The Accidental Native (20 page)

I spotted the English table and Marisol. Our eyes met, and she gave me that little twisted, wicked smile of hers, which meant “happy to see you” and “you're looking good.” I dislike suits but the occasion called for it, so here I was wearing the only one I owned, a tailor-made suit picked up on one of the family travels to Milan, and a skinny tie, because I hate the fat ones. Mami persuaded me to get it done.

“When will you get this opportunity again,” she said. She got me on that alone, but it didn't hurt that she offered to pay half. That was a few years ago, and it fit me well.

I had to admit I felt great, despite all the crap coming down on me. Tonight, I thought, I can forget about Roque—who fortunately sat with friends somewhere else—and get lost in baile, botella y baraja.

“You should wear suits more often,” Marisol said, pulling my tie, as I sat down next to her.

I laughed. “I'm already dying to take this one off.”

She bent over and whispered “Okay, later I can help you out of it.”

I grabbed her hand and took her to the dance floor, me, the once apprehensive dancer. I had become better since hanging with Marisol. My spastic feet tapping had evolved into more fluid, rhythmic steps.

“There's hope for you, Falto,” she teased.

I complimented her on her dress, a full length, red formal with a low-cut back. The silky material clung to her curves like a novice driver on a mountain highway. “Splendorous” was the word that came to my mind.

The night floated along, one merengue after another, from salsa to cha cha, one conversation after another, drink following drink, and then the moment of zen came when, seated around most of
my colleagues, I realized that during the course of the evening I had heard gossip about everyone seated at the table. Freddie had connived in winning a system-wide grant to study theater in Cuba, although he did not teach the subject and certainly not theater in Spanish. The truth, I was informed in a whisper, was he had a lover living in Cuba, and this was a way to get back to him.

Micco, according to the grapevine, had gotten one of his undergraduate girlfriends pregnant. Roque insisted that Micco had the habit of sleeping with female students. When this came to me, disgusted, I almost approached him, but Marisol told me that it was a complete fabrication. Roque, she told me, had the bad habit of spreading malicious rumors and ugly gossip without evidence. He had marked several professors on campus with this gossip already.

“He means well, to protect students in the college, but he gets carried away.”

No shit, I thought.

Rita Gómez didn't come, a rarity, because although shy and demure, she loved to dance and party and never missed an event. She had made me promise her a dance. The word was that she had taken ill.

Talk of infidelities, corruption, crimes and misdemeanors. Departmental intrigues, institutional failures, dirty college politics. And so it went in the world of the humanities. It had become stifling in the cafeteria, what with all the talk and people, so I stepped outside for fresh air. I sat on one of the cement benches, legs crossed Indian style, and watched three students kick a hacky sack around. I was about to stroll over and ask to join them, when Marisol strode up to me.

“What you doing out here?”

“Just getting fresh air.”

“You could have told me. I thought you'd left.”

“Sorry, couldn't take all the b.s. flying around in there.” She nodded and sat down next to me. “Speaking of bullshit, you know what Roque told me?”

Marisol sat down next to me. “What?”

“To stay away from you.”

She looked at me, stunned.

“Yeah, you heard right,” I said.

“When was this?”

“During my performance review.” My eyes bobbed up and down, watching the guys kick around the footbag. Basic stuff, delays, one of them trying to do a flying inside.

“That prick.”

“Said you're deluded to think this is going somewhere—that I'm using you.”

“What did you tell him?”

“What else? To mind his own fucking business.”

Her eyes widened.

I laughed. “Well, not exactly like that. I had my work mouth on.”

There was an extended moment of silence—never a good sign. She picked at her dress, staring at the ground. The guys had a good round going without dropping the bag.

“Yeah, he's nosey,” she finally said.

They dropped it, and then came the usual cascade of shouts and laughter.

She stood up to return inside, then did a turnaround, like she was lost. I jumped up and grabbed her arm.

“You know what? I think I'm going home,” she said, looking at my arm holding hers.

