by Mark Gimenez
"I'm good."
His bike was not.
His sweet ride was now a yard sale. The wheels, frame, seat, and tire pump lay scattered over the white rock that was Sculpture Falls, limestone carved into crevices and furrows by the running water over millions of years. The Schwinn had slammed into the rock and disintegrated upon impact. That was bad luck. He still owed five months' payments on the bike.
"Finally got the bike dialed in, then I run into a tea party."
"Andy, if you'd hit those rocks instead of the water, you'd be in worse shape than your bike. Why didn't you bail?"
"Bike would've nailed the old ladies."
"Oh. A boy scout."
Andy stood. Either he or Tres was swaying side to side, he wasn't sure whom, until Tres grabbed his shoulders.
"Steady there, partner."
When the world finally stood still, Andy said, "My bike."
"I'll get what's left of it," Tres said.
Andy waited while Tres retrieved the remains of the bike. The wheels looked like potato chips and the frame like a pretzel, the tire pump would never pump again, and the seat was now floating in the water. Andy felt like John Wayne when the bad guys had killed his favorite horse.
"My trusty steed."
They climbed back up the ravine to the trail where they found Tres' bike and the three women waiting; they were wearing big wraparound sunglasses, visors that matched their color-coordinated outfits, and waist packs. The most dangerous obstacles on a single-track were not rocks, roots, or ruts, but white-haired walkers.
Andy sat on a boulder, removed his helmet, and ran his fingers through his thick wet hair that hung almost to his shoulders. He wore his hair long on the Samson theory: long hair made him indestructible on the bike. He dug out a few small rocks embedded in the raw hamburger meat that was his left knee, which made him grimace. One of the old ladies leaned over and yelled as if he were deaf: "Are you okay, sonny?"
He recoiled. "Yes, ma'am."
The second one put on her reading glasses and examined his face from a foot away. Her breath smelled like mints.
"I was a nurse. You may need stitches."
"Yes, ma'am."
"At least put Neosporin on those cuts," she said, "so you don't get an infection."
"Yes, ma'am."
"The water's down there?" the third lady asked.
"Yes, ma'am."
She turned to the others. "I told you."
"We got lost," the first lady said. "Took the wrong trail."
"Yes, ma'am."
"We were checking the map. I guess we shouldn't have stopped in the middle of the trail."
"No, ma'am."
She shrugged. "Our bad."
She unzipped her waist pack and pulled out a can of Ensure. She held it out to him like a peace offering.
"Homemade Vanilla."
Tres turned away and choked back laughter.
"Thank you, ma'am," Andy said, "but I've got Endurox in my CamelBak."
He reached around and found the rubber tube hanging from the hydration pack. He put the mouthpiece between his teeth and bit down on the bite valve. Nothing came out. The CamelBak must have punctured on the fall-but the three liters of liquid cushion had probably saved him from a serious spinal cord injury.
"Or I did."
"Endurox?" the Ensure lady said. "Does that relieve constipation?"
Tres couldn't hold back now; he buried his face in his hands and howled.
"Constipation?" Andy said. "Well, no, ma'am, it doesn't. At least I don't think so."
"The key to life is fiber. I mix Metamucil with my Ensure every morning. I can set my clock by my morning bowel-"
"Yes, ma'am." He pointed west. "Go back that way, hang a left on the white rock trail, then another left on the dirt path down by the creek. That'll take you to the falls."
"Can we swim naked there?"
"Uh, no, ma'am. Only out at Hippie Hollow on the lake."
The Austin chapter of AARP waved and walked off, chatting like sorority sisters. Tres fell to the ground laughing and started rolling around like a kid practicing a "stop, drop, and roll" fire drill. He said, " 'Does it relieve constipation?' " then howled again.
Andy shook his head.
"Get up. And help me up."
High noon and Tres was still reliving the moment.
" 'Does it relieve constipation?' You should've said, 'No, ma'am, but taking a header down that ravine sure as hell did-I crapped in my pants.' "
"Dang near the truth."
