In Perfect Light

  It was good to be drunk. To be numb. To not care. He understood now why Yolie liked drugs. It must be something like this, he thought. Sometimes heaven was feeling nothing. Maybe being drunk was a little like dying and going to heaven. Like living in the light. He kept thinking of Ileana. She was eight now. Eight years old and smart and beautiful, and she had all her teeth now. He was glad that she was the one who had been saved. He laughed and laughed and laughed, and then he thought that maybe he wasn’t laughing at all. Maybe he was crying.

  He didn’t know how long he’d been sleeping out in the courtyard. It was early afternoon when he’d started drinking. It was night, now, and the banging on the door woke him. He stumbled to the door, and stared at a man. He knew that man. It was one of the men who had come to him before. Half gringo, half Mexican. “You’ve grown,” the man said.

  Andrés smiled at him. “I’m not working tonight.”

  “I have money. I have lots of money.”

  Andrés shook his head. “I’m done with all of this.”

  The man came closer. That’s when Andrés reached for his collar and flung him to the ground. The man looked up at him. “Homero will make you pay.”

  “Fuck you, and fuck Homero.” Andrés walked away, his head pounding and pounding as if it were a door someone was trying to knock down. Maybe that was the day when the fire inside him got started. The fire that kept everyone at bay. The fire that scorched anyone who got close.

  The fire that was burning him up alive.

  Timing and Order in the Universe

  It is early in the evening. Tonight, Grace is looking at an article regarding women who have cancer—why some survive, why others don’t. It isn’t strictly a medical essay, though it is written by a doctor. Richard Garza had left it in her mailbox with a note: “There’s hope and there’s still time.” She wonders at herself. She is frustrated and charmed by her doctor’s tenacity. She has already decided not to seek treatment, but tonight she will read the article. He went to so much trouble.

  Andrés Segovia is having a conversation with himself as he looks in the mirror. Every time he looks at himself, he looks unfamiliar. Sometimes he thinks he is looking at himself for the first time. He is never satisfied with the stranger he sees in the mirror. Today, he thinks the man he is staring at is old. He sees an aging face.

  Dave is talking to the DA at a small bar down the street from the courthouse. They are old friends—just as, at times, they are old enemies. They are discussing the charges against Andrés Segovia. Dave is trying to get him to drop the charges. The DA listens patiently to all his arguments. He is trying to be sympathetic. But the answer is no. “Sorry—but in my opinion, your client took a life. In the state of Texas, that’s murder. Look, it’s not capital murder, no premeditation, so look, maybe you can talk me down to manslaughter. Your client was reckless, and there isn’t any doubt about that. No doubt at all.” Dave is equally patient as he listens. “Involuntary manslaughter.” They nod at each other. The DA shakes his head. “Look, he could get a pretty light sentence. Five to fifteen—with parole.”

  “He doesn’t deserve this, Bobby. You know I’m going to put the victim on trial. You know that, don’t you?”

  “If you can.”

  “Just watch. He’s not going to spend one second in jail. Not one worthless second.”

  “We all fight to win, don’t we?”

  The DA raises his bottle of beer.

  Dave is thinking this is a waste of time.

  Liz and Mister are looking over an empty building on the East Side. Dolce Vita East. They have decided to open up a second coffee shop. Liz looks over the abandoned building. “It needs work.”

  Mister looks at her and asks, “Are we afraid of work?”

  They laugh. They decide they will make an offer on the building. As they walk back to the car, Liz says maybe they should name the new coffee shop after Vicente.

  Touch

  Do you ever let anyone touch you?” She’d asked him that. She knew the answer before she asked. “Define touch.” And there it was again, that rage that owned him. There it was, knocking down his door.

  Just as he was about to leave, she’d taken out a dictionary. “Let’s see,” she said. “Touch. Yes, here it is. I like the first definition. ‘To cause or permit the body to come in contact with so as to feel.’”

  “That’s an old dictionary, Grace.”

  “It’s about as old as you are—which isn’t old at all.”

  “Dictionaries are outdated the minute after they’re published.”

