Do They Know I'm Running? (6 page)

“Things are different now. You know that.”

“My uncle’s in a cell someplace. At least, that’s the best I can hope for. But in a few weeks, maybe less, he’ll be on a plane to El Salvador, not much me or my aunt or anyone else can do about it. And we kinda need Tío’s cash input at the moment. Money’s kinda tight.”

“Maybe it’s time you thought about a job.”

The tone, he thought, so snide, so bogus. “Okay. You’re right. I should go.”

“And not come back.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I don’t? I said it—I can’t take this, okay?” A tear scrolled down her cheek. He reached out to hold her but she tore herself away. “Get out!”

“Why are you—”

“Get!
Out!”

She looked around, saw the empty wineglass on the floor and stooped to pick it up. Cocking her arm, she readied herself to hurl it.

“Put it down.” He turned and without looking back walked out the front door. She slammed it behind him but didn’t turn the lock. He wondered at that, lingering on the porch. Shortly he heard it, coming from inside, not the sound of weeping, something else, something much different, a sudden thick crashing, the splintering hollow thud of earthenware smashing against wood. By the time he snuck back in, came up behind her in the long narrow hallway, she was ankle deep in clay shards, face in her hands, shoulders heaving. And then the shelves were bare, he thought, the words sounding like a line from a fairy tale.

He picked his way through the debris, noticing how the fresh-grave smell was even more pronounced now, wrapped his arms around her, whispering her name as he nuzzled her hair. Listening to her shallow sobs, he thought: But this was what you wanted, right? Someone somewhere crying.

Hours later, when he rose from her bed to head back home, he asked himself what it meant, to bed this woman he cared for so much when she wouldn’t look at him, when even during sex the tears didn’t stop—unable or unwilling to climax, turning away from him as he pulled out short of climax himself, burying her fist in her mouth and her face in the pillow, steeled to his presence but no longer demanding he go.

ROQUE SLOWED TO A JOG AS HE NEARED HUNTINGTON VILLAGE.
Fog drifted off the wetlands, hazing the streetlamps. The screech of a blue jay answered a distant car horn.

He wondered if the agents had come back hoping to wrap up the prior day’s business, snatch the few stragglers who’d eluded them—like Happy, who hadn’t been seen anywhere around here since, Christ, when, two years ago? The prospect of a confrontation, ordered to show ID, forced splay-legged against the chain-link fence with its thorny bougainvillea, it momentarily distracted him from what had just happened with Mariko.

He’d meant to comfort her; she’d remained inconsolable. The woman who made him feel smart, capable, a lover, a man, she’d peeled back the layers of his ego to reveal a whole new level of fuckup. He felt out to lunch, dishonest, guilty. He felt eighteen.

His chest heaved from the run as he peered through the fogged-in darkness, edging toward the trailer-park entrance, checking for sedans, clean-cut cops in bulky raid jackets. The maze of trailers sat quiet and mostly dark. The air smelled of pine and sewer muck. You go back soon, he told himself, you make sure she’s okay. You stay until she talks to you.

The tinny clamor of wind chimes grew louder as he neared the trailer; he saw lights up front. Tía’s awake, he thought, one more thing to tweak his guilt. Godo would be too, of course. I’m
gonna catch hell, he thought, for leaving him alone. Okay. Fine. Unlocking the door with his key, he eased it open, stepped inside. Glancing at the breakfast nook, he stopped short.

“Close the door,” Happy said.

He was sitting next to Tía Lucha at the kitchenette table, his face bearded and stern, looking like a saint from some old Dominican prayer card. The beard was new. Always lean, he seemed gaunt now, eyes bulging from their sockets like small black plums. The rest of his face composed itself into a wary, tight-lipped scowl and his body seemed coiled, ready to bolt or lash out. He wore jeans, work boots, a plaid flannel shirt. His black hair was cropped short.

“Where the hell did you come from?”

Happy’s long-fingered hands clutched a mug of Tía Lucha’s Nescafé, which he raised halfway to his lips before answering. “That’s a long story.”

“When did you get here?”

Tía Lucha piped in:—
He’s been back almost a week
.

Roque was stunned. “You knew?”

—
Of course not. Why would I keep something like that from you if I knew?

She seemed dazed, even fearful, an effect enhanced by the day’s first smears of thick white makeup, which gave her face a clownish unreality. Her glance darted between Roque and Happy, her gifted if irksome nephew, her
marido
’s fugitive son.

Roque said, “I meant no offense, Tía.”

She rolled her eyes. Happy downed the last of his coffee.

Roque said, “Does Godo know you’re here?”

Happy turned in his seat to get out. “We had our chat.” He rose and offered a grateful nod to Tía Lucha. To Roque, he said, “Walk with me.”

“I need to check the dressing on Godo’s leg.”

Happy glanced back down the hall toward Godo’s room. “It can wait.”

OUTSIDE, THE FOG LINGERED. HAPPY HIKED UP THE COLLAR OF HIS
shirt. “You forget how cold it gets here,” he said, walking briskly toward the gate, hunched forward. He cast an impatient glance over his shoulder, urging Roque to keep pace.

Once they were out on the river road he turned north, one wash of headlights after the other spraying his back as the morning’s first traffic made its way toward Napa. He ignored the cars or trucks as they rushed by but Roque could tell from the dock of his head as each one passed that he was noting who was inside.

