by Manuel Munoz
“I’m really sorry to hear that,” Roberto said. “I didn’t know your dad was sick.”
“He didn’t either,” Joaquín said. “Well, no, he did — he must have. I looked up all this info on colon cancer, and he must have been shitting black for months already.”
Roberto didn’t know what to say to that, but Joaquín cleared his throat, the way he always did when he needed to ask a favor.
“I can’t stay at my house,” Joaquín told him. “I’m bringing him with me.”
“Oh.”
“I just wanted to let you know. He wanted to come along. You know, because it’s important . . .”
“No, of course, please,” Roberto stammered. To see him, after a year — there would be no other way out, and he held back his hesitation and his jealousy.
“Friday night, then,” Joaquín said, his voice level and satisfied. After they exchanged quick, swallowed good-byes, Roberto set about cleaning the apartment, dusting and wiping down the counters, emptying the drainboard of its clean dishes, tossing the junk mail he’d let languish for weeks. He ran the vacuum over the living room carpet, even though it was evening and the couple next door might be watching television. But this was where they would sleep, Joaquín and the new boyfriend from Menlo Park, here on the floor in a nest of blankets and thick pillows from the couch. There had been a time when Joaquín was hurting, Roberto had to remind himself, to resist the anger that was building up inside him — the stories Joaquín had told of crossing over into the United States when he was young, the scorching desert sands of Arizona and cupping stagnant water from a trough to keep himself alive. But that was a different kind of pain, an unfair comparison; still, it was all Roberto could think of to ward off the jealousy. A year ago, it was he whom Joaquín had folded into, as if acting in a dream, his dark brown arms involuntary, Roberto awake at night and running his fingers over the deep, circular scar on Joaquín’s left arm, from his immunization back in Mexico. Or finding the line of three birthmarks on the left side of his belly by memory in the darkness of the bedroom.
Roberto rose early on Thursday morning, pulling the blinds of his kitchen window all the way up to the top. The view opened out on the spare, grassless backyard and high fence, which still couldn’t blot out the horizon of peach orchards and walnut groves. This was what came of the south side of town’s expanding, eating up the farmland, the field lizards still confused as they scampered around in the dust. He made a full pot of coffee, time still to relax before going to work, and watched the sun burn off the dew from the fence, the steam barely perceptible as the wood soaked up the morning warmth. Had Joaquín heard about the way the town had changed since he had left? Would his parents have bothered to tell him? And even if they had mentioned that Roberto lived in the new apartment complex over there just south of Kamm Avenue, where an old nectarine grove used to be, there was no way for them to know that the complex remained half-empty because it was too expensive for the town, the windows dark at dusk, and how Roberto could hear the rustle of the orchard leaves at night even with the window closed. They were slowly going gold for autumn.
After a stretch of hot sand, a trough of stagnant water, it’s easy to leave a world behind. Ever since Joaquín had told him those desert stories, Roberto took them as his own, walking the steps in his imagination: boredom was nothing to face down, and he understood how easy it was for Joaquín, after all their time together, to admit that he was restless and maybe even out of love and that the answer seemed to be in a bigger city, despite his having no savings, no job set, and no family close by. Those weren’t true obstacles, and if they were, Joaquín reasoned, they wouldn’t be in the way very long. Roberto thought of this as he got into his car to make the short drive to the convalescent home in Kingsburg, where he worked soothing the tender backs of elderly patients, calming them in Spanish. Fifteen years now. Complacency or good reasoning, he couldn’t tell which had kept him suited in the pristine white uniform and vinyl shoes for a steady paycheck. “I don’t want you to come with me,” Joaquín had said. “Because I can only take care of myself.”
