Amigoland (8 page)

She could hardly listen to him anymore. What she wanted was for him to turn up the air conditioner, but at the same time she
didn’t want anything from him. It was just a little misunderstanding between them. Later, things would be fine again, like
always. She knew this, and yet right then all she wanted was to get far, far away from him. She moved her face up closer to
the air vent and left it at that.

“I never said anything about telling him.”

“Then?”

“Just why you kept it from me, Celestino, like it was a part of your life that didn’t concern me.”

He tried to brush a strand of hair from her face, but she leaned away from him. Even upset, she looked more attractive than
he had imagined her this morning when he was hurrying to get to the bridge.

“Why would you care about some old man you have never seen?”

“Your brother.”

“Yes, all right, my brother, so now you know.”

“Yes, now I know,” she said, but somehow he had the feeling they weren’t talking about the same thing.

L
a señora Muñoz was sitting back in the recliner, watching the novela she had recorded yesterday. Socorro took another shirt
from the laundry basket and spread it across the ironing board. If she timed it right, she would finish with the clothes about
the time it took them to watch this episode of
Mi destino perdido.
La señora liked to say the tragedies weren’t any less sad the second time she saw them. In today’s episode, for instance,
poor Gabriela lies still in the hospital, thick gauze pads covering each of her eyes. What this beautiful young music teacher
doesn’t realize is that the doctor who saved her life and with whom she now finds herself falling in love, desperately so,
is also the man who caused the accident that robbed her of her sight. Gabriela caught only a glimpse of Dr. Hernan Lozano
Ramos as he sped up to pass her and then inadvertently cut her off and sent her car swerving toward a ravine. She is lucky
to be alive. The doctor reminds her of this as he stands along one side of the bed and caresses her hand. He says it as a
way of pacifying her, as well as discouraging her from trying so hard to identify the person responsible for her condition.
A young police detective, much closer in age to Gabriela than the doctor, stands on the other side of the bed. He has come
around again to help her recall some detail of the driver who didn’t have the decency to render aid after causing this terrible
accident. Eduardo, as the detective insists she call him, also has feelings for the victim. The fact that Detective Eduardo,
as Gabriela prefers to address him, has been less than friendly and courteous toward the doctor has not set well with her.
The doctor has stated, in no uncertain terms, that his patient should not in any way be upset. She is lucky to be alive. Of
course, there is little for him to worry about as long as she cannot identify the other driver. And so the respected surgeon
remains the only person who knows he was speeding with his unconscious wife in the passenger seat, sedated from the cocktail
he prescribed to help relieve her latest case of nerves. Gabriela blames herself for the accident. Distraught from having
just discovered her fiancé in bed with her half sister, she had been driving home in a confused and erratic manner that caused
her to overreact when the other driver pulled out in front of her. She is lucky to be alive.

Socorro held up the dress shirt and sprayed starch on the back. She was about to start on the sleeves when she turned to glance
out the window.

“Are you waiting for someone?” la señora asked.

“No,” she said, pulling away. “Why do you ask?”

She sprayed more starch on the shirt.

“Because already that’s the third time you look outside.”

Socorro could feel herself getting red and hoped this was from her ironing. “I just wanted to see who was driving by.”

“If you’re so curious, you should go over there.”

“Over where?”

“To check on my neighbor,” la señora said. “What else would interest you so much on this street?”

“We changed days, and tomorrow I need to clean the house for him.”

“You miss him?”

Socorro turned down the temperature on the iron until it reached the permanent-press setting, then a moment later turned it
off completely but continued with her work all the same.

“Tell me,” la señora insisted, a little louder now. “You miss him?”

“I work for him.”

“And because of that, you can’t miss him?”

“Ay, señora, how can you say that?” She tried her best to laugh at the question.

“You think you would be the first woman to feel something for the man she worked for?”

“But he’s much older.”

“Men forget how to count when they see a young woman — look at the doctor with Gabriela,” she said, pointing the remote back
at the television.

“Yes, but he would never be interested in me.”

