had a big shelf, like a bookshelf, and a table made of wood, a nice table, and six wooden chairs around the table. And there was a refrigerator and a small gas stove. “I brought the tables and chairs last night,” Mando said. Proud. “The refrigerator and stove need cleaning—bought them secondhand. But they work.” The kitchen led into another room, which Andrés guessed was a bedroom. And that room led to another empty room, which Andrés guessed was another bedroom. And that bedroom led into a small yard, which was as small as the two back rooms. “A courtyard,” Mando called it.

  “This is our house,” he said. Proud. Sure. A man.

  “It smells bad,” Ileana offered. “I don’t like it.”

  “I’ll make it smell good,” Yolie said. “I promise.” She looked at Mando.

  “And guess what we’re gonna do, Ileana? We’re gonna paint this place and make it look real nice.”

  Mando had been planning and planning and planning. Mando opened a closet in the first bedroom, and he took out the cans of paint and brushes and mops and a broom and all kinds of stuff to clean their house with. “We got everything,” he said. “And we’ll paint all the walls white. So it won’t look so dark. How does that sound? And we’ll paint the kitchen yellow. How does that sound?” He looked at Ileana.

  “That sounds good, Mando,” she said. She was happy with his answer. He was the father now.

  Even Andrés liked the way Mando sounded. He didn’t sound mean or angry, but nice and soft. So maybe everything was going to be all right.

  But the rooms were so dark. And there weren’t any windows except in the front room. “But the darkness keeps the house cool in the summer,” Mando said. And so they started painting. And just as soon as they started painting, there was a knock at the door, and a girl—she was pretty—a girl and two guys, they were at the door. And the pretty girl hugged Mando and kissed him. “This is my girlfriend, Xochil,” Mando said, “and these are her brothers,” Enrique and Jaime. And Andrés shook their hands, and Mando’s girlfriend kissed Andrés on the cheek and told him he was better looking than Mando, and that made Andrés smile.

  Mando and Enrique and Jaime went out, and they unloaded four beds. Each bed was small, for one person. Twin beds, one bed for each of them. And mattresses and pillows and sheets. They weren’t new, the beds, Andrés knew that. But they seemed like they were good beds, though he knew he didn’t really know anything about beds. But Yolie said they didn’t smell like urine and that they didn’t have stains or anything like that. And so he inspected the mattresses closely and he smelled them, and they didn’t smell bad. Not good. Not new. But not bad. Like old rain, maybe, almost sweet. Something like that.

  So that first day in their new city, in their new neighborhood, in their new country, they all painted and cleaned and worked to make their new house into something that was good, something that was worthy of them, something that the rats wouldn’t like. That’s what Mando said. It was a joke. He said, “If you keep a house painted and clean, then the rats won’t like it.” Rats. Sure. It wasn’t rats Andrés was worried about. But he didn’t know exactly where the worry was coming from. He just had a feeling. Like thunder in the sky. Only the thunder was in his stomach. There would be a storm.

  Yolie and Xochil cleaned the refrigerator and stove and painted the big shelf in the kitchen. Mando and Jaime and Enrique painted the living room and the kitchen, and by late afternoon, they had started to paint the front bedroom. Mando gave Yolie some money and told her to go buy some food. He gave her directions to a grocery store and told her what the exchange rate was so she would know what things would cost in pesos even though she was paying in dollars. In Juárez, you could always pay in dollars. He’d seen his father pay like that. Sometimes they gave you back change in pesos. Andrés knew that. And he kept the exchange rate in his head like he kept other things. In case he ever needed to pull the information out.

  That first night, Yolie and Ileana made tacos. Andrés remembered that tacos were the last thing his mother had ever cooked for them. He was sorry he remembered. But the tacos were good, and everyone ate. But Andrés felt the thunder in his stomach. That night, when everyone was asleep, Andrés walked into the bathroom, knelt down in front of the toilet, stuck his finger down his throat, and vomited the tacos his sister had made.

  It wasn’t bad the first few weeks. Like they were really a family, everything new and different. But they didn’t know what they were doing, not really, just a game. Mando would go out in the morning, like he was a dad and going to work. And Andrés always wondered about that, and wondered if he were working in El Paso or Juárez—but Mando never told them. When Andrés asked him where he went, Mando said, “I go to work. So we can live here.” He knew Mando didn’t want to talk about it. And sometimes Mando went away for a day or two. And Andrés would ask him where he was. And he would say that sometimes he had to travel. For his work. Ileana asked him where he traveled. He said he didn’t like to talk about work. “Only old men who are about to die talk about work.” That’s what he said.

