Before the End, After the Beginning

by Dagoberto Gilb

  “That wasn’t last night.”

  “But that’s where I was.”

  “Earlier. I don’t know later. And you weren’t with your partner.”

  “Dude’s not my partner. I met him at the Circle K just now, es todo. He was begging. I gave him a couple bucks and ran into him here.”

  “You gotta lot of shit stories.” He smiled at his own toilet paper humor.

  “Officer, that’s not fair, that’s not right.”

  “We’ll see. We’ll see what your partner says about last night.”

  “So, this is because you think I was with him last night?”

  “So far now, it’s disturbing the peace and resisting arrest. See what your partner adds on.”

  “Come on, I didn’t do none of that.” I wanted to get out of this, but how? He didn’t believe me, and he definitely didn’t care. “What is it I gotta do?”

  “You were born. Until you die, the rest is on you. I’m just doing my job.”

  TO DOCUMENT

  My girlfriend Jennifer rushed in to tell me—I was studying—that she’d talked to them, meaning him of course, the one we looked away from all the time, the one staring at us from his driveway, always standing there, a driveway to him like a beach, only you stood there. Staring. The narc, I called him. She called him coolio, which was kind of fun, but it made me think culo, which was not so fun. My mean sarcasm was something she never got or heard or listened to because she was a well-mannered white girl. Worse, I knew she really did think he was cool in some twisted-up way. I figured that was because she grew up without any danger, or any crazy, or any just plain wrong, so anything that wasn’t like a family TV upbringing was not only fascinating but exciting. This also explained why she was with me.

  “He invited us over,” she said, thrilled. “Is that wild?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Yes it is!”

  “It isn’t, Jennifer.”

  “Well, I’m going. You don’t want to, you don’t have to.”

  I’d already put down the book. It was always hard to study where we lived. Music going all the time, people in and out. Lots of dogs. Cats to step on or around. Beer, vodka, tequila. Drugs. Noise noise noise. I was the only one who kept it down. Vanessa and her mousy girlfriend had one room and my friend Ef, the other. He sold drugs with his cousin Richard, who was always in the house, sleeping on the couch. They paid the rent, meaning I didn’t, which obviously encouraged me to stay. I was on the good path. Because it didn’t pay well, to most I had a shitty job as a clerk at a motel and didn’t get enough sleep, but I liked it. Studying was my newborn Christianity, and I read a lot there.

  I had to go. It was how it was. She decided, I went along. She helped me. I’d never known anyone like her and she made me feel . . . like life was better. Soon, she said, she’d be leaving El Paso—meaning me, too, or the way I took it, that we’d be leaving together.

  It was a few days later, a weekend night. The sky was tuned bright, the starlight above mirrored in the streetlight below, the raw desert in front of us as romantically Western as she saw it. They had a nicer house than we did. Maintained better on the outside anyway, the landscaping free of weeds, the decorative rock making the ocotillos and agaves seem ceramic-pot pretty, the palo verde lacy. The front door we knocked on was freshly carved Mexican wood. The inside was nicer, too, all new paint and furniture, like objects inside a frame. She was Natalie, he was Phil.

  “I’m Jennifer,” Jennifer said, “but please call me Jen. And this is Nino.”

  “Nino,” Natalie said. “How unique a name.”

  “Is that short for something?” asked Phil.

  I would have said no, but Jennifer thought I was taking too long. “Just Nino. Nino the niño!” She laughed, and they laughed, too.

  “Around here Phil goes by Felipe,” Natalie told me.

  “Felipe!” said Jennifer, thrilled as ever with what I found irritating. The man was also shaved bald and wearing a light blue coat with wide lapels and a “hip” shirt—maybe cool in New York. She had on a black party dress. Older, she was still cute, so much that it was hard to see how they could possibly have matched up. We were both wearing jeans, though I washed mine, and Jennifer made me iron both the pants and my white guayabera, which I was glad I had. As usual, she was right. It didn’t matter what she wore, she made it classy.