The throbbing bass of "La Grange," ZZ Top's hit song from the seventies, blared out from a boom box and reverberated off the limestone walls of the pool. Coming to Barton Springs was a trip back in time to the way Austin used to be. The music, the people, the pool. Old-timers swam laps in the icy water the Indians thought healed them and felt young again. Young people like Andy re-created their parents' fondest memories from the seventies and eighties-and every middle-aged parent in Austin had a fond memory of Barton Springs. And kids made new memories, floating on inner tubes, diving off the board, and playing in the turquoise water. For as long as anyone could remember, everyone in Austin-except developers-had desperately wanted the springs to stay frozen in time, at least for one more perfect summer.
Like that summer.
Andy stretched out on the south ledge of the pool and admired the lifeguard in her red Speedo sitting up in the tower. Barton Springs Pool was a thousand-foot-long natural swimming hole situated in Zilker Park just south of downtown Austin. Four million gallons of spring water filled the three-acre limestone cavity and maintained a constant year-round temperature of sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. And every hour, another million gallons gushed forth from the three springs the original owner, Uncle Billy Barton, had named after his daughters: Eliza, Zenobia, and Parthenia.
Poor girls.
It was a hundred degrees out, but the cold water had temporarily relieved the heat, just as the marijuana smoke riding the breeze from the college kids on the grassy bank south of the pool had temporarily relieved Andy's aches and pains.
"Hey, medicinal marijuana really works. My knee doesn't hurt anymore."
Andy didn't do dope-his high came from adrenaline-but he inhaled the sweet smoke again just to make sure he had completed the full course of treatment.
"There's no place like Austin," Tres said. "Biking the greenbelt, swimming the springs… the live music. This is as good as it gets. I only wish I'd been around to hear Springsteen rock the Armadillo."
The Armadillo World Headquarters, a cavernous National Guard armory converted into a concert hall, was the kind of place where politicians from the city wore cowboy boots and cowboys from the country smoked dope and everyone regardless of political persuasion got drunk and danced to Willie Nelson. The famous and not so famous had played the Armadillo back in the seventies, including Andy's father. To hear him tell it, those were the best years in Austin. He said the Armadillo was the soul of Austin-until it was razed for an office building in 1981. That was a dark day in Austin's history-the day of the coup. The day the developers seized power.
Austin had changed that day and hadn't stopped changing. Austin seemed more like L.A. every day, although Andy had never been to L.A. More people, more traffic, more trendy lofts and lounges downtown. Less laid-back. Fewer hippies. No Armadillo. In ten years it would be just like-and this singular fear gripped all who loved Austin the way it used to be-Dallas.
But one place had not changed: Barton Springs.
Andy had broken a full-body sweat again, so he rolled off the ledge and into the water. He dove down fourteen feet below the diving board and put his sore back close to the Parthenia spring. The rhythmic pulse of the spring, the dim light, and the water wrapped around his body made sitting on the bottom of the pool a womb-like experience. But this was not your chlorinated backyard pool; he stirred the gravelly bottom and tiny red-gilled salamanders floated up. Unlike the salamanders, Andy needed oxygen so he pushed himself
to the top. He climbed out of the pool and again stretched out on the warm ledge.
Andy's standard routine was to lie on the ledge ogling the female lifeguards in their towers and the college coeds tanning on the grassy bank until he had worked up a good sweat; then he would simply roll into the pool. After a few minutes in the cold water, he would climb out and repeat the routine. With enough experience, you got into a nice rhythm. Andy and Tres were in a nice rhythm.
"Arthur," Natalie said, "it says here we could hire an Indian surrogate."
Natalie Riggs was Tres' gorgeous girlfriend; she insisted on addressing him by his given name. Against Andy's advice, Tres had dutifully reported in to her after their morning ride, apparently a condition of their engagement. She had decided to meet them at the pool, the only upside of which was the fact that she looked stunning lying there on a towel in a tiny string bikini with her smooth skin shimmering in sweat and suntan oil. Jesus. She was thirty-one and a sexy brunette; she wanted to marry Tres and have a baby-Tres said her biological clock was ticking so loudly it kept him awake at night-but she also wanted to retain her fabulous figure, a requirement both for her job as a local TV lifestyle reporter and her hopes of jumping to the networks. "Have you ever seen a fat pregnant woman on the network morning shows?" she often asked Tres. So they had decided to have a baby by gestational surrogacy: Tres' sperm, Natalie's egg, a stranger's womb, and a binding contract.
