by Travis Borne
“And, Señor Jim!” He was dodging imaginary cones on a driver’s-ed course, as if he had finished the entire bottle of glittering gold by himself this time, and as if, he hadn’t seen them in years—then fell forward tripping over his pigeon-toed feet. Rico darted forward and with Jim’s fast follow-up managed to catch Felix’s fall; they each caught a flailing arm and held him by the shoulders. Felix arched his back as if his spine was gummy candy, but they managed to get him at least partly straightened out.
“Abuelo, you okay?” Rico asked, rolling eyes at his totally sloshed father. Supported between the two, angling his head up to see them, Felix let fly an ugly smile with a bobbing head—gummy bones solidified as Felix seemed to devour his own awe. They pulled him straight up then Felix ruffled Rico’s hair, ruining his side-parted forehead curtain. Standing again, with relaxed moons for eyes, Felix floated his face to Jim.
“Señors. Estoy muy contento de verlos de nuevo. Come inside and take my place. It is…your turns, I think…I’ve had enough to drink for a while.” He managed to stabilize his head and uncrossed his eyes then focused straight ahead at the third man wearing futuristic sheen. He blinked several times as if he’d just spotted a ghost, and with a slap of shocking sobriety he managed to further straighten the crook in his back. Taking a less wobbly and more serious step toward the door, Felix said dully, “No puede ser. No—Si. Si, I remember.”
“Felix,” Jon said.
Felix’s missing-tooth smile was the single corroded headlight on his pickup—the only one that still worked. He squeezed Jon blue then grabbed his shoulders, propping himself back, then deeply inhaled Jon’s appearance—and exhaled a miasma of cigarette breath, mezcal with at least two worms, and left-in-the-sun-all-day nachos and milk cheese, right into Jon’s face. And he noticed Jon hadn’t aged, at least not by the amount he should have. He also noticed fine scarring as if Jon had walked into a spiderweb.
Felix said, “The ship. It’s been, well for me even longer, stuck in this map—” Shock sparred with his torpid state of disbelief. “—at least twenty years, Jon. But, we left you, and—”
“I was eventually rescued,” Jon admitted, “just in the nick of time but I had died for about five minutes. It’s a long story, Felix. I’m glad to see you too, although we never had much of a chance to meet each other properly, and under non-apocalyptic circumstances.” Memories rushed into Jon’s mind: the daring escape, and the chance shot that punctured Rosita’s lung. “I’m very sorry about what happened that day—a day none of us can ever forget. Felix, I’m very sorry about your wife. My sincere condolences.” But Felix only smiled, slyly, the opposite of Jon’s surmised reaction to such a terrible memory.
“Ven, Señors. Jon, my wife is fine, different now, but fine.”
“My mama!” Rico freaked, jerking his head back. He scanned the bar, the hallway in the back, the stairs up and to the empty roundabout above, and the people at the table—where? “But I thought you said—”
“When you first came with Señor Jim we didn’t have much time, Hijo, and I didn’t want to…” Felix paused, and partly falling onto Rico with the mouth odor of a guillotined head, explained, “Rico, she was copied into the system—on the ship.” He rotated his breath blaster to Jon. “Jon, recuerdas?”
Jon nodded.
“Herald’s first attempt at capturing consciousness was 100% successful, but copying the mind, her memories and some of the other details, well, she is only partly there, Hijo. She does not even look like your mother, but, there is a part of her still in there. Occasionally we retrieve a memory and hold on to it for as long as we can. She won’t remember you, or recognize you, but it is your mother’s consciousness.” Rico was drawn to the table as if his legs had become extra-dimensional matter and his body was a starship in search of some; his jaw inadvertently fell and saliva became raging waters.
Felix led the other two over, arms around necks. At the table, he introduced them with a newfound sense of emotionally instigated sobriety. Next to his empty wooden chair sat Rosita. She wore a Mexican dress similar to the one Jim had seen her in at the mercado, except instead of red and black, yellow and black, same white top with plenty of lace, again with a matching flower in her long, lustrous hair. Felix introduced her—and Rico choked up.