  “Are you guys from El Paso?” Phil asked me.

  “Nino is,” Jennifer answered. “I’m from California first, then I moved to Maryland.”

  “I’m from Philly,” said Phil. “I know, Phil from Philly. I know, I know.”

  “That doesn’t work with Felipe, does it?” Natalie cheerfully said to me.

  She was speaking to me because I hadn’t said a word yet. I might have, I might not have as quickly as I should have anyway, but in their living room I’d already gotten distracted. It was a spacious room, long pastel blue sofas and chairs circling a wall of glass—the drapes were pulled to their corners so that the panoramic view of the desert and city lay before. No doubt beautiful. But my eyes wanted to lock on the wall opposite, at a painting as big as most picture windows. Hard for me not to see it when I walked in because it was of a woman—a very attractive one—seated and completely naked, her face aroused. The painting blurry, a strange green and pink, at first I thought only my mind made it seem to be Natalie.

  “Wine? Or beer maybe?” said Phil. “I have gin, bourbon . . . I have it all. Name your pleasure.”

  “I can’t believe we forgot to bring a bottle of wine or something!” said Jennifer.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I should have remembered.” I would never have thought of it. “My fault, sorry.” I didn’t look at her, but I was talking to Jennifer.

  “Please,” said Phil, “you’re our guests.”

  “Wine, white wine,” Jennifer said.

  “Me, too,” I said.

  “You do not seem like a white wine man,” he said to me.

  “It’s fine,” I said. What did I care?

  We would eat very soon, but for the moment we all sat.

  “Oh!” said Jennifer, seeing the art. “It’s you!”

  Natalie smiled. “Self-portrait.”

  “You paint! So do I!”

  “It’s Modigliani, but more now, more contemporary avant-garde,” said Jennifer.

  “He’s a favorite of mine, too.”

  They were hitting it off, talking in little screeches and exclamations. Phil was pleased. I thought he was proud that his woman was so hot and proving it in their living room’s portrait. So I was more uneasy still. I didn’t really like the wine either, but it wouldn’t have mattered what I was drinking. When suddenly the women were going to the kitchen together, and Phil and I had to be alone, lousy was even worse.

  He refilled our drinks. I assured him I really wanted another white wine.

  “So what about you, man,” he said, being cool. “What do you do?”

  “For money?”

  “Well, usually.”

  “Only a crummy job. Nothing. At a motel.”

  He was smiling. “You have other work? For not money . . .”

  I didn’t answer quickly.

  “You know, like your lady is an artist.”

  “I’m studying. I read. I like to read.”

  He chuckled like I made that up.

  “For school? A grad school?”

  “Yeah, maybe. But no.” I didn’t like to discuss this part of my life. “What about you?” Turning the subject. “What do you do?”

  “Retired military.”

  “Military,” I said. “Retired.”

  He waited, expecting more. Probably most people would ask quite a bit more. In fact, one detail was that he didn’t seem retirement old, even if he did seem
older. But I didn’t care. I didn’t want to ask more.

  “A lot of people over at your place,” he said finally. “All the time.”

  “Yeah, it’s a zoo.”

  “Partying a lot.”

  “Not always. Not Jennifer and me.”

  “Not everybody lives there.”

  “No.”

  By now he was getting a little peeved. Like he wished dinner was ready. Like he wished I’d tell him whatever. Or maybe exactly.

  “So what is it? How many people live there?”

  “Roommates?”

  It was like he either wanted to stand up or sit better than he already was.

  “It’s a three-bedroom,” I said. “I have one of the rooms. Me and Jennifer. Then our other two roommates.”

  He finished his drink. I had barely sipped my second glass of wine. I was sure he would say something else, but then we heard Natalie.

  “Nino, Felipe, dinner is servido’d!”

