Moon Shadow: The Totally True Love Adventure Series (Volume 1) (13 page)

In the nick of time, Mike says, “You ladies change your clothes. Let’s get out of here.”

Norma and Josie leave the table. Josie had not taken her eyes off me. Now I can relax a little.

“Soon we’ll go to the store Josie’s folks own,” Mike says. “Carlos will meet us outside with your license.”

“Whatever,” I say, as I get to my feet. I’m feeling a little unsteady after drinking the beer, and I want only to be somewhere else.

Outside, the Mexican girls, both in their early twenties, I gauge, have changed into matching black cocktail dresses and black heels. Norma looks stunning.

I wait in front, with Norma and Josie, while Mike meets with a tall Mexican man nearby—Carlos.

I watch Carlos jerk his head back with a practiced movement, tossing his hair into place. He possesses the terrified, twitching face of a jackal. Apparently, Mike is speaking Spanish, his voice low. He hands Carlos a twenty-dollar bill, and Carlos gives Mike the driver’s license. I’ve already concluded that I will own a doctored license.

Mike returns my license to me, and as I examine it, the girls peek over my shoulder. I notice the year of birth has been changed, undetectably, from 1997, to 1996. With the new date of birth, I turned eighteen in March. I’ve been told often that I look older than my seventeen years; now I hold the proof in my hands.

While we wait for a taxi Josie slips her arm through mine, pulling me close. Oddly enough, I enjoy Josie’s possessive embrace; I feel somewhat manly with her on my arm.

I have begun to acknowledge that, in her own special way, Josie is beautiful. The curve of her mouth seems to form an expression of sadness; her eyes show concern. She looks at me, smiling, a stupid smile perhaps, but it only reflects her essential nature. I can hardly blame her for being happy. She is of a culture rife with poverty and despair and injustices, yet she retains her free-spirited innocence. Her demeanor reflects her inner desires. She is in touch with herself, and what I like best about Josie, I now realize, is that she doesn’t seem to feel impotent or inconsequential, like me.

“Josie’s store has an apartment in the back,” Mike says, his words slurred. “Let’s walk, it’s not far.”

I stroll along with Mike in the early evening warmth, behind the girls.

“Al Williams, Julie’s father,” Mike says, “showed Dad the wild side of TJ. Dad brought Julie and me down here, before I enlisted.”

I rub my eyes in a gesture of weariness. There’s an interval of silence.

“How’d you like your license?” Mike asks. Then before I can answer, he says, “Carlos is creative, does passports, visas, work permits, anything. If I ever get my ass in a jam up north, Carlos will set me up down here. Get me a job. Nobody would ever find me. Keep that in mind, Danny. Tell your friends. Norma speaks English; she’s a great contact. Josie, too.”

Mike shouts after the girls. “Wait up!”

I drop behind with Josie. Locked in until Mike wants to leave TJ, I feel apprehensive about fending her off. I had explained to Mike on the drive from the airbase that I don’t need a girlfriend.

Josie’s neighborhood looks like something out of the nineteenth century: tile-roofed houses fronting on narrow streets, an ornate gallery of shops. We approach the unlighted grocery store, the anterior of which is crumbly and small, half the size of a 7-Eleven. The door is padlocked. Josie takes a key from her white plastic purse. As we enter, we hear the jingling of silver bells hanging on the door. Josie switches on the lights.

The tiny store is lined with wood shelves stocked with canned goods, boxes of cereal, rice, brown bottles of vanilla extract, chocolate candy bars and chewing gum. Bins of bananas, avocados, tomatoes and carrots adjoin the checkout table. I don’t see a cash register.

Josie grabs my hand, and with the awkward tread of a large, ungainly bird, she leads me to the back of the store. Mike and Norma follow. The place seems insidious somehow, with its stale smell of spilled beer and undone laundry, its peeling stucco walls, slimy windows and soiled shades.

We enter a small kitchen where an ancient stove and refrigerator stand to one side, across from a threadbare sofa. Josie opens a cabinet over the stove and brings out a bottle of tequila. She hands it to Mike. He turns off the kitchen light. Norma is sitting on the sofa.

