Olivia was enchanted by it all. She adored the banners and the pamphlets and the earnest conversation that she could just barely understand. Jorge’s poems about freedom and liberty and the color of her eyes swept her along in a tide of something part love, part politics—the combination so heady, it did her in.
One evening, after hours of impassioned but seemingly fruitless debate, Jorge stood up in front of a gathering of twenty or thirty student leaders, and, quoting Marx, Castro, and Public Enemy, begged them to strike like their comrades at Mexico City’s public university. The students of Universidad del Valle de Mexico were afraid that their private institution could and would expel them. Jorge convinced them that it wasn’t enough to speak sympathetically of rebellion. They had to act. By the end of his oration, they voted overwhelmingly to strike.
That night, Olivia walked with the boy she imagined to be a young García Lorca down the Avenida de Zacatecas and out to the main road. They found a motel—the kind of place where cars drove into private carports in front of each individual room and their drivers pulled shut the flimsy metal doors behind them, hiding them from view.
When they checked in, the old woman at the counter asked if they were staying the night or un rato—a little while. Before Olivia could buy them an entire night on the sour sheets and thin foam mattress, Jorge muttered, “Solo rato,” and took the key.
Unlike their necking, which had been languid and passionate, night after night on a bench in the park or in doorways along the street, the first time they made love was rushed and almost grim. When they walked into the dank little room, Jorge undressed quickly, motioning her to do the same. Olivia, who, despite the evidence of poetry and white doves, had more of a sense of romance than her lover, could have ignored the forty-peso room and imagined them in a canopy bed with an entire lifetime to spend in each other’s arms. Jorge, it seemed, could not. He tore the wrapper off of a condom, entered her roughly without any preamble, and came almost instantly. He was dressed again before she’d even had a chance to inhale. They walked back the way they came, holding hands, but only because that was the way they’d walked there, and the contrast of not touching would have been too stark. He left her at her room, and she didn’t see him again until the next afternoon, when she found him waiting in his usual spot outside the Instituto, a bouquet of purple irises in his arms.
That night marked what might have been the end of Olivia’s infatuation with Jorge. Her disappointment with their lovemaking seeped into the rest of her relationship with him, and although she continued to echo his words of love and devotion, part of her felt like a fraud. She could not bear the thought of herself as a dilettante who casually took up with a Mexican man in a kind of excess of touristic fervor—too many of the American girls she met in Mexico seemed to have a travel checklist: see the sights, eat the food, sleep with the men—but at the same time her attempts to imagine a future with Jorge failed her and ultimately inspired her escape back home. When he had arrived in California, his skin caked with grime, his hair stiff with dust, and his pockets emptied by the “coyote,” she had pushed all doubts out of her mind. He had sacrificed too much to follow her, and there was no longer room for ambivalence.
***
Olivia was a good waitress. She wasn’t particularly interested in food, and she never knew what wine went with what dish, but she was attentive to and friendly with her customers, complimenting their choices and encouraging them to try a piece of flourless chocolate cake or an appetizer of sautéed calamari. While her solicitude came naturally to her, she was competent and amiable because she got better tips that way, not because she liked her customers. She came close to hating them at times, particularly late at night when groups of men, liberated from their decency by the absence of their wives and girlfriends, made jokes that they mistakenly believed were beyond her comprehension and grabbed her ass.
By 11:30 at night, Olivia’s smile was so tight it hurt. After she pulled off her white apron and bundled it into her bag, she had to grip her cheeks with her hands and massage her face back into something resembling a human expression. She dug her hands into her pockets and pulled out the wadded bills. Ninety dollars. Pretty good. Enough to pay the electric bill.