“You want me to believe an older man like Celestino Rosales wouldn’t be interested in a young, attractive woman?”

“Maybe, but not me.” She pretended she was having problems with the pleat on the back of the shirt, so she pulled it off the
board to flap it open a couple of times, enough to produce a tiny breeze.

“I saw that you came over two times last week.”

“Only because I didn’t finish all my work and then one of his daughters was coming to visit him. He wanted everything ready
for her.”

“I want you to know you could tell me if he was,” la señora said, “or even if you were.”

Socorro chose to keep her eyes focused on her work and turned the temperature back up on the iron. “Thank you, but there’s
nothing to tell.”

“And nothing has happened?”

“Like what?”

“You know, what happens between a man and woman when they are alone all day in a house.”

“Ay, señora.”

“You could tell me.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, of course.”

“
Sure
sure, or just a little bit sure?”

“
Sure
sure.”

La señora didn’t seem convinced, but she went back to watching the rest of her novela anyway. Socorro hoped that she wasn’t
too obvious about her feelings. She could imagine the old lady spreading the news across the neighborhood. And then there
were his children that he was always worried about. He said the youngest one talked about her mother as if she were still
in the hospital and would be coming home soon. How would they feel if they learned their father had found someone else, and
so soon? Her own mother had remained alone after her father died, which was part of what had made it difficult for Socorro
to tell her what had really occurred between her and the man whose house she cleaned every week. How could she begin to explain
this to a woman who had been without a man for more than twenty years?

Before her first afternoon with Don Celestino, she had never imagined doing such a thing: she used to look down on those women
who cleaned houses only because they wanted to find a widower with money. Some of these women married and stayed with their
husbands for a few years, until the old man died or grew so ill that his children took him to a hospital, where finally he
died. It must have seemed a small price to pay in order to arrange their papers and from then on have a comfortable life.
With a little luck the old man might leave them with some money, maybe a house or a car, depending on whether he had arranged
this beforehand and his children didn’t claim it all. Other women remained unmarried but the old men paid them generously,
as if spreading their legs was simply another chore they were doing, like mending a shirt button or replacing a spent lightbulb.

At least she knew that her interest in him had nothing to do with what he could give her. She wanted only what they could
share as a couple, if he would let this happen. Since they had become intimate, her life had turned into two lives. One that
she lived on the other side of the river with her mother and aunt, still cooking and cleaning and shopping and going to the
pharmacy for these pills or that salve that her mother might need. And her other life, on this side of the river, where she
rushed about her day trying to finish early so she could spend some time with him in the late afternoon, before she had to
walk back across the bridge. Times like this, she tried to remember what she had imagined her life would be like if they ever
got together, because surely this hadn’t been it. To live her life in secret? As if she were playing the role of the mistress,
only the role of the married man was being played by a widowed man? Not that she didn’t enjoy her time with him, because she
did, but it also seemed like some fantasy that lasted only as long as they were together and then ceased to exist when she
wasn’t in his car or house or bed.

But after waiting for so long to find someone, she asked herself if she should be making demands of him or if she shouldn’t
just be happy they were together and not care if these moments were fleeting at best. All these years of waiting, the men
she knew had fallen into one of two categories: those who disappeared from one day to the next, and those who stuck around,
but only because they were biding their time until something more promising came along, after which they disappeared from
one day to the next. Maybe she was meant to be alone? It had crossed her mind again recently. Why else would God have sent
her a husband who just wandered off like a mule without a rope? And then sent her an older man who wanted her but wouldn’t
tell another soul about them, not even his own family? Was their friendship so shameful that he couldn’t at least tell his
brother, the only one he had left? Neither one of them probably remembered what they had fought over. How much effort would
it take him to at least do this for her?

“Ay, he wants to fool you!” la señora called out at one of the women on television.