  Yolie would pick up the house, like playing Mother. And she would cook. And the three of them, Yolie and Ileana and Andrés, would walk to the market and buy food. Andrés loved the market, the tomatoes and the nopales and the limes and the different kinds of chiles, jalapeños and chile de arból and anchos and pasillas, and chiles negros and chile pasado. He loved to stare at the chiles, so beautiful, all the food and the way it was displayed—like jewels and diamonds. Yolie seemed to like the market, too. She was happy when they were there, and she always knew how much to buy and always got a good price.

  But she was restless. Sometimes she would go out in the afternoon, and she told Andrés and Ileana not to tell Mando. And they never did. They never knew where she went. And Andrés thought maybe it was like riding his bike around the neighborhood. Because it felt good to get out and be by yourself. And not be inside all the time.

  Ileana and Andrés would stay home, and Andrés would make up stories to entertain her. Ileana and Andrés learned to keep the house pret
ty clean. Mando got some bricks from somewhere, and they bricked in the dirt of the courtyard, and it was like having an outside room. And he bought some pots, and Yolie planted a banana tree and other kinds of bushes and flowers in the big clay pots Mando had brought home, and it was nice. Andrés liked that courtyard. He would sleep there at night. He would count the stars. But as the days passed, he was getting as restless and bored as Yolie.

  He missed school. He missed riding his bike. He missed speaking English. They had a new rule. Speak Spanish. This is Mexico. But really, they spoke both. For some reason, they hung on to their English.

  “…Mando had saved money and he’d thought of everything. The problem was, he’d only thought of the practical things. An affordable place to live, simple pieces of furniture, a couch, chairs, money for food. If we needed something, he always seemed to have the money to buy it. Nice rugs to cover the old linoleum. It wasn’t bad. But it wasn’t that simple. Not for Mando or Yolie. Not for any of us.”

  “Did you ever find out where Mando was working?”

  He liked her voice. He liked the way she said Andrés. He looked at her. He knew he was wearing a numb look on his face. But he could make himself look numb, even if he didn’t feel that way. He wondered where he’d learned that.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Just wondering.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” She wouldn’t push him. He knew that. If he didn’t want to answer a question, she left it alone.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  “Sure.”

  “There’s a little coffee shop on this floor. I’ll buy you a cup.”

  They didn’t say anything as they walked down the hall. It was odd, to be walking next to her—as if somehow he was a part of her life. But he wasn’t. He knew that. She was a counselor, a therapist, a beautiful woman. He was nothing. That’s what he was.

  As they stood in line at the coffee shop. Grace ordered two cups of coffee. “Small or large?” the guy asked.

  “Small for me.” She looked at him.

  “Small. Black.”

  The guy nodded, and handed them their cups of coffee.

  “When did you start drinking coffee?”

  “My first foster home. I was sixteen.”

  He thought it was all right to ask her the same question. Maybe that was all right. “How about you?”

  “When I got married.”

  He nodded. “You started late.” He felt stupid.

  “Yeah,” she said. “My husband loved coffee. So I learned to like it, too.”

  He thought the seconds it took them to walk back to her office would last forever. And when he was finally sitting back down across from her, he felt better. He knew what he was supposed to do when he was in her office.

  “Do you have a girlfriend?” She asked the question almost as a matter of small talk. But it wasn’t. He knew that.

  “I thought we were supposed to talk about my past.”

  “We can talk about anything we want. And you don’t have to answer the question.”

  “I know.” He tapped his finger on the table. “No.”

  “Are you straight?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with being gay.”

  “Do you think I’m gay?”

  “No.”

  “But you think I might be, because I don’t have a girlfriend.”

  “You sound angry. I didn’t mean to make you angry. It was an honest question. I don’t assume anything about anyone. I don’t jump to conclusions. I ask questions because—” She stopped, then looked at him. She wanted him to understand. “I only asked you if you had a girlfriend because I wanted to know if you were close to anyone. That’s all I’m getting at. Do you have any friends?”

  “I don’t have friends, no.”

  “You mentioned a guy. Al. Is Al your friend?”

  “No. I wouldn’t say that. I work with him. He’s not really my friend. I’m not good about making friends.”

  “What about Dave Duncan?”

  “I wouldn’t call him a friend. He’s my lawyer.”

  “You’re not friends?”

  “No.”

  “So you don’t have a girlfriend. And you don’t have any friends. Sounds lonely.”

  “Look, listening to other people’s problems day after fucking day—that sounds lonely, too.” He was on fire, she could almost touch the rage. He could scare people. He could make anyone afraid, if he wanted to.

  He looked at his watch. “Look, I gotta go.”

  “Andrés, I don’t want you to be angry.”

  He hated her calmness. So fucking easy for her to be so calm, since it wasn’t her life that was under discussion. “I gotta go.”