  Jennifer was right behind her. “You can’t believe how good the food looks and smells,” she told me. “I think I’m in love with your wife,” she told Phil. This made him feel much better, and that made me feel a little relieved, too.

  The dinner was probably as excellent and unbelievable as Jennifer and Phil gushed, but I was too uncomfortable to do much more than fake it. I probably didn’t really like this kind of food as much as they did. No tiny eater, I thought good was some eggs with chorizo, or rice and beans made right, avocado with lime, salt, and pepper with warm tortillas. Though she tried to act like it was no biggie, I knew it ticked Jennifer off that I was this way, and it didn’t make me feel good that it did.

  “I had fun, and I really liked her.”

  “I know.”

  “And he’s so out there.”

  “Out there like a narc.”

  “I don’t think they’d care. I bet they smoke it.”

  “Who’d want to smoke it with them?”

  “I definitely would with her. I bet she does. I’ll find out.”

  “With him, then.”

  “It doesn’t seem like he would, that’s true. I bet he’d be very interesting if he did. “

  “You gotta be joking, right?”

  She smiled. She wasn’t. I didn’t for one second believe she’d want to hang out with him—even her, for that matter. Jennifer was just . . . this was how she was.

  Not that I would smoke it with either of those people. I wasn’t doing any with anyone. I had put that past me. Even Ef didn’t smoke like he used to, not like his cousin Richard and Richard’s friends. Not that he wasn’t into the white powder some, enough. He did the blow. He insisted he was careful about it, and I believed him. Mostly. Efren was my closest, longest camarada. We were brothers. I wanted to believe him. The truth was that he’d been getting loose about his business. Was it because of blow? It was like he was getting it too easy, and he was moving it around too fast. Sometimes the house noise seemed like more than noise. Sometimes it sounded like stupid.

  These two young guys coming over were proof. One had long scraggly hair that had braids in it that hadn’t been unbraided in a year. Tattoos that seemed like a long-sleeve blue shirt from a distance. He needed food. I’d take him for a meth head, but he smiled too much and too calmly. His partner was a pretty blond, proud of the muscled cuts in his pecs and abdomen. In other words, he went shirtless. Only hippie beads. I was there when they were telling Ef that they felt like they were being followed at first, so they drove around until they lost those detectives. Ef sold to them.

  “Are you losing your mind?” I told him after.

  “I been doing business with them for a while,” Ef said. “They’ve always been good for it.”

  “I never seen them before.”

  “You’re not always around, mano. I’m telling you, they’re good for it, and a solid quantity when they . . .”

  “Are you joking? They even said they were followed.”

  “They said they thought they were. Pero okay, I see what you’re getting at.”

  “Like, if you saw them, if you were a cop, what would you do? You’d see where these stoned idiotas go, who they know, like that.”

  “You got a point, simón, yeah. Pero . . .”

  “But what?”

  “Come on, Nino. Lighten up, dude.”

  “Ay, you are so losing it.”

  “Look, serious, I’m practically done with the shit now. I know what you’re saying.”

  “You’re done?”

  “Ya no más, en serio.”

  “I do not want to see their car here again, ever, okay?”

  “Yeah, that’s cool.”

  “They’re a bust. I’m telling you.”

  “Andale, brother. I got it, I got it.”

  Jennifer didn’t recognize anything as dangerous. She thought it was all an adventure ride. Material, paint strokes, color. Nothing in her life suggested that she was wrong. I never asked her if she’d even gotten a traffic ticket.

  “Detectives,” I said. “You heard of them?”

  “How would anyone know? Aren’t they undercover?”

  “No. They drive unmarked cars.”

  “That’s what I mean. That they look like cars, so how would he know?”

  “They’re as unmarked as a seven-foot quarterback, wearing plaid shorts and a camera, in, like, a cruiser painted plain brown.”

  “You worry too much.”

  “Right. That’s probably it. Let’s forget about it.”

  “It’ll pass,” she assured me.