"Which tribe?" Tres said.
Natalie eyed her fiance over the magazine she was reading.
"Which tribe what?"
"Which Indian tribe? Apache, Comanche, Sioux…?"
"Not those Indians. India Indians. You know, the ones with the little black mark on their foreheads."
"They're having babies for Americans?"
"That's what this article says. You just send them the fertilized egg and nine months later they send you back the baby. And they're a lot cheaper than American surrogates."
"Outsourcing babies to India?" Andy said.
"Every time my computer crashes and I call tech support," Tres said, "I'm talking to some Indian guy named Bob. Can't understand a word he says."
"And the clinics have pre-qualified surrogates," Natalie said, "tested and ready to go."
"Tested?" Andy said.
Natalie sipped her Pellegrino sparkling water then said, "The surrogate's got to pass a criminal background check, a psychiatric test, and an STD test. Do you know how hard it is to find a surrogate in the U.S. who can pass all three tests? That's why they're so expensive here."
"Supply and demand," Tres said.
"You gotta worry the woman who's carrying your baby is a criminal, a nut, or diseased?" Andy said. "Jeez, Natalie, seems a lot safer to birth that baby yourself."
"And lose these abs?"
She had awesome abs.
"Why not outsource your baby to a nice Swedish girl?" Andy said. "I'll implant the egg myself."
"Commercial surrogacy is illegal in Europe," Tres said. "And it's only legal in twelve states over here."
"Is Texas one of them?"
"Yeah, but you've got to get court approval, so we may do it in Illinois. You don't have to go to court up there. But the doctor's got to sign an affidavit saying it's a medical necessity."
"And saving Natalie's awesome abs might not qualify?"
"Exactly." Tres reached over and patted her lean belly. "Still, babe, I think we should use an American surrogate and support the troops."
"Support the troops how?" Andy said.
"A lot of American surrogates are military wives," Tres said, "having other women's babies to make ends meet while their husbands are in Iraq. I figure we could do our share for the war effort." To Natalie: "I vote American."
"I vote for her," Andy said.
He nodded at a coed walking toward them. She was blonde and spilling out of her bikini in a good way. She jiggled past them and over to her spot on the bank where she sat and removed her bikini top. Topless sunbathing was legal at Barton Springs. For full nudity, you had to go out to Hippie Hollow on Lake Travis, a bit of a drive, so most coeds opted for topless at the springs.
"Only problem with her," Tres said, "is I'd have to manually fertilize the egg."
Any perceived threat to Tres' trust fund got Natalie's immediate attention. She lowered her sunglasses and gave the blonde one of those brief but thorough head-to-foot once-overs that competitive females mastered by ninth grade. Natalie Riggs could now describe in detail every flaw on the blonde's body.
" Puh-leeze. You or my baby inside her? I don't think so."
"Maybe I should conduct a pre-surrogacy exam first," Andy said, "check out her reproductive system personally."
"In your dreams," Tres said.
"Like there's anywhere else?"
"The standard surrogacy contract," Natalie said, "requires the surrogate to stop having sex for the entire gestation period. I doubt she could stop for an afternoon."
"That's what gives me hope."
"Andy," Natalie said, "her hair is bleached, she could stand to lose some weight, and in case you didn't notice, those are implants."
"What's your point?"
"My God, Andy, she's drinking a supersized soda. That's three hundred forty calories. She'll be a size ten in two years."
"Two years? Natalie, my relationships usually last two hours."
Natalie sighed in resignation.
"Then go over and ask her out."
Andy sat up. He considered doing just that. But she wasn't alone. Rejection would be a painful public humiliation. A train whistle sounded in the distance; the park's miniature train was about to leave the station. Andy lay back down.