Jorge was waiting at the bar, deep in conversation with Gabriel. The two men had hair identical in color—a deep, shiny black. The physical similarity ended there, however. Whereas Jorge was thin and sharp-faced, Gabriel, although not particularly tall, was massive. He had the over-developed biceps and chest of a man who earns his muscles lifting free-weights and the handles of Nautilus machines. He didn’t look particularly strong, just large, as though his muscles were carved out of soap. His hair was clipped short, and he wore a row of earrings in one ear. If she hadn’t heard stories in the waitresses’ changing room of his sexual escapades, Olivia would have assumed he was gay. As it was, between the wife who occasionally showed up at the restaurant and the various waitresses he bedded, it was unlikely he would have had the time or the energy to have sex with a man, even if so inclined.
Olivia put her arms around Jorge’s waist. She leaned against his back, feeling the cool slickness of his windbreaker against her cheeks. He spun around on his stool and kissed her quickly on the mouth. Turning back to Gabriel, he said, “Okay, call them now and we’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“We’ll be where?” Olivia said, as they left the restaurant and crossed the parking lot toward the car. “I don’t want to go anywhere. I’ve been working since 4:30.”
“Don’t worry, chica. It’ll just take a minute.”
Olivia stopped in front of her car and threw her purse on the hood. It landed with a thud. “Jorge, what’s going on? Where are we going?”
“It’s nothing, Olivia. Don’t worry. We’re just going to make a stop. Two stops. But it’ll be fast, I promise. You won’t even have to get out of the car.”
“Jorge, is this the deal? Are you out of your mind? Do you really expect me to go along with you while you do a drug deal?”
He leaned against the car and said beseechingly, “Look, it’s no big deal. You’re just going to wait in the car.”
“No!”
“Okay, mami. But I need the car.”
“Fine. Just drop me off at home before you go.”
“I can’t. You heard me tell Gabriel I’d be there in twenty minutes. I don’t have time to drop you off. You’re going to have to take a bus or something.”
Olivia groaned, imagining the long, late-night bus ride. She hadn’t any idea which bus to take, or even if they were still running this late at night. She considered the dent a cab ride would make in her night’s earnings. She’d probably lose half, at least. Maybe even more. She looked around the parking lot to see if any of the other girls were still there, but they’d all run for home as soon as they’d cleaned up their stations and zeroed out their tabs. She knew the manager was still there, and she considered, just for a second, asking him for a ride. But what would she say? “Can you drive me home? My boyfriend needs my car to do his meth deal.”
“This sucks,” she said in English.
“Cómo?”
“Nada.” She reached for her bag and dug around for the keys. She tossed them to him. “You drive.”
Jorge handed the keys back to her. “I don’t want to have to park. I’m just going to pull up in front and jump out of the car. You have to drive.”
She shook her head in disgust, although she was relieved that he didn’t expect her to do anything other than wait for him in the car. She unlocked the doors and got into the driver’s seat, throwing her bag in the back. Jorge sat next to her, jiggling his leg and tapping his knee with his fingers. He flipped open the mirror on the visor and smoothed back his hair.
“Put your seat belt on,” she said.
He leaned back in his seat, still tapping nervously. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Jorge, you
have to wear a seat belt. Do you want some cop stopping us while we’re on our way to do your drug deal?”
He reached back for the seat belt.
She pulled out of the parking lot and followed his directions to a small house in South Oakland.
“Wait for me here. Don’t turn off the engine,” he said.
Olivia sat in the car, listening to the idle. The street was empty and quiet. The houses were small bungalows, most with wrought iron gates on the windows and doors. The house into which Jorge had disappeared was painted a pale color; she couldn’t make it out in the dark. Its front lawn had been covered over in cement that was probably painted grass-green. There was a tricycle lying on its side in the driveway, missing one of its rear wheels. Along the side of the house, a clothesline drooped under the weight of sheets snapping in the night breeze.
Olivia turned on the radio. She punched the buttons, stopping finally on a station playing bolero music. Jorge would hate it, preferring as he did Norteno bands likes Los Tigres del Norte. But Olivia loved old scratchy records with the quavering voices of boleristas like Amparo Montes and Toña La Negra, singing about desesperación del amor and almas solas.