  “See you on Thursday, then?”

  “Can’t. I got an interview for a job.” He wasn’t telling the truth. “Can’t on Thursday.”

  “Next Tuesday, then?”

  “Sure.” He didn’t look at her, didn’t say good-bye. He just walked out the door.

  So that’s how he played it when he couldn’t yell at you or hit you. He just looked away, pretended you weren’t there. So, I’ve touched a nerve. She stared at the ringing telephone.

  She let it ring. Let them leave a message.

  Not This Case, Judge

  Dave sat at his desk, the morning newspaper unread. He’d brought it with him to the office. He stared at the headline: MAN CONFESSES TO STRANGLING EIGHT-YEAR-OLD. He tossed the newspaper in the trash, then stared at his messages. A call from a former client, a call from his ex-girlfriend, a call from someone he didn’t know, a prospective client, he guessed, and a call from Judge David Caballero. A good judge. Fair, anyway. He made a mental note to write him a check for his reelection campaign. The system sucked. Writing checks for good reasons. And writing checks for bad reasons. He noticed his secretary standing at the door. She had a file in her hand. “Judge Caballero is here to see you.”

  “Send him in, Margie.”

  He stood, half surprised the judge was there in person. He’d come by before, to ask him to take a difficult case, a case nobody wanted to take. He suspected he was knocking at his door now for a similar reason. He was old-fashioned, the judge, preferred to drop in on lawyers rather than call them on the phone. A dying breed.

  “Judge, good to see you.”

  “Dave. How are you?” His voice was friendly, controlled, formal. A voice he’d cultivated over the years. It made people feel comfortable. But never too far away from work.

  Dave was already standing in front of him, shaking his hand, offering him a chair. “It’s good to see you, Judge. Taking a long lunch?”

  “Well, a late one anyway.”

  “How’s Blanca?”

  “Oh, she’s fine. Thanks for asking. She keeps thinking of women you should marry. She keeps a list.”

  “That’s very sweet of her, to think of me.”

  “Don’t you believe it. You should see the list.”

  They both laughed—nothing forced, an easy laugh—then settled into an uncomfortable quiet.

  Finally, Dave tapped his fingers on his desk and asked, “What can I help you with, Judge?”

  “It’s about the Gonzalez case.”

  “The Gonzalez case?”

  “The Angela Gonzalez case.”

  “Oh, the little girl.”

  “Yes.”

  “Awful.”

  “Yes.”

  “I want to appoint you to represent—”

  “I won’t do it, Judge.”

  “That was fast. You didn’t even let me finish.”

  “I don’t mean to be rude, Judge. I don’t need to tell you how much I respect you. You’re a fine judge, and I’ve always tried to take my share of court-appointed cases. But this time, Judge—”

  “Nobody wants this case, Dave.”

  “I can’t do it.”

  “Why not? As an officer of the court, Dave, you’re obliged. You have a duty.?
??

  “With all due respect to everybody’s civil rights, I can’t represent that man. I can’t. Don’t do this to me, Judge.”

  “You’re a good lawyer.”

  “I can’t do this. Give it to someone else. I’ve never turned a case down, have I, Judge? Good, bad, evil, low-profile, high-profile, murder, rape, whatever—if you handed me a case, I did my job. But not this one.”

  The judge nodded. “Mind if I ask why?”

  “It’s personal.”

  The judge kept nodding. “I see. Got any suggestions?”

  Dave sat at his desk and looked around at his comfortable surroundings. An enviable office, neat, tasteful. Not one piece of art in sight. You’d think a man of means would at least own a fucking painting. He caught himself. He knew what he was doing. He beat up on himself when he was upset. The judge’s visit. The things that had happened to Andrés Segovia. A little girl, dead.

  He remembered a colleague talking about “sex rings.” That’s the phrase he used. “They use the children of Juárez, use them for their games.” Games, a neutral euphemism. “Most of the men are from our side. We export more than freedom, baby, I’ll tell you that.” He hated thinking about that conversation, hated knowing what was out there. He knew most of those kids never turned out any good. Andrés Segovia was still something of a miracle.

  Hell no, Judge, I won’t take that case.

  Grace in the Afternoon

  The question, Do you have a girlfriend?—he’d hated it. He objected to having been asked if he was gay, but he was just as bothered by the girlfriend question. By the friend question. Yes, bothered by those questions—enraged by them. As if she were trying to undress him. As if it were a violation. The accusation of intimacy with anyone made him so uncomfortable that he’d wanted to lash out. But even worse was the accusation of loneliness. At that one, he had lashed out, loneliness is fucking listening to other people’s problems day after day.