"And get shot down in public? I have my reputation to consider."
Tres laughed. "What reputation?"
"Andy," Natalie said, "you've got to date to have sex… well, maybe not with her, but with classy girls you do, like the kind you meet at Pangaea."
"That's the place with the safari theme? Girls dressed like Tarzan's mate dancing on the tables? Natalie, I can't get past the velvet rope at places like that."
The beautiful people of Austin now frequented the trendy new lounges springing up in the warehouse district a few blocks west of downtown. Andy was not and so did not.
"A guy from New York opened Pangaea," she said. "They've got tribal spears and shields on the walls, and the ceiling is draped like a tent. It's fabulous."
"It's expensive," Tres said.
Natalie rolled lusciously toward Tres and gave him a little kiss.
"But I'm worth it."
Andy tried not to admire her body in motion, but he couldn't resist. But then, she and Tres weren't married yet, so it wasn't as if he were committing a Ninth Commandment violation.
She rolled back and said, "So when was your last date?"
"Last year."
Natalie sat up, squirted a line of suntan oil onto her right thigh, and rubbed it in with long smooth strokes.
"When last year?"
"April."
"April of last year? Andy, it's August of this year."
"I'm working on it."
"Anyone answer your ad?" Tres said.
Natalie now rubbed oil on her left thigh.
"What ad?"
"Andy put an ad in Lovers Lane."
Lovers Lane was the online dating venue of the Austin Chronicle, the weekly alternative newspaper in town.
"Any responses?"
"Nope. Every 'woman seeking man' wants a guy who's smart, rich, and looks like Matthew McConaughey. They don't want regular guys."
McConaughey was Austin's resident movie star.
"Which is why they're alone and putting personal ads in the Chronicle," Tres said.
"Which is why they're not going to answer my ad-I'm not smart or rich and I don't look like McConaughey."
"Andy," Natalie said, "don't sell yourself short. You're sort of smart."
That amused Tres almost as much as the old lady's "Does it reliev
e constipation?"
"I'm a regular Joe looking for a regular Joan."
"So lie," Tres said. "Everyone in those ads lies."
"But that defeats the whole purpose of personal ads: you can be honest."
"Andy, no one's honest. I know. I work for the IRS."
Tres had hired on with the Internal Revenue Service after law school at the University of Texas; he had been a B student, so the best he could do was a government job. But he hoped to parlay his inside knowledge into a big firm job in a few years. He didn't need the money-there was the trust fund-but he needed a station in life.
Andy said, "I'm honest."
Tres: "And poor."
Natalie: "With no girlfriend."
Andy: "Which requires money."
Tres shook his head. "It's a vicious cycle."
Natalie gave Andy her "wise mother" look, which told him she was about to offer more unsolicited personal advice. The fact that she was two years older than Andy apparently gave her standing.
"Andy, classy girls don't want slackers."
She graciously omitted the implied "like you."
"They want guys with ambition," she said. "Like Arthur."
"He has a trust fund."
"Or that. They want someone who can give them the life-the house on the lake, the cars, the country club, the nightlife, the wardrobe, the accessories. Someone with money, or at least the ambition to make money."
She squirted oil onto her upper chest and smoothed it over the exposed portion of her beautiful breasts.
"Andy, if you want a girlfriend, you need ambition."
Andy turned away from Natalie's oily body and said, "I need a beer."
TWO
La cerveza mas fina.
Andy drained the Corona longneck and waved the bottle in the air until he caught their waitress' attention at the far end of the porch. Ronda was working the sidewalk tables fronting Congress Avenue that Sunday night. She was twenty-five, sweet, and a lesbian; her black hair sported purple and green streaks, and colorful tattoos covered every square inch of her visible skin surface, most of which was visible since she was wearing only a blue jean miniskirt and a red halter top. From that distance, the tattoos blended together and made her look like a walking Jackson Pollock painting. She held up four fingers and raised her pierced eyebrows as if asking, Another round for the table? Andy nodded and pointed at Tres behind his back. Tres didn't know it, but he was buying.
