by Susie Bright
His colleagues loved him, his students worshipped him. And yet to date him, Marcela had learned, was like eating in a dream. The feast might be all hers but she still couldn’t taste a goddamn thing.
What did she know about him? He’d grown up nearby in Watsonville. At her insistence, he once brought her there. She had taken him to meet her parents in Woodland, and he remarked that the place reminded him of where he grew up, a small California city surrounded by fields and full of Mexicans. She wanted him to return the favor, show her “his” Watsonville.
She pestered him until one Sunday morning they drove out to the coast, stopping at the first market they passed to buy pan dulce and hot chocolate. The clouds hadn’t burned off and it started to drizzle, so they stayed in the car and just drove around. He said he was going to take her down “memory lane.” He pointed out where he went to school, where he used to play soccer, the playground where he got his first kiss, yet these were all the things she had shown him in Woodland, as if he were simply repeating her memories and pointing.
But then he would throw in stuff such as, “That’s the alley where we jumped my cousin Rafa,” and laugh. “In high school, I used to deal from that apartment right there.”
“Stop playing,” she said.
Then he drove to the outskirts of the city and his tone become more somber: “We used to live in a trailer out here on the farm where my parents worked, and my dad, he would walk home from the bar every night. And one night he didn’t come home, so my mom went looking for him. She found him dead on the side of the road. A hit-and-run. Can you believe that?”
“I’m so sorry!” she said. “I didn’t know.”
But then Vicente began laughing and she thought he was teasing her again.
“Don’t do that!” And she slapped him on the arm. “That’s not even remotely funny.”
She assumed that after driving around they were going to end up at his house and she was going to meet his family. But after circling around a picturesque central plaza with a kiosk, he took the main road out of town and got back on the 101 heading north.
“Aren’t we going to visit your family?”
“My family?” He chuckled. “You don’t want to do that.”
“Do what? Meet them? Of course I do. If it’s your family.” Then she stopped herself. They had only been dating a few months. Maybe he wasn’t ready for that step. “All right,” she finally said. “No pressure.”
Before getting too far, they pulled over at a roadside fruit stand and she picked up a basket of strawberries. “I know these are your favorite,” she said. She took a strawberry out of the basket and went to put it in his mouth.
“What makes you say that?” he asked, backing away.
“Uh, if it’s not your favorite fruit, why do you have a tattoo of one on your back?”
The first time they had hooked up, she noticed a tattoo of a strawberry near the base of his neck. It was so delicate that she almost laughed. It was sweet, and so like him too, like a stamp on his taut skin.
He chuckled. “Oh, yeah, that’s right. I forgot.”
She laughed too, and attempted again to place the strawberry in his mouth. “Open up,” she said.
“Perhaps it’d be wise to wash those first,” he said.
She had already eaten half the basket. “Whatever, live a little.”
A few weeks later, out with her girlfriends, they got on the topic of things they found odd or gross about their lovers. When it was Marcela’s turn, her friends joked that they should just skip her because Vicente was clearly a gift from God. She wanted to share something so she told them about his strawberry tattoo. “Isn’t that weird?” she said.
Her friends laughed politely and said it was “adorable,” but one of them asked, “Isn’t he from Watsonville?”
“Yeah, why?”
“I mean, I think that’s a gang thing. In Watsonville it’s the strawberry, in Salinas it’s a freaking lettuce head. Somewhere else it’s an artichoke. My students, I swear, they teach me the randomest shit.”
Marcela tried to laugh it off. The idea that Vicente’s tattoo was gang-affiliated seemed so ridiculous that she didn’t intend to give it any further thought. But later that same night, she went home, poured herself another drink, and googled variations of “beautiful thugs” and “hot gangsters.” She found the results entertaining if nothing else.
It was her own romantic history that caused her worry. It was lined with two kinds of men: machistas who infuriated her, and one harmless white guy whom she eventually grew bored of. She had married the latter, but had suffered the torture of plenty of the former. Vicente, she thought, was a departure for her. Finally she had learned from her mistakes. She wasn’t doomed to repeat herself. Didn’t she deserve someone beautiful and kind with an air of mystery?