A hard swallow of saliva took a throat cliff dive and his mouth went dry. Rico gazed between her high cheekbones and into her deep brown eyes; she smiled at him cordially, but with indifferent modesty. Her hair fell to one side, covering her left shoulder, and her smile was as wide as a smile could be, white, gleaming; if Felix had the smile for Halloween, she had Valentine’s Day. She was beautiful, glowing with grace. He could feel his mother there, somehow, perhaps through the system, the software of the map eliciting some type of connective transference, and his eyes became glassy. He felt like crying and wanted more than anything to hug her but realized, that would seem crazy; he knew, somehow, she had lost too much to remember him.
Felix looked to his son seriously—for a damn fucking change. He knew his son was getting a taste of what he had been through: losing most of their memories, the short and round woman who’d been his wife of another life; he passed a somber nod of absolution toward his son. But the brief moment of mourning didn’t last.
Too, the funereal second was odd for the others at the table, yet quickly shattered by Felix’s bull-rider liveliness. He reached to the nearest lotería game board and picked up three shots, one for each of his guests, spilling half of one.
Jim downed his first; the taste was jumper cables to a memory, a memory missing first gear: thoughts of Felix’s light-blue pickup truck, Esperanza, riding through the desert with his elbow outside the window like a chicken wing, a colorful sombrero living on his bald head, and the dust when the crazy shit, motherfuckin’ Felix—he’d slid ’er sideways, ditched, then laughed an ass he didn’t even have, off.
Next, Jon; it was a taste vaguely familiar: like tequila, but sweeter, more pungent, less refined perhaps, raw, and different from one of the last times he’d actually had tequila. He remembered the day as if the sun was killing him kindly, but it was the night that owned this pith…one of his last and greatest nights in the world as it once was, with his best friend, Herald, in Tijuana, Mexico, Club Subterranean—and Jodi was there… God, how I miss her, he thought.
Rico, with one eye fixed on a mother who didn’t recognize him, had gotten the half shot by chance—as well the worm. He flattened his smile upon seeing the little gusano, almost imagining the gnarled, hardened thing taunting him, and oddly, because this moment was so completely surreal, unreal, tantalizing him in an almost sick way. The liquor was dark, waiting, haunting.
Felix nudged him. “Hijo, andale pues.”
He turned it up. Huuuh-huhuck. The same grimace he’d flustered while sitting between Jim and his papa in the blue pickup; he shook it off and put the shot glass down about a quarter as hard as Felix had nuked his. Chuckles fluttered round the table, and the little dude slid down Rico’s throat. He could feel it, hard, as if it had suddenly grown to the size of an iguana’s tail, yet safely encompassed in the sweet burn that next made him cough, and he turned again to Rosita, his mama. Thoughts of her made him warm just like the shot: so lively, always in the kitchen cooking for the family. She was really short, round, nothing like the woman sitting right there, yet all the same he could feel something but couldn't put a finger on it. As the liquor warmed his stomach it electrified a warm memory that sizzled its way into his head: her hugging him until his eyeballs nearly exploded, right before school; she always squeezed her kids, his two brothers, his older sister, even his primos who’d always stayed over, and as if every hug was to be the last ever, as if maybe she had known, somehow...
The hot sizzling fell from his mind as the lizard tail went into his stomach like a teasing fingernail. That last hug, their last few seconds together when she’d boarded that ship in the baseball field…she was so distraught, she hadn’t the time or energy to
make their final hug count just the same—
Felix slapped his back.
“Bueno, va, Rico?” Felix blurted. Initiation shots sucked down, good manners next—unless alone in Esperanza with just the guys. Felix commenced to introducing his friends, picking up his sweating, green bottle of beer and employing it as a pointer. Next on Rosita’s right was a Chinese man wearing western attire. He looked like he’d just finished a cattle run, but his skin was white as if he worked at night, and he wore a tanned-leather outfit. His white-pumpkin face popped with a quick, hi. Aside him clung a pitch-dark, model-thin black woman. Her hair was shaved to an eighth of an inch. “I introduce you to mi buen amigo, Tung and his wife Tasha, they are not mere—” Felix turned to Jim, his thin leather lips stretching out a scarecrow’s smile, the missing, just-to-the-left front tooth outperforming the good ones. “—dream characters.”