“Whoa,” I said, “what's going on?”

She went inside, retrieved her purse and passed me on the way back to her car. It seemed like a mile to her car in that silence. Her mood had changed, and I couldn't help thinking that anywhere Roque's name popped up, it was like a toxin, contaminating everything and everyone.

“Mari, did I do something wrong?”

I went to caress her face, but she held my hand and started to cry.

“Hey, what's the matter?”

“Nothing, that's the point,” she said. “Nothing has happened or will happen with us.”

“Don't say that, c'mon. You letting Roque get to us?”

“It's not about Roque, dammit. It's you, it's you.”

I was looking at her looking at me with those big brown eyes, all teary, and minutes later I was wondering what the fuck had
happened. The evening had started out great and suddenly I was hearing all this negative stuff.

“What do you mean, it's me?”

“It's me, too.”

“Mari, you're losing me here.”

“Pedro is right—I'm fucking deluding myself.”

“No, no. We've come a long way.”

“Long way to what, Rennie? And, where are we going with this?”

How could I answer that? I didn't know the answer to that one. I just didn't. And maybe I didn't want to answer. Didn't want to be pushed to answer.

Silence at the most inopportune times is a death warrant. She slipped into the car, slammed the door and drove away.

Dear Committee Members, due to an unforeseen development, I beseech you to please bring down on me the harshest punishment allowed by this venerable institution. Quartering seems particularly and metaphorically appropriate at this time
.…

Walking the streets can be an antidote for the blues. After Marisol drove off, I went back and gulped a whisky with soda. I'm not the guy who's going to sit and drink all night because his girl's gone—not that guy. But I needed a jolt. Then, I had to walk, somewhere, anywhere, didn't matter as long as I moved toward something and away from everything.

My meandering took me up hilly Altavista, past the hospedajes, the private buildings housing students, the closest thing to dorms in the area. It was quiet, with the kids gone for Christmas break. Or wasted, watching mindless films, or becoming numb playing video games, who could tell? It was late, but I had lost track of time, had no watch and didn't care to know the time. But it felt late.

I spotted the corner that held my parents' house. The house was brilliant with Christmas lights and ornaments. Cheap, tacky-as-hell, bought at a bargain basement. I could not find solace in their tackiness. Could not find satisfaction in laughing at their stupid attempt at festive happiness. Because they were happy. Squatters, yet they had the audacity to fix up the place like they had a right
to it, a right to domestic bliss, a sense of home that they could adorn and decorate.

Their inside lights were off and their battered Corolla was gone, so they were off spending their government check on more Christmas cheer—anything but paying their rent.

I ran to the side of the house facing the corner, jumped up and grabbed a fistful of lights. They came down, crashing to the ground. For good measure, I stomped on them, delighting in popping them into a pulp. Down came the twinkly small lights, the Three Kings ornament, wishing I had a sledgehammer to smash the entire house down. Lights turned on across from me, and I started to run down the steep hill, stumbled and tore a hole at the knee in my pants, cursing the Riveras under my breath.

Who knows how many winding side streets I walked before finding one I knew. Hobbling now, my knee hurting. A young woman walking in front of me turned, startled. She clutched a canister of pepper spray. She saw me and relaxed. Green-Eyed Girl.

“What happened to your leg?” she asked, looking down at my torn pant legs.

“I'm okay,” I said. “You're out late.”

“Yeah, coming back from a party. You mind walking me back to my hospedaje?”

“Sure, if you don't mind me limping along.”

At her door, she thanked me, and I said “no problem.” She hesitated and told me she could help me with the knee, but I said not to bother, I was close to the Guest House. And she glanced my way, sending that look any guy with decent radar can read. Any other situation, it would not have been easy to turn her down. She, too, looked splendorous in her mini skirt and high heels, her hair dazzling around her stunning face, her green eyes crackling with unspent energy and passion. Oh, so easy to get lost there, I thought. To get lost and forget myself in this young woman's desire, that bronzed body, soft and voluptuous.