In the semi-darkness Josie steers me down a short hallway to a room with no door that is dimly lighted by a red bulb. Inside is a single bed, propped against the wall.

Josie goes in, sits ponderously on the bed. I remain standing in the fuzzy light. If I could only run to my cave on Rattlesnake Mountain, I am thinking, where I wouldn’t be found.

Josie gazes at me with her unrestrained smiling brown eyes. I stare outside through the window high above the bed, at the stars that glow like candles in some celestial synagogue. I sigh, and then sit down next to Josie, with the hope that I can get by with only a kiss or two.

From the kitchen comes the noise of the sofa, creaking with the movements of Mike and Norma, along with the sweet music of Norma’s voice, emitting moans of pleasure like the notes of a melodic phrase in a familiar blues tune, repeating themselves over and over: “ooh, ooh, ooh ...”

I’m embarrassed, and at the same time aroused. Visions of Norma, in an ecstasy of passion, steal into my mind.

Josie puts her head on my shoulder. I turn my head and attempt to kiss her, gently on the lips, but her tongue gets in the way. She laughs softly and I kiss her again, with some tenderness. We kiss for a few minutes (I am still listening to Norma) and then Josie places her hand on my crotch and massages me through the fabric of my jeans. I feel an obligation to move my hand to her breast. The firmness of her bountiful bosom surprises me. I begin to imagine that I’m fondling Norma.

With Josie’s touch and my whims of Norma, I am ready, but not willing. Josie unzips my pants. She grasps me delicately, yet with a subtle, knowing firmness. A small thrill of pleasure tickles my neurons. Josie lies back on the bed and pulls up her dress.

Fresh images of Norma are bouncing about in my head and Josie is moaning just like her. But at that point, I know I must stop.

“Dunny?”

“I don’t ... want to continue,” I whisper, as I roll away from Josie.

In the kitchen the frequency and volume of Norma’s moans reach a crescendo, becoming vociferous: “Oh yes, Mike, yes, oh yes ...”

Then, abruptly, silence.

I stand and zip my jeans. Josie smiles stoically. Without taking her eyes off me, she sits up slowly and straightens her dress. In her best English, she says, “Joo ees me fren, Dunny.”

I sit beside Josie and kiss her softly, without passion. We sink back on the bed and kiss for a long while, until she falls asleep. Then I close my eyes and fall asleep next to her.

***

I wake with a start, open my eyes. Brilliant white light has eradicated the darkness. I hear a gruff masculine voice angrily spewing Spanish words.

“Danny, let’s go brother, we gotta get the hell outa here!”

Ironically, Josie stands over me, smiling, calmly tugging at my arm, but she can’t mask the worry in her eyes.

I spring from the bed and rush out of the room and into the kitchen. Norma sits on the couch, getting dressed in a hurry. Mike takes off running. I bolt after him, through the store. An old mustachioed man stands behind the checkout table, sorting paperwork. A short woman of middling age is stocking the shelves. Neither of them seems to notice Mike or me. The cluster of tiny bells on the door sounds as we stumble outside.

“That was Josie’s ma and pa,” Mike says. “They don’t like it when guys hang around the store.”

“Can you blame them?”

“Maybe not. Let’s grab a taxi.”

“What time is it? I ask.” If only Mr. Christie, or better yet, Liz, could see me now, I tell myself sarcastically.

“It’s after six a.m. We’ll be home by eight.”

The streets are deserted, except for a few drunken swabees tramping along on the sidewalk behind us.

A yellow taxi comes into view. Mike waves his arm and the driver slows the cab and pulls to the curb.

“Let’s go, Danny.”

I look over my shoulder and see the Navy men approaching, on the run. Just as Mike opens the car door they draw close, and one of them, a big yellow-haired brute with massive hands and bovine face, a Swede perhaps, grabs Mike’s arm from behind. The Swede turns Mike around and gives him a shove. Mike, still a little drunk, stumbles backwards and falls into a sitting position on the pavement behind the cab. I back away from the taxi.