* * *
Marcela heard a loud pounding at the hotel door followed by, “Police department, open up!” She looked over at Vicente, who hadn’t stirred in an hour. The towels of ice remained covering his face. The pounding on the door resumed and she rushed to answer. Two officers filled the doorway.
“We’re looking for Vicente Cuellar.”
“Yes, he’s here,” she said. “But he’s sleeping.”
“I’m Officer Fernandez. This is Officer Halston. If you don’t mind, we’d like to ask him a few questions about the incident in the downstairs bar. If we can just wake him up, we won’t be long.”
Marcela hesitated in the doorway. The officers couldn’t see the bed from where they were standing. Were they really asking her permission?
“Let them in. I’m up,” Vicente called from inside the room.
Marcela stood aside and the officers walked in. As soon as they saw Vicente’s face, they looked at each other, then pulled out their pocket notepads and began writing.
“Well, he sure got you good,” Officer Fernandez said.
“You should’ve seen the other guy,” Vicente quipped.
The officer looked up from his notepad. “Uh, we did. He’s in handcuffs right now. And he’s fine.”
Vicente chuckled. “It was a joke. Look, officers, let the guy go. It was just a misunderstanding. We were drinking. Tempers flared. I said some things I shouldn’t have—”
“And what did you say, exactly?” Officer Fernandez cut in. “The other guy just said, ‘Stuff.’”
“It doesn’t really matter. All I can say is that I’m over it. We got it out of our systems. I’m sober, he’s sober. No need to make it a bigger deal than it is.”
“Well, you see, we’re staring at your face and it looks like a pretty big deal. If a man is capable of doing what he did to you, then he might be capable of doing that to someone else. It makes us feel like we’re not doing our jobs.”
“I appreciate what you’re saying, sir, but see, the issue is—” Vicente stopped. “I thought I recognized you, Fernandez.”
The officer looked up from his notepad. “What was that?”
“It’s me, Cuellar. You used to be a guard in juvie, right?”
The officer looked closer. His face brightened. “Holy shit. It’s you! I thought that name sounded familiar! What the hell, man! It’s been years.”
“I know, I know,” Vicente said. “You gave up on the little homies or what? After the real bad guys now?”
“That was just my first job. Jesus, I was barely a kid in there myself.”
Fernandez’s demeanor had relaxed completely. He shook his head in amazement and turned to his partner. “This kid ruled the hall. You would’ve thought he was Tony Montana.” He turned back to Vicente. “So you teach college now? That’s what they were saying downstairs in the lobby. I couldn’t believe the other guy was a teacher. Looked like a thug to me. And now you, I can’t believe it—they letting every banger go to college now? But that’s good, Cuellar. I’m proud of you.”
Vicente nodded his head. “Look, that guy downstairs. Me and him are cool. We both got pasts, and today they caught up with us.
We both spent too many years working to get where we are right now. I wouldn’t want to mess that up for him over a little skirmish.”
Officer Fernandez smiled. “Skirmish. Listen to you. Same old Cuellar. You could always talk your way out of everything. Nothing stuck to you.” He looked over at Marcela. “Ain’t this guy about the smoothest talker you ever heard?”
Marcela was too stunned to answer. She had leaned against the wall and was digging her fingernails into the textured ridges of the wallpaper, afraid she was going to lose her grip.
* * *
The officers left. After a long silence, Vicente turned to Marcela. “You okay?” he asked.
She still hadn’t moved from the wall.
“Come here,” he said. “Let’s sleep this off.”
She couldn’t even look at him. “I don’t know who you are,” she said. “We’ve been together six months and I feel like I don’t know you any better than when we first met. That cop called you Tony Montana. All this time, I think you’re a sensitive, thoughtful teacher and now suddenly you’re Scarface?”
