He put it in drive and hit the gas. They barreled forward, and the front left tire almost clipped a porch post.
“Beto, watch out,” Angie said. “Jesus. Papa is going to kill me.”
Rose started laughing. “You’re the worst driver, Beto,” she said. “The worst in the world.” She laughed harder, and Angie did too, her big echoing laugh.
“Sorry,” he said. His hands were sweating, and he could smell the stinking wool of Tomás’s jacket, and he hit the accelerator too hard again. They skidded out into the street, splashing in a giant puddle. The jolt sent both girls sliding across the seat, and because they were tipsy, and in love, they started laughing harder.
Beto wasn’t laughing. He was shaking, and sweating, and he could barely see past the headlights. He just wanted to get home. He was starving.
Roberto bolted upright in the shop’s office. He blinked at the windows and then at his watch. Eight o’clock now, well past his dinner time. His stomach churned. He hadn’t eaten anything but a convenience-store turkey sub that Angie picked up for him at noon. His hands were shaking—he could blame too much coffee, but he knew it was more than that. Angie had gone home at six, but he’d said he’d close up. He hadn’t wanted to go home to his empty apartment, to see the tangled sheets imprinted with the body of another stranger. He had sunk down into Mr. Juarez’s recliner, replaying the memories that had erupted throughout the day. He heaved himself out of the chair now, and his legs wobbled before he caught his balance.
Roberto walked home in the near dark. The day had reversed itself: dawn turned to deep dusk. He reversed his route, too, down Main and past Esther’s closed shop. The other stores were bright and busy now, the street alive with cars and headlights. The scent of char-grilled carne asada wafted from Casa Verde. He’d stop there in a minute, wolf down tacos and take home another batch, and the owner would say, as she always did, “Hijole, mi’jo, where do you put it?” But he stopped first across from Esther’s, staring at the unlit window. The bats were out again to feed, their wings beating fast after a day at rest. He tilted his head and watched them dart and swerve after invisible prey.
He saw himself—that boy, Beto, the boy who dreamed of flying through space. A boy whose brother died, whose friend disappeared, whose body grew too quickly. Somehow he’d shut off his heart and mind and let his body take over, consume him. A kind of self-protection, yes, but where had it led him? Scarfing food, holding down three jobs, walking and biking instead of driving, having rip-roaring sex in dark parking lots. And here he was: still hungry, a gnawing pain he could not shake.
Tomás, again, always: Don’t try so hard, hombrecito. Be yourself. Little man, all grown up. But into whom? He wished he knew. Maybe it was time to figure it out.
Standing across from the bakery, Roberto stared upward. It was not yet night, but the planets and stars swam in the murky aquarium sky. Something bright streaked high in the east, and he squinted. A meteor? No, a satellite. Or a ship sailing across the sky. He rose to his tiptoes, rocking on the balls of his feet. A car honked, and someone catcalled, “Whoooo, Beto!” He waved automatically. He looked to Esther’s window, and the line came to him: He was pure moonbeam, traveling by the light of himself. He put his head down and began to walk at a fast clip. He passed the restaurant and instead headed straight home. He needed to write it down before he could forget.
Say You See the World
They found you. At least that’s the word on the street. About a half mile north of the motel, in the wash where I gather stones for the lake. All this time, you’ve been that close. All this time, I could have been the one to find you.
They’ll be knocking on my door soon enough, I’m sure. Going over it all again. I can’t tell them any more than I did then. I was the last to see you. I still don’t know where you went. If that’s you in the wash, I have no idea how you got there.
All I know is that was the fall of falls. That’s how it has become entwined in memory for me. Fall the season. Falling down. Falling for the pharmacist.
I had graduated high school, and I should have been at Arizona State on an art scholarship, but instead I was stuck helping my parents with the motel until my mom got on her feet after her double mastectomy. I had moved out of the room I shared with Rose in the house I grew up in and into the Woodchute’s Room 11, with its king-size bed, kitchenette, pink-and-turquoise southwestern art and dusty gold curtains. What could I say: at least I had my own space now. I shoved my clothes in the closet, my toiletries in the bath, my drawings and half-used paints and drawing pads under the bed, along with a shoebox where I stashed my savings.
The first fall happened sometime in October, I think. I remember tufts of yellow and red on the Black Hills. I was at the motel, carrying a load of bedding from a room to the laundry bin, when I got distracted by the sky, by the riotous clouds casting shadows on Mingus Mountain. Distraction. That’s how I thought of it. Still think of it. My space-outs, Rose calls them. The best I can describe it is that it’s like seeing a flash from something, the face of a watch, maybe, or a car hood, a hubcap at the bottom of a river. Behind my eyes, colors and shapes take flight, and I can’t seem to help it: I stop and stare. That, on top of my face, and you can imagine the assumptions: I’m crazy, or mildly retarded, or possibly autistic, or, well, not quite right. People say these things in front of me. I’m sure they said them in front of you, as well as others: Space Cadet. Prentiss Dementis. Hickey Face. Tard. Deformo. They stare at my cheek but won’t meet my eyes, or whisper to each other when they see me coming, their eyes fever-bright with malice or pity. My own parents never really noticed when I was in a room—not after Rose, their “surprise,” the unblemished daughter, came along. It’s like I’m either too visible or invisible, which is a strange place to inhabit.
Anyway, that day at the motel, I stepped on a dangling sheet and, boom, down I went to the pavement, scraping the hell out of my knee and elbow. The first fall.
That also was the first day I spoke to you.
At the HealthCo, I was standing in line at the pharmacy, my basket full of antiseptic and bandages, when I turned to see you watching me, touching your cheek in the spot where my mark was. I knew who you were. I’d seen you at school earlier in the spring, of course, but I also knew you as the girl who walked at night. I knew before anyone about you and the man and the dark house. But I never told. I’m good at secrets, even if no one asks me to keep them.
I said to you, “It’s not contagious.” Out of habit, it came out with more sting than humor, and you dropped your hand as if you’d burned yourself, as if your own perfect skin would ever harm you.