All day at work, Roberto listened to the pained sighs of relief his hands brought, concentrating on those sounds. When he first started at the convalescent home, his hands shook terribly; he was terrified that he was handling the patients too roughly. Now he understood the moans, the phlegm-coated pleadings caught in the throats of the old white ladies, the old Mexican señores with their faces stern through the indignity of another man’s touching them. Roberto listened today as Señor Félix Vardo closed his eyes and sighed with resignation, allowed himself to be heaved over on his side, Roberto’s hands manipulating the skin, circulating the blood back there. Today, Señora Susana de la Monte actually smiled, able to lift her own feet onto the pillow for Roberto to work on the swelling, and she thanked him even though he was far from being done. As with all the other patients, he massaged her hands afterward, lathering generously with his own store-bought lotion, and as Señora de la Monte’s eyes met his in silent appreciation, Roberto thought of Joaquín’s father. Sometimes the nurses at the front desk would clue him in on the status of a particular patient, usually on arrival or departure, and show him the telltale darkness creeping into the X-rays sent over by the radiologists. The patients never seemed to know why they had arrived or why they were departing — their families signed the papers, their faces blank expressions of exhaustion — but Roberto knew. He thought of Joaquín’s father in the Visalia hospital, and he knew.
Out on the loading dock at lunchtime, he offered his supervisor a cigarette before she had time to take out her own pack. “Trudy,” he said, lighting her cigarette, “do you mind if I work a double tonight? Get off for Friday?”
“You look tired already,” Trudy told him. She was a grossly fat woman with blond hair cut close to her neck, tiny glasses perched on her nose. Although everyone liked her, it was widely known that she had become manager because her weight prevented her from doing any of the more strenuous work. But she was a kind person and good with numbers.
“I have people coming tomorrow,” Roberto said. “I just found out.”
“Family?” Trudy asked, coughing. “They staying with you?”
“You know how it is.”
“Sure,” she said. “I’ll pull someone off for tonight. There’s always somebody who’d rather work daytime.”
“Thanks,” he told her, though he could feel himself tiring already at the thought of not leaving until one in the morning.
“I can’t give you overtime, though,” Trudy pointed out. “Late notice. They’ll get on me if you raise a stink, so that’s the only condition.”
“Fine,” Roberto said, nodding. “Fine.” He finished his cigarette and waited silently for Trudy, not rushing her. For November, the afternoon was warm, almost eighty degrees, but when night came, the temperature would plummet, the open Valley sky snatching away all the heat. He would be fast asleep, though, too tired to pace around as he usually did when anxiety gripped him too hard. This evening, after most of the patients would have been urged to sleep for the night, Roberto planned to walk the floors anyway, engage the few who tossed and turned, peeked through doors to investigate the hallways, stumbled about. He planned to volunteer himself for the harder work in the kitchen, stowing away dishes and the heavy food trays. All of this to drive home tired at one in the morning and collapse into bed, oblivious and not needing to face the quiet hours.
WHEN ROBERTO WOKE AT two on Friday afternoon, the November light was angling low into his bedroom, the daytime nearly done. He sat on the edge of the bed with a sense of relief. The night hours had come and gone, the stretch of being trapped by the quiet streets, the hush over the apartment complex, with nowhere to go for solace. He hated those times, those hours of darkness when he could not sleep. With the afternoon light it was easier for his heart to juggle around all the old questions grinding into him like broken glass. It soothed him to hear the faint patter of the couple next d
oor washing dishes in their kitchen sink, the tick of heels on the walkway in front of his apartment.
He heard his cell phone ring and he stumbled into the living room to retrieve it. It was Joaquín.
“I’m parked next to your car,” Joaquín said. “Which one’s your apartment?”
“You’re here already?” Roberto asked groggily. He walked over to the front door and opened it, stretched out to see the far end of the complex, where the parking lot was, and there was Joaquín, waving.
Roberto watched him as he put the cell phone in his pocket and leaned into the red Datsun pickup to pull out a duffel bag. Joaquín was talking to someone in the passenger seat, as if coaxing him out. The other door opened, and Roberto stood watching, still shirtless and wearing his boxer shorts, suddenly aware of the twenty-five pounds he’d put on since last year. He could see the other figure emerge, smaller than Joaquín, probably younger, and as the two of them headed in the direction of the apartment, Roberto ducked back inside to put on some clothes.