  After that we got on our way for a picnic in Cloudcroft with our neighbors, who’d invited us. Phil had a silver flask of cognac and we all shivered after taking swallows. Jennifer was very excited because she’d never been, and with the Mescalero reservation nearby—more excited. She and Natalie were still exuberant over each other, and Phil had got creepier since—it was hot in El Paso—they were both displaying much in their low-cut tops. And they did not shy away from the topic that was on his mind.

  “You wouldn’t like a nude beach?” asked Phil.

  “I’m normal. Of course I like to see naked women. It’s not that . . . though probably they don’t all look so good, and maybe it’s best I didn’t see that, either.”

  The women moaned critically.

  Phil loved it. “Not all boobs are equal,” he explained.

  The women moaned.

  “Not all penises are equal either, Felipe,” said Natalie.

  Jennifer said, “Uuu.”

  “What’s yours like, Nino?” Natalie asked.

  I was not good at this. Didn’t like it ever, less so with these people who did not make me comfortable.

  “Come on,” she insisted. “You’ve seen what we girls have, what about you?”

  “When’d he see you?” asked Phil, giddy. “What are you guys doing when I’m not watching?”

  “Our painting, my darling.”

  “You are well-endowed,” Jennifer told her.

  “You’re a couple of handfuls yourself, my lovely.”

  Both of them seemed to be shoving their breasts forward.

  “So what about it, Nino?” Natalie kept on.

  “You’re asking him to take it out?” cried Phil.

  “I didn’t mean that, but if that’s what it takes!”

  I didn’t offer a word. I didn’t move.

  “It’s big,” Jennifer said to break through. “I’ve seen it up yummy close.”

  Both Phil and Natalie howled.

  I hadn’t drunk that much, and I didn’t think Jennifer had, but she was drunk already. Clearly the flask was no aperitif for them. “Settle down, boys and girls,” I said finally. “We’re still getting there.” />
  “He’s no fun but probably right,” said Jennifer.

  “If he promises to show me later.” Her hands were so close to her breasts, it was as though they were someone else’s moving in for a feel.

  Phil was still laughing too hard as the highway curved to the right, and he didn’t turn the wheel enough, so the car wandered into the oncoming lane. We all heard car horns as he straightened it out fast.

  After a few moments passed, I offered to drive. Phil’s eyes were already locked on the rearview mirror. It was the New Mexico State Police, who finally lit it up. When the patrolman got to the window, Phil was perfect, driver’s license and insurance already out: He lost his grip on the steering wheel; he was very wrong to be driving one-handed. He stepped out of the car, and the two talked by the trunk. Then he came back, shaking his head.

  “He was a good man,” he said.

  “You didn’t even get a ticket?” I said. I was sure I’d have been given a DWI test, and I only had a couple sips.

  “One of those things,” he said. “He understood.”

  I looked at Jennifer to say, See? without words, but like Natalie, she hadn’t sobered up as Phil had.

  “Look, I don’t mean to piss on the party, but I feel like we should turn back. Cash out while we’re ahead.”

  “Poop on,” Jennifer corrected me. “The expression is poop on.”

  She and Natalie giggled too much again. All was well. I offered to drive. He wouldn’t hear of it. A flask—a second one or refilled?—came out again in Las Cruces. By the time we pulled into his driveway, I was the only one not fresh-start happy to be back. All seemed completely forgotten by Natalie and Phil by the time they were pouring a second bottle of red wine, our picnic laid out on the outdoor patio table. Natalie was bombed. Jennifer, either because she didn’t know how not to be agreeable or because she was, kept up. Phil, his crude slobber virtually drooling down her cleavage, didn’t seem to disturb her, and Natalie, bumping and pressing against me whenever possible, didn’t provoke, either. Though it was true I didn’t adore the Gucci food, I got up to leave because I was done for the day.

  “I’m not ready yet,” said Jennifer.

  “Stick around, man! There’ll be plenty of time to study later,” Phil told me, but then looked at them—an inside joke.