I grinned stupidly. “Good night,” I said, struggling on my descent to La Tirilla. From where I stood, the campus Christmas tree shone brightly and lonely.

That night it was easy to say no. Because with every pained step I took, another answer kept surging in my head, and with such pain I knew it had come too late.

Back at the Guest House, I replayed a message from Julia. A long one. Her voice a bit slurred. In the background, upbeat voices and music. The office party she had invited me to. She called to invite me for Christmas dinner.

“Just you and me.” The phrase laced with loneliness and sadness.

I called back to accept. “I'd like that,” I said. “Just you and me, Julia.”

The Christmas ball was huge, and clear, more like a crystal ball to my young eyes, although much lighter. I held it in front of my eyes, panning it, and through the open areas that did not have the special silver trimming, I could see through it, getting a kick out of the blurry, distortions of my mother and grandparents, and everything else in their apartment living room. It was like looking at circus mirrors.

“Okay, Rennie, give me the ball,” my mother said.

I handed it to her, carefully, because this was one of the early Christmas decorations my parents had bought together to celebrate the holiday as a family, after I had been born. Mami put it in a prominent area of the tree, a big beautiful fir. I liked closing my eyes and breathing in its piney scent that blended with the smells of the pernil and other holiday foods drifting from Güeli's kitchen to make that Puerto Rican aroma of Christmas, so distinct and memorable.

It was probably a week or so after Thanksgiving, the traditional time to trim the tree. Mami was decorating the tree by herself, while Güeli cooked half the menu of any criollo restaurant. Papi had gone to buy beer and ice. Buelo Wiso sat in his recliner, watching TV and drinking a Budweiser, complaining how it would never be as good as Schaefer. He would never help Mami with the decorations, but liked to tell her about the bald spots.

“Allí, put one there,” he would command.

“Why don't you get up and put it yourself, Pa,” my mother would tease.

“Eso e'cosa de mujeres,” he responded.

Mami would look at me and smile, then whisper: “Guess drinking beer and sitting on one's fat behind is man's work.”

I'd giggle and look at Buelo's buttocks spreading across the recliner with the duct tape patches.

“Don't be talking about me to the boy, Maggie.”

“You know we love you, Pa,” she said and hugged him as he remain seated, his tattooed arms reaching back to embrace her from behind. His tats mesmerized me. He had served in the Navy and emblazoned across his right forearm ran the letters, U.S.S. Wasp, the carrier on which he had spent a good portion of his naval career as a mechanic. He had a dragon on the other, a cross and a heart with a knife on his right biceps—who knows what other parts of his body held ink. These were not the modern types of tats you'd find in studios—which Buelo Wiso considered “mariconadas,” or “faggotries.” For the longest time, I thought he was referring to puppets on a string when he said that. His tattoos were traditional, done in blue, with perhaps a dabbing of red.

Those Navy days were long past. These days, Buelo liked to sit and drink his Budweiser in his Schaefer mug, watch a baseball game, or oddly enough, bullfights televised on the Spanish channels. He sat quietly as the procession of horses with picadors poked at the bull, and whatever followed until the matador came into the ring. And even then, he appeared unmoved, as the matador made his passes and finally killed the bull. Perhaps he'd make a snarling comment about the little Spanish “puppet's” too tight pants, but he reserved outbursts for when a bull would have his day and with a brutal thrust throw the poor son of a bitch ten yards. Then Buelo's fat torso would rise a bit, his massive buttocks edging on the recliner, his right hand snapping its fingers like Puerto Ricans tend to do in amused excitement, and he'd yell in glee, he'd celebrate the bestial victory, however temporary.

But usually, Buelo would sit, a toothpick clinging out of his mouth, his big forearms slung over his round belly, and with wide eyes and an innocent voice comment on things.

“He loves to provoke,” my mother would say.

“And he's an expert at it,” my father would add.

Buelo and Mami had a long running feud over the status issue. He was pro-statehood.

“He's a pathetic pitiyanqui,” my father would say.