Vicente sighed. “What do you want to know?” His voice was tender, apologetic.
“Why’d you do that down there?”
“I don’t know. I just wanted to fight.”
“But that’s the thing. I saw you. You didn’t fight at all. You didn’t even try to defend yourself.”
Vicente shrugged his shoulders. “Sometimes it feels good to get hit.”
“That’s not an answer that makes any sense. You know that, right?”
“Marcela, I’ve been through some shit.”
“You need serious help.”
He leaned his head back down on the pillow. “Perhaps,” he said.
* * *
Next morning Vicente woke her up, gently shaking her shoulder. There was a coffee maker in the bathroom and he had made a pot. He served her some in a Styrofoam cup and placed it on her nightstand. The coffee was weak, but it helped her headache. She pulled aside the curtain and saw it was dawn.
“Why’d you wake me up so early?”
“I wanted to walk with you on the beach. I don’t want to scare anyone with my face like this. It’ll be empty for a little while. Let’s go.”
They bundled up and strolled along the wet sand in silence. Neither made any attempt to talk and it was soothing just to listen to the crashing of the waves.
“In all my life living in Watsonville, I’d never been to Santa Cruz except when I was in juvie up the road. I didn’t realize it was like twenty miles away. The first time I came over here was when I started going to Cabrillo after I got my GED in County.”
“County jail?”
“Yeah,” he said. “First juvie. Then I got transferred to County.”
“For what?”
“A whole bunch of things. Liked it better inside than I did out.”
“Is that why you didn’t want me to meet your family?”
He grunted. “What family?”
They passed a man in a baseball cap walking his golden retriever. The man nodded to them, doing a double take when he noticed Vicente’s face.
“How bad is it?” he asked.
“You didn’t look in the mirror?”
“I was afraid to.”
“I’m surprised you’re alive, let alone walking on the beach.”
“I always could take a punch.”
Marcela wanted to bring the conversation back. “What do you mean what family?”
“After my dad died, my mom, she struggled. I was in and out of foster homes.”
“Is that why you joined a gang?” she asked.
He scrunched up his face. “What do you mean?”
“You know: didn’t have a family so you found one.”
“I wasn’t in a gang,” he said.
She looked up at him. Through his swollen face, she couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not.
“Then what about your strawberry tattoo? Don’t tell me that’s just Watsonville pride.”
“Naw, that’s my favorite fruit.”
She burst out laughing. “You think you’re funny, Vicente.” She felt his arm around her waist. He turned her toward him.
“Look at me,” he said.
She was cold and she pushed herself closer to his warmth, though she couldn’t look up. She didn’t want to.
“Look at me,” he said again.
She allowed herself to stare at his disfigured face. The ice had helped. His eyes were no longer as swollen, yet his face was still covered in welts, cuts, and bruises. She reached up and gently touched his busted bottom lip, then the cuts on his nose. She moved a little higher and ran her fingers over the veins of his swollen eyelids. His eyes were closed. She could hear his breathing and feel his breath on her forehead. He was shivering slightly. She touched his swollen, bruised cheek. He winced, but she kept her hand there anyway.
With the tips of her fingers she dug into his skin and expected him to back away, but he didn’t. She pressed harder and harder until she realized that he was resisting, pushing back hard against her fingers—and then he grabbed her wrists. “Hit me.”
“No,” she whimpered as she tried to wrest her hands away. “Let me go, you’re scaring me.”
“Hit me,” he said again.
“Hit your fucking self.”
“I can’t!” he screamed—and then softer, “I can’t hit anyone.”
She stopped struggling. “I’m not going to hit you, Vicente.”
He let go of her wrists and her arms fell to her side. She turned and walked quickly back toward the beachfront. She didn’t want to look back, but she couldn’t help herself. Vicente was still where she’d left him, staring after her through swollen eyes.