Several hundred yards on he turned off the gravel roadbed into the parking lot for a small weatherworn strip mall—a cash-only car repair, a discount mattress outlet, a combination
panadería/tienda/envío de dinero
. If not for the raid the day before, clusters of bleary men would already be gathered in the parking lot, trying to stay warm as they waited for contractors to swing by, collect them for a day’s work. Happy headed for a battered Ford pickup scalloped with rust, bearing Arizona plates. Climbing behind the wheel, he said, “Get in.”

As Roque closed the door behind him, Happy lit up a cigarette, the rubbery match flame hollowing his features. After shaking out the match and exhaling a long plume of smoke, he turned to stare across the pickup’s cab with a strangely menacing sadness.

“Been spending your nights boning some broad twice your age. How’d that happen?”

Roque felt the blood drain from his face. “Who told you that?”

“Who says I needed to be told?” Happy tapped his ash through the window vent. “Tell me, Roque, your
vieja
, when she takes you into her bed …” He affected a throaty purr.

“Fuck you.”

“Watch your mouth.”

“You been spying on me?”

“I know things,” Happy said. “Get used to it.”

“Yeah? What else do you know?”

“That’s my business. What’s with Godo?”

“Tía Lucha didn’t tell you?”

“Never mind what she told me, I wanna hear it from you.”

“Hear what?”

“He’s fucked up.”

“Ya think?”

Happy reached across and swatted the back of Roque’s head. “Don’t be such a punk.”

“Don’t touch me.”

Happy, in whiny nasal mimicry:
“Don’t touch me.”
Then: “His dick still work?”

Roque had to process that. “There’s some things we don’t share.”

“I mean has he gotten it wet since he got back? Given how he looks, I was thinking maybe …” Happy rubbed his thumb and index finger together, suggesting cash.

“Who am I, his pimp?”

Happy chuckled at that, then took another long drag, blowing the smoke out, watching it billow against the windshield. “Face the way it is? He looks like a fucking dartboard.”

“Tell him that. I dare you.”

Happy let that go, except to say, “You got a point. Nothing wrong with his temper. Spent maybe two minutes with him, he wants to mix it up.”

“You want Godo mellow, you’ll have to kill him.”

“There’s a thought.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Fuck’s sake, Roque, chill out. By the way, not everybody who was over there came back fucked up. You get that, right?”

“How would you know?”

Happy picked a fleck of tobacco off his tongue. “That’s another
long story.” He turned to gaze out at his window at the mold-freckled storefronts. A crow perched on the rain gutter, framed by fog. “How come you’re not pitching in with money?”

“Who says I’m not?”

“You’re really starting to piss me off with this.”

“I’ve got a line on a band gig. Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

Roque shrugged. “Hard to say.”

“Really? Hard to say what, your family needs the bread? Hard to say they’re fucked, my old man deported?”

An eighteen-wheeler thundered past, rattling the pickup’s windows. The crow on the gutter fluttered its wings. “Maybe we can get a lawyer.”

“Fucking hell—you stupid? What’s a lawyer gonna do except take our money? You think—” Happy stopped short, glancing in his rearview mirror. A patrol car pulled into the strip-mall lot. Murmuring, “What’s this asshole want,” he stubbed out his cigarette, dropped the butt between his feet. “Keep talking,” he told Roque.

“About what?”

“About anything. So we don’t look like we’re casing this dump.”

Roque let his glance dart once out the cab’s back window, then started babbling, launching into the first thing that came to mind. Happy, eyes glued to the mirror, spoke to the reflection: “Come on, fuckwad. You run the plates, we’re gonna do this.” With painful slowness, the patrol car eased along the storefronts, shining a flashlight through the window glass.

“Open the glove box,” Happy said.

Roque obeyed. The butt of a pistol lay exposed within a folded newspaper. “Jesus—”

Happy turned toward him, their eyes met. The menacing sorrow was gone, replaced by emptiness. “Tell me another story.”

“You’re not gonna shoot a cop.”

“I’ll shoot you, you don’t calm down. Tell me another story.”

The black-and-white, having finished its check of the stores, eased toward the end of the parking lot, only to circle back and come abreast of the pickup, so the driver sides matched up. The cruiser’s tires were muddy, the windshield caked with rainy grime. The cop lowered his window and gestured for Happy to do the same. The glove box remained open.

The officer said, “Mind telling me your business here?”

Happy turned so his body blocked whatever view the cop might have through the window. “I’m just sitting here talking with my cousin, officer. He’s getting married next month and he’s worried about money.”

The cop studied Happy at length, an occasional attempt to glance past him toward Roque. The man had a thick putty-colored face with baggy eyes, more bored clerk than cop. “Kinda early, don’t you think?”

“Only time we had. We both gotta head off for work soon.”

“What say you do that now.”

“Yes, sir. You wanna see my license and registration?”

Happy reached for the glove box. Roque’s throat closed up, he couldn’t get his breath.

The cop glanced away, dipping his head toward his radio, deciphering a sudden shock of words ensnarled in static. “Just get to where you need to be.”

“Okay, sure.” Happy toggled his keys, cranking the engine. “Thank you, officer.”

He pulled out and the cop stayed put, the two of them watching each other in their rearviews. Happy turned south, heading back toward the trailer park. He dug another smoke from the pack in his shirt pocket, set it between his lips, then rummaged in his pants pocket for his matches. “I’m gonna drive a ways,” he said, “not pull in, understand?”

Roque nodded. He could finally breathe. “You’re the one driving.”

Happy lit a match one-handed, held it to the tip of his cigarette, tilted his head back as he waved out the flame, then tossed the matchbook onto the dash. “Let’s get back to what we were talking about.”