  “Okay,” she’d answered. “So you think a newer dictionary has changed the meaning of the word—substantially, I mean? Here,” she said, then pushed the dictionary in his direction.

  It smelled of book mold. Like the old part of a library. He’d stared at the entry. Touch. “Here,” he said, “I like this definition better. ‘To disturb or move by handling.’”

  He’d shoved the dictionary back across the desk. She’d reread the entries. “Mine is the first definition. Yours is the seventh.” She’d nodded. “But here, let’s not quibble about rankings. Let’s take number fifteen. ‘To affect the emotions of; move to tender response.’” She’d smiled at him.

  That’s where they’d left the discussion. With Grace having the last word.

  “I don’t like dictionaries much,” he’d told her as he walked out the door.

  He hadn’t liked the discussion. He didn’t like thinking about touch. He didn’t know anything about that word. Dictionaries didn’t know crap.

  He showered, shaved, looked at himself in the mirror. Well, he looked fine. He’d always looked fine. The way he looked, that had never been the problem. Or maybe it had been the problem. You’re a beautiful boy, and why were the voices there, but he knew why and he knew they would always be there, the voices, knocking at his door, taking over his house.

  He slipped on some jeans. He looked in his closet and realized that all of his shirts were the same—all of them were white cotton shirts. All of them. It was like having only one shirt. He’d never even realized that, God, was he screwed up or what? Twenty-six years old, and never been on a date, and all his shirts were white? What was that? And who cared, anyway, about clothes? Some of his T-shirts were black, so that wasn’t white. A few pairs of khakis and jeans, that’s what he wore. And who cared? They covered his body. That’s what mattered. He lit a cigarette, his hands trembling. He ran a finger up his arm. Touch.

  Emancipation—There’s a Word

  Maybe he would go for a run. Maybe that would help. But how would running help anything? He walked to the window and opened it. He looked at his watch. It wasn’t that late. Just before midnight. He wasn’t sleepy. He turned away from the window as he heard the phone ring. It could only be Dave. Nobody else had his number. He walked up to the phone and stared at it. On the fourth ring, he answered it. “You asleep?”

  “No. You always call people this late, Dave?”

  “Sometimes. Yes. You wanna grab a beer?”

  Andrés walked to the window and lit a cigarette. “What are we, pals?”

  “Let’s grab a beer.”

  Andrés blew out a smoke ring and watched it. “Sure,” he whispered. “Why the hell not?”

  “I’ve been wanting to tell you something. For a long time, now.”

  “So what’s been stopping you?”

  “Not everything’s so easy to say.”

  “I thought everything was easy for a guy like you.”

  “Why? Because I’m a gringo?”

  “A rich gringo. A rich gringo lawyer.”

  “Oh, the whole fucking world belongs to me? Is that it? The world doesn’t belong to anyone.”

  “Oh, that’s a pretty lie you tell yourself.”

  They stood there for a minute. On the street. Talking in the dim light. Just like they’d talked that night when he’d bailed him out of jail.

  “So you got a place where you like to go have a beer? You know, wi
nd down?”

  “I don’t think I know anything about winding down. I don’t think you do, either.”

  “Common ground. At last.”

  He lit a cigarette. “I know a place. It’s called El Ven Y Verme.”

  Dave laughed. “That’s funny. I like that. Do they allow rich gringo lawyers?”

  “Only if they’re with people like me.”

  His foster mother was stable. That’s about all Andrés had to say for her. She was strict and decent in a dull kind of way. He called her Mrs. H. For Mrs. Herrera. Mrs. Herrera sounded too formal. And she wasn’t his mom. And didn’t want her to be. And Mr. H—well he was even duller than his wife.

  He wasn’t allowed to smoke. He wasn’t even allowed to have cigarettes. So he started taking a toothbrush in his backpack, so he could find a place to brush his teeth before he came home. He called it home even though it wasn’t. It was just going to be a place where he waited until he was emancipated.

  That would take three years.