“Hi,” Joaquín greeted him, nudging the front door open with his duffel bag. He motioned the boyfriend in with an assuring nod of his head. “This is Robbie,” he said to Roberto. “Robbie, this is my friend Roberto.”
Robbie stepped into the apartment holding his own duffel bag, extending his hand to Roberto. He was a good ten, if not fifteen, years younger, maybe in his early twenties, and his green eyes set Roberto to guessing about his background, his people. It disappointed Roberto to see someone so different from the person he had imagined. He had expected to see a mirror of himself, someone to project some jealousy upon, someone whose look and manner would prove that Joaquín might have given him up but was still seeking someone just like him. Instead, Robbie had the edge of the city about him. The dark brown shirt he wore was perfectly fitted, the short sleeves tucked around little mounds of biceps, streaks of orange running up the side of the fabric in the shape of an hourglass. It would be impossible to find a shirt like that here. “Good to meet you,” he said, shaking Robbie’s hand and looking at the green eyes, which were gigantic, hopeful and innocent, and somehow manipulative. “We’re tocayos.”
“He means you’re the same, like twins,” Joaquín told Robbie, who looked perplexed. “Because you have the same name.”
“But my name’s Robbie.”
“You don’t speak Spanish?” Roberto asked him.
“No,” Robbie answered. “I was born here.”
“So was I.”
Joaquín almost seemed to step between them. “I lied at work,” he said. “I called in sick.”
“Me, too,” Robbie said.
“What do you do?”
“I cut hair,” Robbie answered, snipping his fingers in the air to demonstrate. “That’s how I met him.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I bet him along the way that you called in sick, too,” Joaquín said quickly. “And I was right.”
“Actually, I took a double last night.”
“That’s just like you.” Joaquín unzipped the duffel bag and pawed through it. “I need to shower and then get over to the hospital.” He pointed down the hall and began walking that way. “Bathroom?”
Roberto nodded.
“It’s a nice apartment,” Robbie said, sitting on the couch.
“For this area, yeah.” Roberto could hear vigorous splashing in the bathroom. Joaquín was in a hurry, whether to get to the hospital or to keep him from talking to Robbie, he wasn’t sure. “How long have you been dating him?”
“It’ll be a year around Christmas.”
“Is that right?”
“He’d come in a couple of times already, and he would always leave me a nice tip. And he would sleep in the chair during his cut.”
“Christmas? That’s a lot of haircuts in a month. He only left in November.” Roberto could almost see Joaquín in the chair of Robbie’s shop, hair wet and combed down, Robbie’s fingers delicate around his ears, the snip of the scissors and the click of the metal against the comb. It was easy to imagine Joaquín’s eyes opening and meeting Robbie’s in the mirror as Robbie judged his work, then closing again; and as Roberto stood there imagining this, he let go of the chance to ask Robbie the basic questions — how old was he, and where was he from, and where did he get those green eyes? By that time, Joaquín had emerged from his hurried shower, towel wrapped around his waist, and even the familiarity of his body, the inoculation scar on his left arm visible all over again, did not break Roberto from his thinking.
“Go shower,” Joaquín said, taking the duffel bag and walking to Roberto’s bedroom to put on fresh clothes, but Robbie declined. “Change, then,” he called out. “Put on something respectable.”
Robbie raised his eyebrows and pulled at the hem of his shirt, looking over at Roberto for silent affirmation.
“You’ve never met his people, have you?”
PEOPLE WILL FORGIVE ANYTHING if you help them. But it depends on the people. Joaquín’s people — he had a lot of them in the Valley, both immediate family and friends from his pueblito in Jalisco — always gave Roberto a feeling of being graced and redeemed for his basic decency. Roberto, after all, was the one who enrolled Joaquín in high school all those years ago when they were neighbors on Gold Street. Roberto the one who straightened out Joaquín’s legal tangles with Immigration and the one who managed to find him a construction job out of high school. They had Roberto to thank for Joaquín’s English, the wiping out of the accent over the years — he could have been born here. What Joaquín’s people had in Roberto was a translator, a person to open the government envelopes and make the calls, a filer for their taxes, a negotiator to get a distant cousin into the States safely, a way to put money in the bank instead of hiding it in the house. When, in their twenties, Roberto and Joaquín moved in together, Joaquín’s people kept silent, though Roberto knew it offended them deeply. It was best to ignore their discomfort, like the cancer lurking deep inside Joaquín’s father, and hope instead that such a malignancy would devour itself; but the years just kept going, until there came a point, finally, when Joaquín’s people found Roberto’s services a fair exchange for the shame.