CRAB DINNERS
by Lou Mathews
Seacliff
I was in my apartment, above The Mediterranean, Seacliff’s favorite dive bar, on Center. If you don’t drink and you don’t dive, you’ll still know the joint, or at least the location, because it’s next door to Manuel’s, the best Mexican restaurant in Santa Cruz County. My apartment is spitting distance from my office, a realtor’s shack on blocks on unused state park land. Estelle Richardson, the realtor who rents me a desk, figures we’ll be here for life.
I poked my head out the window to scan the weather and see what the day would bring. There was a girl sitting on the steps of the office, a redhead, reading a book with a finger in her curls. It was nine, an hour at least before Estelle would show, and I didn’t think the kid was looking for real estate.
I have access to the Mediterranean’s espresso machine, a reliable Gaggia that fires up and delivers in three minutes. In five, I was walking up to my office, coffee in one hand, key in the other to indicate my intent. Red looked up, showing an unspoiled face, freckled, quizzical. I looked at her book. It was Carter Wilson’s classic, Crazy February. She closed it on her finger and stood up.
“Are you looking for an apartment?” I said.
“I’m looking for a detective,” she replied. “I’m looking for Ms. Sukenick.”
“It’s Sukie,” I said, and put the key in the lock. “Come on in.”
She sat down across from me. I studied her face. I couldn’t figure out where she was from. I mean, from her speech I knew she was a California kid. She had that accent that Californians don’t think they have, compressed words, raised inflection, like they’re asking a question. But I couldn’t place her face. The freckles and coppery curls could have been County Cork, but there was something different in the eyes, which were a shifting green-gray. Then the cheekbones. If I had to make a guess, I would have said some Irish missionary once made a convert in Beijing.
“So, ” I said, “what does an anthropology major from UC Berkeley want with me?”
She gave a little gasp. “Wow, you really are a detective. How did you know that?”
She probably thought she hadn’t given me any clues, but the blue-and-gold knit cap stuffed in her backpack was defi
nitely Cal and the essential clue was her reading material. Crazy February is a classic in Mesoamerican anthropology, about a murder in the Maya highlands of Chiapas, and I knew Lars Guthrie, the Berkeley professor who assigned the book to his upper-division anthro students every quarter.
What I said was, “If you hang around long enough, you learn some things. What can I do for you?”
She gathered herself. “My name is Kelly Wong. I’m looking for my father, Leonard Wong. Do you know him?”
I didn’t know the man personally, but I’d eaten in his restaurants and any reader of Good Times in the seventies and eighties knew him from his chatty weekly advertisements. “Chef Wong,” in his towering toque, had introduced Szechuan peppers and triple-X chile oil to Santa Cruz County.
Something didn’t scan. I had to ask. “Were you adopted, Kelly?”
She laughed. “I get that a lot. No, Leonard was my father as far as I know. I know the Mayan dicho about you only really know who your mother is, but she said Leonard was her one and only. My mom was Uyghur from Xinjiang. There’s a lot of red-haired kids there.”
“Okay,” I said, and took up my pad and pen. “So when did you last communicate with your dad?”
“That’s the thing,” Kelly said. “Usually, we would talk on the phone every week. He’d call from the restaurant. Sometimes I could tell he’d been drinking, but he always called. Two weeks ago, he didn’t. I wasn’t too worried because I knew there was a big cockfighting tournament in Watsonville. He usually stayed up all night for those.”
She’d mentioned the drinking and I’d seen that at Wong’s restaurant. “XO sauce” was a craze developed in Hong Kong and Chef Wong was determined to improve on the recipe. The “XO” symbolized rarity, like XO cognacs, but there wasn’t actually cognac in the Hong Kong recipe, just Shaoxing wine and pricey dried seafood.
In Wong’s version, there was cognac. When he flambéed scallops, table-side, he would pour a glug of Rémy Martin onto the shellfish, swallow a glug himself, then tip the wok toward the burner. Blue flames would erupt, then applause. Every other table would order the dish. By the second or third order, a lot more of the cognac sauced Chef Wong than the scallops.