  In his house in Juárez, he thought, sometimes, that he would die from worrying. Here, in the house of Mr. and Mrs. H, he thought he would die of boredom. But they bought him a computer, and he was learning things, and he was back in school, and even though he’d missed more than three years, they put him in the same grade he would’ve been. Only he had to catch up on his math. And so he did that. He studied and studied, and fell in love with the computer. Because it saved him from his boredom.

  At school, he didn’t have any friends. He didn’t care. He kept to himself. Once an older guy stopped him as he was walking back home after school. He asked him if he wanted to go for a ride. He knew about older guys. He said no. The guy offered to buy him beer or cigarettes or anything he wanted. So he just looked at the guy and said, “Fuck you.” And the guy got mad, but he didn’t care. He could go to hell. Everyone could.

  And one day, he got in a fight. Some guy was telling another guy in the bathroom that if he didn’t get him some money, he was going to kick his ass. And Andrés got mad, and told the guy to leave the other guy alone, “Just leave him the hell alone.”

  “Fuck you. I’m gonna stick a knife up your ass.”

  And so they got in a fight. The other guy got in some good jabs, but Andrés was faster and angrier, and soon Andrés had the other guy on the ground. And the school cop came into the bathroom, and before he blinked, he was in the principal’s office. They called his foster mother, Mrs. H, and she cried and said she didn’t know what was wrong with Andrés. “Never says anything. Never does anything, either,” she said. And Andrés knew she didn’t care for him. He was just a project. She’d wanted someone who would love her. And he wasn’t doing his job.

  And Andrés got mad and said he didn’t have anything to say—not to her. Not to anyone.

  That’s when they sent him to his first counselor. He didn’t remember her name anymore. She told him that he needed to work on his anger. And she wanted to know where his anger came from. And Andrés didn’t care, and so he looked at her and said, “From God.”

  And he and that counselor never got along. Because she was a Christian, and she didn’t like jokes about God.

  That first day, she kept asking him what had happened at the school, and Andrés wondered why it was wrong to help someone, why wasn’t that other guy in counseling? Why didn’t they do anything to him? So he would talk to the counselor, but not much. She asked what had happened to him in Juárez. She said she knew about that from the social worker—but he never told her what really happened. Maybe a little piece. But just a piece of it. But what had really happened to him, he never told her. Fuck her. He wasn’t going to tell her.

  But everything was okay, because every week, he would go to meet Silvia. Sometimes on Saturday mornings, and sometimes on Saturday afternoons. He would call her and leave a message at her sister’s house. And then she got a cell phone, because it was easier to get a cell phone when you lived in Juárez than to get a regular phone. And he would leave messages, and they always managed to get together. They ate something together. They talked. And she was like having a home, Silvia. She was the only person in the world who knew him.

  He never told anyone about Silvia—not the H’s and not his counselor and not his social worker. No one knew about Silvia. She was a secret. Because Andrés knew they would never let him see her, if they knew. Not the H’s and not his social worker and not his counselor, who was a Christian. They would tell him that Silvia was an abomination, which was Mrs. H’s favorite word. A word she found in the Bible, she said. He’d read parts of the Bible, but he didn’t remember that word.

  School was okay. And the H’s let him keep his computer, and he learned so many things, and he thought that all he needed in the world was a computer and Silvia. So everything was okay. Sometimes girls would talk to him. And he knew they were flirting with him. And he was nice to them, but when they wanted to go out and do something, he said no.

  He joined the running team, and he listened to the guys talk about girls, about what they wanted to do with them, and he thought he didn’t like guys much. He thought guys were all pieces of shit—and he was a guy, so he knew he was a piece of shit, too. He wasn’t any better than they were. And so he ran with them. He was the best runner. So they left him alone. If you were the best at something, people let you be.

  So everything was okay. Except that one day Mrs. H wanted to know what he did on all those Saturdays when he took the bus downtown. “I just like to walk around,” he said.

  “And do what?”

  “Just walk around. I watch the people. They shop, they do things. I just like to watch all the people.”

  She didn’t believe him. Not that he cared. “You can’t go anymore,” she said. “And it’s time you started going to church.”

  He didn’t like her church. “I’m Catholic,” he said, though really he wasn’t anything. He would never be anything.