Taken off guard, Jim’s lucidity committed suicide then came back to life as if a defibrillator had taken a bolt of lightning. He said, “Dream characters, they know if, or if not, they’re just—”
“We have no secretos here, Señor Jim.” And Felix continued with the introductions, “El proximo Señor, si, el es un dream character. I introduce mi buen amigo, the dream character, Fernando.” Fernando was darker than Felix, as if he spent nights under a sun lamp purposed to make toast. His face was the opposite of Felix’s, though, rounder, shinier, and less leathery but gritty with craters for nose pores. Fernando tipped his white straw hat.
“You know you're not real,” Felix chaffed, laughing shortly, “right, Fer—que eres un producto de mi mente?” Fer shrugged his shoulders as if saying fuck it then held up a shot. “Here, they all know, Señor Jim. They are a product of our minds but live on regardless, and live they do. Remember, this map does not end. It goes on and on in your system and he lives for as long as we are here.” Fernando had no woman beside him, just an empty chair.
After a shot, Felix continued, “Proximo, round our table de lotería ganadores and perdedores, tenemos Juanita y Magnus.” Magnus raised his tall glass of beer—he was the only who’d poured it from the bottle. Magnus was a ten-story steel building—to say just tall or strong wouldn’t do justice; Swedish, perhaps German, he was white with slicked blond hair that had dried to become a marvelous helmet. He wore a black suit with minimal dust, and reeked of cologne, a welcome smell which combated the occasional plague spraying from Felix’s thin-lipped maw. Beside him and several feet shorter sat his woman; Juanita nodded politely and meekly.
Felix continued, “Magnus is real, but Juanita is a dream character. He’s originally from Sweden, now makes rocking chairs and furniture aqui in Pueblo Viejo.” Magnus nodded his head sharply, modestly acknowledging his handiwork too: the saloon was insane, ornate to the tenth, brimming with carved oakwood stools and chairs, handrails—the entire bar and beyond; it was as if Magnus owned a watch that could stop time and he had worked on the pieces for an eternity. The banister curled every which way—the place was wood-world on roids, a real project.
Next, Felix gestured to the last person directly before them, then to an empty chair. Jim sparked as she looked up to him. The woman looked very familiar: Spanish with sun-beaten skin, but pretty, very, aged features only magnifying her attractiveness, likely in her mid-thirties, maybe forty, and Jim felt himself drawn to her sapiosexually. He knew he recognized her, just couldn’t pinpoint the gnawing flashback’s anchor.
“I introduce Luisa, mis amigos.” In a lower tone, “Her husband Carlos is at the bar. Carlos usually thinks too much after he’s had one too many.” Luisa smiled humbly, nodding.
Her smile, though. Wise, highly intelligent; she looked as if she’d worked a seven-day work week for decades; humble, trustworthy. Jim angled his head then and there. He observed her carefully. Now he knew he’d seen her before, but from where? Again, he glanced to the bar; Rico’s and Jon’s eyes wandered as well. A man, slouched over with a tall glass of something black. The somber man turned his head as if he’d been cued, perhaps hearing his wife’s name. He was Spanish, but seemingly not of Mexican descent as were most in Old Town. He nodded a slow, Wild West gunslinger nod and met their gaze.
Jim realized.
Jim put two and two together.
“Jim!” he said to himself, only in his mind. He connected the dots as if recalling the beginning of a forgotten dream: Carlos owned the food stand in the mercado! In his mind, he saw Amy’s face when she took a bite into the best, savory pork he’d tasted in his entire life. The best tacos in Old Town, you’ll know when you look into his eyes. Marlo said it, and that’s why he’d chosen to be laconic—the fuckin’ dipshit; Marlo knew, he’d just know. Jim’s face went loose—then tight; it hit him like a snapped bungee cord to the cheekbone. Rafael! He knew it when their eyes met, he just fucking knew it. Carlos, was Rafael! Rafael, the Rafael, is alive!
Felix continued, holding his pointer of a beer, “Luisa is a dream character too, but she’s been with us longer than any of the others. Her and Carlos are quite the team. They have a very close family and they make the best—”
“—tacos,” Jim mumbled slowly, daze-like, cutting him off. “The best tacos in Old Town.”
Luisa too, recognized Jim. She gave him a biased and brighter smile.