The day after Joaquín announced he was leaving him, Roberto had been due at Joaquín’s parents' home to explain an important letter they had received from their car insurance company. It was a one-page letter, and he had not needed more than a minute or two to read that the company wanted to sever the policy because of a recent fender bender, but Joaquín’s parents had made Roberto sit down at the vinyl-covered kitchen table and Joaquín’s mother had brought him a cup of manzanilla tea and a piece of Mexican bread.
“I knew a woman once who married a man from Mexico,” Joaquín’s father had told him in Spanish, rubbing the brim of the cowboy hat that he always wore. “Married him and worked a good job, helped him with his papers, and even raised all four of his kids. And don’t you know that this man took up with another woman, right over there in Fowler? Divorced the woman who helped him and his kids — all that money, all that time.” Joaquín’s mother shook her head, listening, remembering, and Roberto marveled at her easy agreement. He knew what she had taken, what she had endured from Joaquín’s father, and yet she listened on from the secure place of a marriage held together by will.
“A real shame,” Joaquín’s father told him, “when people don’t have an ounce of decency. I want to tell you how much my son shames us for what he’s done to you.”
Joaquín’s mother kept nodding in agreement, and when Roberto met her eyes, he felt that maybe he had misunderstood the enormity of Joaquín’s leaving, his departure, and that Joaquín’s parents knew what it signified better than he. Joaquín’s mother alone, perhaps, knew why love mattered, even if it meant loving the wrong person, and she looked at Roberto with extraordinary, unexpected empathy. Both of Joaquín’s parents knew about distances and crossing those gaps, about the hours of worry, and the reconciliations in the middle of the night, knew that there woul
d be no return. They knew how people came and went, sometimes arriving, sometimes not.
“I’m always going to help you,” Roberto had assured them, dropping his eyes to the paper, and when he had to tell them the bad news about the car insurance, they took it well. He had known, though, that from then on they would always have trouble asking him for assistance.
NOT FORTY MINUTES AFTER they left, after Robbie had fussed with the ironing of a long-sleeved blue shirt with a delicate diamond pattern, Roberto heard the phone ring. “Could you come get him at the hospital? My mom made a big stink.”
“What happened?” Roberto asked. “Just send him home in the Datsun. He won’t get lost.”
“He can’t drive stick,” Joaquín explained. “And my dad is real sick, so I can’t leave. You should have seen my mom go off on me when I brought him in there. Everyone yelling, and the nurses came over to see what all the noise was about.”
Roberto sighed. “Well, you knew better.”
“My dad’s out, completely out. And my mom points at him and says, ‘He can hear everything you’re saying. You think he doesn’t know what you’re doing?’”
“Fine,” Roberto said. “I’ll come pick him up. Tell him to wait outside so I don’t have to park.”
On the other end of the line, he could almost hear Joaquín hesitate, swallow, close his eyes. Finally, before hanging up, Joaquín said, “Thanks. Really. I’m sorry.”
“I’ll be there in twenty, okay? Tell him what kind of car I drive.”
When he arrived, Roberto could spot the brightness of Robbie’s shirt from the very end of the parking lot, radiant against the shade of the long archway leading to the hospital’s front entrance. He beeped the horn, and Robbie turned to the car as if in surprise — if he had been searching for Roberto’s car, he hadn’t been very alert, probably drifting off, Roberto thought, into his anger with Joaquín. He could see the scowl on Robbie’s face as he made his way to the car, and when Robbie got in, he slammed the door.