She jumped as Jorge jerked open the car door. He was holding a small cardboard container, about the size of two shoeboxes. He laid it gently in the well of the passenger seat and got in the car. Then, with an almost childish grimace, he buckled his seat belt.
Olivia’s stomach lurched with dread. “What’s that?” she whispered.
“You know what it is.”
“I thought your job was just to introduce people! I thought you weren’t even going to be touching the stuff!” Her fingers gripped the steering wheel so tightly she could see her knuckles glow white in the dark of the car. She kept her eyes on Jorge’s face, afraid even to look at the box under his feet.
“I’m the one everybody trusts,” Jorge said. “Oreste knows me, Gabriel knows me. It only makes sense for me to do the delivery. I just drop this off and pick up the money. That’s it.”
The back of Olivia’s neck prickled, and she whipped her head around, terrified someone was watching her.
“Oh, God,” she whispered.
Jorge hit his knees with his hands, obviously impatient with her anxiety. He seemed to feel none of it himself. On the contrary, he looked excited, almost happy. “Let’s just drop this off, okay? Then I’ll take you home. I’ll deliver the money myself.”
Once again she followed Jorge’s directions to another house. She was so frightened she didn’t even notice the route they took. The numbers on the digital clock on the dashboard seemed to be frozen, refusing to move while she waited alone in the car. She tried to listen to the radio, but the sound of her heart beating in her chest drowned out the music.
Suddenly, in her rearview mirror, Olivia saw the bright lights of a car driving up the block. She began to whimper, and by the time it had passed her and continued on its way, she was crying. It felt like hours before Jorge returned, and she almost left without him. When he finally opened the car door and leapt in beside her, she slammed the gear shift into drive and spun away, blindly driving down street after street until she reached a landmark she recognized. She kept her eyes glued to the road in front of her, refusing to look at Jorge or at the brown paper bag he held in his lap. She slowed down only when she was within a block or two of home. She pulled up in front of their apartment building and wrenched her house key off the ring. She grabbed her bag, jumped out of the car, and ran down the alley to their apartment.
Olivia gagged as she ran by the garbage bins and made it only as far as the kitchen sink, where she vomited again and again until her chest heaved dryly and nothing more came up.
She leaned her forehead against the cool metal of the sink and breathed deeply, willing her stomach to cease its anguished roiling. Finally, when she was able, she stood up and walked into the bathroom. She stripped off her clothes and stood under the hot shower until her breasts and belly were seared bright red.
She crawled into bed, pulled the thick comforter over her head, and buried her face in the soft pillow. Within moments she fell deeply asleep. She didn’t hear Jorge come in hours later and didn’t even shift in the bed when he lay down next to her. The next morning he was gone again. She took another message for him, writing out the details Gabriel gave her. Where. When. She did her best to put out of her mind what it was that her boyfriend was doing—how he was earning the money he imagined he needed to support her.
Olivia wished she had somewhere to go, something to do, but it was her day off. She cleaned the apartment, more because she needed to keep busy than because it was dirty. She was down on her knees, scrubbing at brown rust stains under the lip of the toilet, when she heard a faint moaning. Her bathroom window faced the alley leading toward the street, or she never would have heard the noise. Olivia opened the smoked glass window, jerked at the warped sash. She stuck her head out of the window and saw an elderly woman backed up against the rear of the apartment building. Her arms were spread wide and her fingers were scrabbling at the clapboard. A small black dog stood on its hind legs, its front paws leaving muddy prints on the woman’s faded housedress.
“Don’t be afraid! I’ll be right there!” Olivia shouted.
She ran through her apartment and out the front door. By the time Olivia reached her, the woman had begun to slide down the side of the building, her breath coming in shallow gasps and her eyes wild with fear. It was the rottweiler puppy. Olivia scooped up the dog just as it began licking at the old woman’s face. She held the dog in one arm and gripped the woman around the waist with her other. She tried to lift her to her feet, but quickly realized that she wasn’t strong enough to do that one-handed. Instead, she lowered her gently to the ground until the woman sat propped up against the wall, her legs stuck out straight ahead of her like the ribs of a broken umbrella.