“That’s
our
cab,” the Swede roars, his voice deep and husky. He is drunk, like the others.

As the Swede moves towards him, Mike rises in a sneering rage, with a grin for the imminence of combat, his fists cocked confidently in boxing form, the sweat bursting forth from his brow in droplets of quicksilver. It seems he has been jolted out of his drunken state.

Mike hops menacingly towards the Swede and executes a fine roundhouse punch to the big guy’s face. His fist glances off the man’s cheek. The Swede rocks backwards, wavers momentarily, falls to his knees, and then gets up again.

The cab speeds away. “Run, Danny, run,” Mike yells feverishly. “I’ll be all right.”

I can’t help thinking that my brother is as fearless as Doc McCoy, played by Alec Baldwin in the remake of
The Getaway
.

I had already backed off the street, onto the sidewalk. Now two of the three other Navy men approach me with battle-ready scorn in their eyes. I feel the cold sweat of fear clammy beneath my arms. The third guy has circled around behind Mike, apparently intending to jump him if he makes a mistake with the Swede, who’s trying to put Mike in a chokehold.

Mike takes hold of the Swede’s arm and gives a ferocious twist, sending the Swede reeling. He closes in and lands a kick squarely against the Swede’s soft middle. The Swede bends over, gasping for air. The fourth guy comes at Mike from behind with fists raised. Mike turns just in time to strike him in the face with a straight-armed punch.

I’m forced to make a quick decision: take on the other two guys, or run for help.

I run, with the canter of a horse at first, and then I’m flying up the sidewalk, like Jacoby Ellsbury of the Yankees rounding the bases for an inside-the-park homerun. I slow down just enough to look back and see that the swabees aren’t chasing me any longer.

I stop and turn around. Mike, backing away from the four Navy men, trips and falls to the pavement. The Swede moves over him with fists cocked. Mike seems to have lost his fighting edge.

Just then I see another taxi approaching, and I sprint into the street, towards the yellow blur, frantically waving my arms. The driver stops the car short of hitting me, but I slam into the hood and roll off, still on my feet. I open the front passenger door and jump inside.

“¿
Qu
é
es la problema
?” the driver asks. His florid face holds a polite, amiable smile.

I point a shaking finger up the street, and the driver sees the action in the middle of the road. He guns the engine and lays rubber as his cab kicks forward and moves down the street.

Strangely, from the backseat of the cab, I hear, or think I hear, my mother’s voice, in a hushed tone, although her words are enunciated clearly enough: “You shouldn’t have run away when your brother needed help, Danny Boy.” I turn and look behind me, half expecting to see my mother’s liberated spirit. There’s nothing.

The four Navy dudes have surrounded Mike. They encircle his prostrate form like squawking buzzards. But at the approach of the speeding car they scatter, leaving Mike on the pavement with his face bloodied. I jump out of the cab and run to him.

“I’m okay,” Mike says, angrily. “Shit, if I hadn’t stumbled, I would’ve kicked all their asses. But what good is a victory over cowards?” His face glimmers with mawkish pride.

I master an impulse to hug my brother.

The Mexican driver offers his handkerchief. Mike flinches as I press the cloth against a deep gash on his upper lip. I help Mike to his feet and walk him to the cab. He lays prone across the back seat, holding the handkerchief over his wound.

The sense of guilt I feel after having abandoned my brother weighs heavily on my heart. I didn’t run because my brother had suggested I run, but because I was afraid. That failure was only a continuance of the unraveling of what little bit of virility I thought I possessed before I joined the Army.

I hop into the front seat of the taxi, recline and close my eyes. As the cab moves on, I begin to worry about the loaded pistol in Mike’s Ranger. I fear that Mike will kill someone with it, or end up getting
himself
killed.

Mike mutters something in Spanish.

“Amerhican Bordher” the driver says. “Jess, Jess.”

“T
hat’s a cool tree house,” I say. My throat is parched and my heart is almost too big for my chest. As it beats out of control, sweat breaks out all over me. I seem to have two lives now, two selves, the normal one with my mother, and this one, full of unknown possibilities, with Daniel.