Socorro hurried to finish the rest of the ironing so she could get paid and leave for the day. It was bad enough la señora
was comparing her to these poor women in the novelas. She wasn’t mixed up with a man who was trying to deceive her or hurt
her in some way. She wasn’t married to a man who got so tired of waiting for her to get pregnant that he found himself another
woman. And she wasn’t involved with a man who wanted to run off on her. She didn’t have to figure out who was telling her
the truth anymore. She knew the truth; she just couldn’t tell anyone.

H
e had never been one to walk around in short pants, showing off his legs to the world. So while the others wore shorts or
exercise pants, Don Celestino preferred his blue jeans and an old short-sleeve work shirt. His black cushioned shoes were
easier on his feet and still looked like proper shoes. The girl at the store had tried to sell him a pair that fastened with
Velcro straps, but he chose the laces because he didn’t want to get in the habit of doing things the easy way.

Cooder, on the treadmill to his right, wore running shoes, athletic socks that reached just below his knees, long pleated
shorts, and a sagging muscle shirt that allowed tufts of his white chest hair to billow over the top. His black fanny pack
hung loose on his hips like a loaded holster. “Ready to be young again, Rosales?” he asked.

Don Celestino was turning side to side as if loosening his back before a long run. “What do you mean,
again?
”

Cooder patted him on the shoulder. “Good answer.”

Then each one hit the start button on his treadmill.

Cooder jogged at a slow enough pace that it might have been confused with a fast walk. As he trotted along, he leaned forward
as if he were carrying a sixty-pound car battery and desperately looking for a safe place to set it down. He chose the machine
on the right because it was closer to the mounted television and the game show he liked to watch, though he generally jogged
with his head down, his eyes focused on the black conveyor belt whisking beneath him.

Don Celestino kept his finger on the speed button until it reached 2.0, the setting for the comfortable pace he preferred
to walk. He reread the inspirational poster on the wall in front of him:
STAYING HEALTHY, MAKING THE MOST OF LIFE!
In the poster a gray-haired couple strolled in a wooded park and laughed about something only they knew about. He could look
around if he wanted to, but he chose to concentrate on what he was doing and instead stare straight ahead at the gray-haired
man and woman. Once or twice he had lost his balance and then caught hold of the railings in time to correct himself. Later
he blamed the machine for somehow speeding up when he wasn’t expecting it. Anyone would have been caught off balance. He hadn’t
reported the malfunctioning equipment only because he didn’t want to get anyone in trouble.

“Who is Zachary Taylor?” the old man shouted. “Who’s General Zachary Taylor?!”

Don Celestino focused on moving his legs at the pace of the machine; by now he was used to Cooder yelling while he watched
television. He had more trouble with just the idea of being here with these old men and women. He knew he wasn’t old like
some of them. Other than his plume of white hair, there really wasn’t anything that showed his age.

“Who is Pershing?! Black Jack Pershing!”

And it wasn’t just his appearance and physical strength, because he knew his mind was sharper than those of much younger men.
You wouldn’t find him repeating the same story over and over. He could still describe how the dagger-shaped icicles hung off
the truck’s bumper that night in 1949 when he had to go for the doctor and how Dora was already holding the baby in her arms
by the time they arrived back at the house. And before that, he could remember attending barber school for almost three years
because he kept having to leave with his brothers to follow the crops up north to Ohio, to Minnesota, to Iowa, to Michigan,
and then by the time he did get his license, the army was ready for him. The foggy morning of June 24, 1945, he and eighty-seven
other young men headed to Fort Benning, Georgia, for basic training. He remembered sitting directly behind the bus driver,
and when the sun was barely rising over the King Ranch, he pulled out a small notebook and began writing what he imagined
might be his last letter to Dora. And when the war ended before he had actually made it overseas, the army shipped him back
home, and in Houston he boarded a commercial bus that eventually stopped at a roadside diner near Corpus, and while the rest
of the passengers were free to enter the restaurant, because of the times he was forced to sit on the back steps of the kitchen
and eat a cheeseburger so greasy it stained his uniform. All these stories and more still came to mind as though he had experienced
them only yesterday, no different than they would for a much younger man.