“Are you okay?” Olivia asked.
The woman didn’t answer. The dog gave a sudden wriggle, and Olivia looked down at it. He barked happily, and she scratched his ears. Then she stormed across the alley and pounded on the door of the apartment where his owner lived. When no one answered, she knocked even harder. The door finally opened, and the young man who she had seen walking the dog peered out, his hair standing up on his head in wiry spikes.
“Wassup?” he said, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.
“Your dog nearly killed someone, that’s ‘wassup’!” Olivia shoved the puppy into the man’s arms.
“He just a puppy, he can’t kill no one.”
“Yeah? Well he nearly scared that woman to death.” Olivia waved in the direction of the old woman. The man’s defensive grimace disappeared, and his face sagged.
“She all right?” He began to walk toward the woman but stopped at Olivia’s warning hand.
“Leave her alone. I’ll take care of it. You just keep your dog inside where he belongs.” She spun on her heel and ran back to the woman who had, by now, begun to breath more normally. “Are you all right? Do you need me to take you to the doctor? Should I call an ambulance for you?” Olivia helped her to her feet. Gnarled blue veins buckled the ashy white skin of the woman’s twig-like legs, and her hand was a dry claw in Olivia’s.
“Should I call 9-1-1?” Olivia asked.
“No, no,” the woman muttered in a vaguely European accent. “I’m fine. Fine. I am only afraid of dogs. Nothing happened. Only I am so stupid. Afraid of a little dog.” She wiped ineffectually at the paw prints mixing curiously with the faded pattern of teapots and cups on her dress. “Can you only help me to my house? Please?” She pointed to the rear door of the building.
“Of course! Of course.” Olivia helped her inside and up the short flight of stairs to her apartment. “Are you sure you don’t need a doctor? Is there someone I can call for you?”
The woman shook her head. “My daughter, she’ll be here
soon. She comes for lunch. She’ll be here soon. It’s all right.” She unlocked the door to her apartment using the key hanging around her neck and opened it only enough to slip inside. The door slammed behind her, and Olivia was alone in the hall.
When Jorge came home later in the day, Olivia began to tell him what had happened, about the woman’s terror when confronted with the overly friendly puppy, and about how furious Olivia had been at the dog’s owner. But Jorge cut her off.
“Did Gabriel call?” he asked.
She glared at him, and then wordlessly handed him the slip of paper on which she’d written the message from Gabriel. He took it, crammed it into his pocket, and tried to kiss her. She turned her head away.
“Come on, baby,” he said in English, grabbing her up in his arms.
This was the first time Jorge had ever said anything like this to her. He only rarely used English phrases and words, and then with a kind of hesitant self-consciousness that had always charmed her. This sudden ease with an endearment never before part of their repertoire made her inexplicably angry. She twisted out from under his arms.
“Mi amor,” he said, softly, and reached out again. She began to shrug his hand away, but he rested it so gently, so tentatively, that she could not bear to refuse him. In a low, earnest voice, he promised her that as soon as he got the second half of his money, he would wash his hands of Gabriel.
She gave in. He steered her to their bed, all the while whispering how much he loved her, how beautiful she was. She lay back on the pillowy down comforter, its striped duvet cover worn slick and feather-soft, and closed her eyes. She opened them to find him waving in front of her the wad of cash he’d brought home the night before and stuffed under the mattress of their bed. It was as if he thought the money were Spanish Fly or rhino horn—that the mere sight of it would make her voracious with desire. She looked at it for a moment, despite herself, because she’d never seen so many bills in one place. Then she rolled on her stomach and buried her head in her hands. Jorge kissed her unresponsive neck for a while and then gave up. He stretched out next to her, and the two of them lay there, silently.
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