Jim returned his just the same, politely yet dazed, managing his inner hypernova. A stoned smile formed. His eyes went dully wide and he put forth a diligent effort to contain his excitement. Three days, we have three days. We can do this. He nudged Jon, who’d seemed to have lost all lucidity; Jon had been melding with the gang and the friendly atmosphere. Jim whispered, “Jon, it’s him. Rafael.”
Whispering in reply, while Felix grabbed some chairs and made space, Jon replied while taking a squinting hard look at the man who seemed, depressed, “How do you know, Jim?”
“I don’t know how, I just know.”
“Vamonos,” Felix exploded, “let’s play and then you can tell us why you’re here.” They took a seat: Rico between Rosita and Tung. Jim and Jon, reluctant to completely detach eyes from Rafael (Carlos), took a seat as well: Jon next to Felix, and Jim beside Fernando on the far side. Carlos had removed his attention as fast as his slow gunslinger nod and took a sip of his tall drink; he then re-lowered his forehead to the bar; it drooped mere inches from the dark, glossy wood.
Scooting his chair toward the table, Jim asked Felix, who sat directly across the table, “Why does Carlos look troubled, I’m gonna head over—”
“No. No, Señor. This is his time, Jim,” Felix responded. “He’ll think for hours, and he will not have company. It’s the alcohol, I suppose. He’s been this way for years.”
“Is he—is he a dream character?” Jim asked.
“There’s only six of us here, Jim. Rosita and I, Tung and Tasha, and Fernando’s wife Loren, who isn’t present, and Magnus. Carlos is the only one we cannot be sure about, and, I don’t think he knows himself. All we know is, he’s different. A good man with a good family, but he has his weird thinking moments and when he’s like that, well, we just leave him alone.”
Luisa, Carlos’ wife, nodded in agreement. She said, “He thinks a lot. Sometimes, he goes away at night and doesn’t return until morning. Says he needs his alone time. And then he’s his old self again.” Luisa had almost no Spanish accent.
All at the table took a glance to Carlos. It was as if he was sulking, deep in thought. He’d risen his head, and through the assortment of bottles was just staring at himself in the mirror. Felix tugged at Jim then released another unpredictable burst of excitement. Before long they were all having a good time playing the lotería with shots, and getting plastered. Fifteen minutes flew by, then a half, then a full hour; no one had even realized Carlos had left.
34. Mercado Morning
Jim couldn’t sleep past seven, although they stayed up until 2 a.m. playing the lotería with mezcal—six or so lizard tails having their way with throats. After getting ready in his hotel room, he walked down the h
all and raised a hand to knock on Jon’s door—but caught himself. He leaned in. Snoring. Jon was out, getting the sleep he wished he could get himself. But surprisingly, he wasn’t as hungover as he thought he would be, and some coffee should be able to jolt the slug that was his brain.
He felt close to Jon. They seemed to click. Perhaps it was the memories he’d received: he knew about Herald and the good times the two of them had shared, good times he felt he had participated in alongside them, although he never really had a chance to do any of that. Herald and Jon partied together like maniacs when Herald was out of control, managed and conquered by the hateful red one, Demon, the dark manifestation of his mind that had named him Rab henceforth.
Much had flooded out from Rab and infected Jon for a time, although no one at work knew, no way: they both lived the nightlife of a nihilist rock star on roids, and speed and everything else. They’d go out Monday through Thursday, even when the clubs were mostly empty, and always managed to have a good time. There’d always be a few, just like them, girls out and about doing the same thing. And they’d end up cruising the streets of Mexico in a stolen car, delivering girls to homes after a Saturnalia, then purposefully trying to get lost while downing a Forty. Then Friday, Saturday, Sunday—the partying escalated into a frenzied bacchanal, most times ending with daylight scalding their eyes as the club door flung open, sunlight making known, as momentarily as a nuke’s flash, the putrid nastiness of the gum-mottled, cum-splashed, vomit-infused rock wall inside the club’s corridor. Yeah. They explored dark alleys, hidden clubs, whorehouses, remote fucking holes in the fucking wall, as outsiders meshing like, “give me some skin, bro,” always successfully; they’d exploited the works and beyond, to the stars, rock stars. Equivalent, was the detonation of a supernova to the death of an ant, and everything in between, the rush of new elements stinging every sense and emotion, pique with a punch: youth, craziness, and the chance that should have been Russian Roulette after too many tries, for really, both Rab and Jon should probably be dead.