  “You live with us. You don’t know. You’re only a boy. You’ll go to church with us. And you won’t be going downtown anymore. There are things boys shouldn’t see.”

  He didn’t say anything. He’d been there almost two years, and he was sixteen now, and he only had two years to go. Less than two years. But he wasn’t going to stay. So that night, he called Silvia on her cell phone. She didn’t answer. It was night, and he knew she was working. At La Brisa. So that night, he put a few things in his backpack, and he left. He had to leave his computer. He thought of his typewriter. That made him sad. But one day he’d buy his own computer.

  He walked across the bridge to Juárez, though it scared him. He knew he shouldn’t be going back. He shouldn’t. He knew that. He was trembling, and he smoked all the way to La Brisa, one cigarette after another. And when he got there, he ordered a beer. And the bartender recognized him and told him he shouldn’t be drinking, but he poured him a beer, anyway. “You looking for Silvia?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “She’s working. But she’ll be back.”

  So he waited for a long time. He smoked and sat at the bar, and a few of the girls said hello to him, girls he knew. They were really boys, but they called themselves girls, and so he called them girls, too. And they told him he looked like a man now. And they were nice to him. Nicer to him than the social worker or Mrs. H or his first counselor. He’d started seeing a new one, and she was nicer, but not as nice as the girls. Not as nice as Silvia.

  And that’s when everything happened. As he was sitting there at that bar, thinking about things and smoking too many cigarettes, Silvia ran into the bar, and he could tell something was wrong. “He’s after me,” she screamed. “Homero, he’s after me. Me va matar. Me va matar!” She kept screaming that.

  She didn’t even notice Andrés sitting there. Not until Andrés said, “It’s okay, Silvia. It’s okay.”

  Silvia embraced Andrés, calmer now, though she was still upset. “You shouldn’t be here,” she said. “You crazy boy. You should be home playing with your co
mputer.”

  “I left,” he said. “She was going to make me stop going downtown. I was never going to see you again.”

  “You crazy boy,” she said. She lit a cigarette, then downed a shot of tequila to calm her nerves. “I have to get you out of here. If Homero finds you here, he’ll kill both of us. He’s still mad about what you did. And I helped out one of his girls, and he came after me tonight. He beat up the guy I was with. He said he’d kill anyone who was with me from now on.”

  “You have to come back to El Paso, Silvia. You’ll be safe there.” Andrés begged and begged her, until she agreed.

  She knew Andrés wouldn’t leave without her.

  “I don’t remember exactly everything that happened that night. Only that we came back across. And that somehow someone told Homero they saw us. He was one mean sonofabitch. We didn’t know it, but he followed us into El Paso. He must’ve been right behind us.”

  “You never told me that you’d been to Juárez that night.”

  “No. I guess I didn’t. It wouldn’t have made me look very good in front of the jury.”

  “The jury wouldn’t have known. The jury knows what we tell them.”

  “Maybe I didn’t trust you.”

  “Maybe you still don’t.”

  “I’m here having a beer with you. That’s as close as I get to trust.” Andrés downed his beer. “I didn’t mean to kill him. We stopped to get a cup of coffee at the Hollywood Café, Silvia and I. And she said I was going to have to go back to the H’s. And I told her no way in hell. I told her I’d have to get new foster parents. I told her I didn’t care. And I made her promise that she wouldn’t go back to live in Juárez, and she said yes, but I knew she was only telling me that so I’d shut up. And as we walked out of that place, and turned the corner, that’s when it happened. He had a knife. He grabbed me and put the knife to my throat, and I thought I was dead. And for a second I didn’t care if I died. I didn’t. And he made us go into the alley. And then he lunged at Silvia with the knife and kept digging it into her. Again and again, and it happened so fast. And I don’t even remember what I did. I think I was screaming. I don’t know. I don’t remember. I just remember cop cars—and me standing over Homero. And I knew what I’d done to him. And I didn’t even care. I didn’t mean to kill him. But it’s—I mean, well, look, it’s fucking hard to be sorry.”