Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

  I tuned out. I wasn’t what you’d call a good citizen. I wasn’t involved. There was a poster going around: “Drop out and drop acid.” I liked that. Not that I was about to drop out. To drop out, you had to be in. I’d never been in. I’d always been just, well, looking in. And to drop acid, you had to have money—mine was all going toward college.

  I did my homework. I studied. I went home. School was, as Pifas would say, “a fucking drag.” If I was a good student, that only meant I wanted to go to college. It didn’t mean anything else. Not to me. I only had two questions on my mind when it came to my relationship with my teachers or the school administration: What do you want? And when do you want it? I’d yes-sirred and no-ma’amed my way through my public education. If I had a rebellious mind, I didn’t let my body in on it. My body was a good soldier.

  It was only during lunch that Gigi caught me up on what I’d missed in Marvin C. Fitz’s long-winded intercom announcement. “Sammy, I want you to be my campaign manager.” I was outside, in the back of the cafeteria. The smoking section. All those rules, and they let us smoke— but only on that one piece of earth.

  I looked at her blankly. Then I looked at Susie Hernandez. Then I looked at Frances Sánchez. Then I looked at Angel. “What is she talking about?”

  “I’m running for Senior Class President.”

  “We already have one. Her name’s Sandy Ikard.”

  “And she moved, pendejo. She up and moved.”

  “Isn’t that what a vice president’s for?”

  “He up and moved, too.” Susie said. “His dad got transferred from White Sands.”

  I shrugged. “Wish my dad would have been transferred. Guess they don’t transfer janitors.” I took a drag from my cigarette. “So where do you come by all this new information?”

  “Baboso. Menso. Weren’t you listening to the announcement this morning?”

  “Baboso? Nice mouth.” I shrugged. “Guess I wasn’t.”

  “So I’m running.”

  Shit, I thought. Why did people set themselves up for heartbreak? How many times did you have to lie down on a busy street before you got run over? “Good for you, Gigi,” I said.

  “So I want you to be my campaign manager.”

  “I don’t know how to do that.”

  “There’s nothing to it,” Frances said. She gave me this look. Angel gave me a look, too. She was a looker, that Angel. But right then she looked at me the same way Susie and Frances were looking at me. I knew what the looks meant. She’s asking you. Don’t be a piece of shit.

  Why do you want to run, Gigi? But I knew the answer. She had the right, didn’t she? Why not her? She didn’t have a prayer. I should have told her not to run. I should have told her that Pifas had a better shot at being stationed in Germany than she had at being elected. Gigi Carmona from Hollywood wasn’t going to be the President of the Class of 1969. She wasn’t. No way. Nice dream, nothing wrong with dreaming. You won’t win. That would have been the honest thing to say. But I wasn’t always honest. And she was standing right there in front of me. She looked so happy. Like the world had given her a chance at something. And she wasn’t going to let the moment pass. She was beautiful—even with all that make-up that she didn’t need to be wearing. I thought of the girl who’d sang that song. That song that broke my heart that night at the river. I thought of the girl that went with Pifas the night before he left. I loved that girl. Not like I had loved Juliana. But I loved her. “Okay,” I said. Even though she was going to get massacred. Even though her heart was going to break like it was nothing more than one of those cheap plastic rulers. I said okay. I’d said that word again, okay. That word always got me into trouble.

  “We have two weeks,” she said, “before the assembly.”

  “Let’s do it,” I said. “We need twenty people.” I said it as if I knew what the hell I was talking about. “Twenty hard-core people. Twenty people who’ll work night and day for two weeks.” I looked at Angel and Susie and Frances. “There’s three. And we’re gonna need some money.”

  “Money?” Gigi looked at me.

  “Elections aren’t free, Gigi. This is America. We’re gonna need a roll of butcher paper and some tempera paints and some construction paper to make you some buttons and, well, maybe some balloons.” Shit, I thought. I was going to have to put my money where my mouth was. I had a five-dollar bill in my wallet. I had it there for emergencies. I’d carried it around for two years. And I’d never spent it. I figured now was the time. I took the five out of my wallet. “Here.” I gave it to Angel. I trusted her. Susie and Frances, I wasn’t so sure. “You’re the treasurer.” I looked at Susie and Frances. “How much money do you have?”

  “I have seventy-five cents,” Frances said.

  I pointed at Angel. “Give it to her.”

  Frances reached in her purse. “And what about you?” I said. I gave Susie the same look she’d given me. She reached in her purse and took out a dollar.

  “Good. Good. We’ve started. Let’s spread out. Let’s hit the people we know. It’s lunch time. It’s a good time to hit people up. Gigi, make a list. You need twenty hard-core people. And not Hollywood types either. Get Eric Fry—he’ll help you. I hate his ass, but he’ll help you. And get Hatty Garrison. She’ll help you, too. It’s gotta be a coalition thing,” I said. “Know what I mean?” They knew. They knew exactly what I was talking about. Don’t just get a bunch of Mexicans. That’s what I meant. They knew. “And let’s try to raise twenty-five dollars. We already have $6.75—”

  “$8.75,” Angel said. “I threw in two more.”

  I smiled at her. God. She was pretty. “We’re a third of the way there. Let’s see what we have at the end of the day.”

  “I’ll throw in two more dollars,” Gigi said. She started reaching into her purse.

  “Nope,” I said. “Candidates can’t give.”

  “Why not? Why can’t I give to my own campaign?”

  “You are giving, Gigi. Don’t you know the rules? You’re putting your Hollywood ass on the line, ¿sabes?” All of a sudden I was directing all the traffic. “Put your money back in your purse. You pay your way. We pay our way.” I clapped my hands, then rubbed them together like a miser. Where did I get this stuff? “Okay, let’s collect our money. Let’s get our people. We can meet right here after school. Right here. Two weeks. Two weeks.” I clapped my hands. Like a fucking football coach.

  I won’t lie to you. Even thinking back to that day makes me smile. I was really into it. I wasn’t on the sidelines. Just watching. I was a part of something. It was good. Really. I was part of a cause. I was part of something that wasn’t about me—that wasn’t about Sammy Santos. Gigi for President. Wouldn’t that be something? I saw the four of them walking toward the cafeteria. Susie, Frances, Angel, and Gigi. Good for them, I thought. And good for me. I was on the right side. We didn’t have a prayer. I stood there. I decided to skip lunch. I thought about lighting another cigarette. I looked down at the ground. I saw a pair of shoes. I looked up. Gigi was standing there. She looked at me. Then she came right up to me and kissed me on the cheek.

  “What was that for?”

  “You know,” she said. “You know exactly what that was for.”

  “They can kick you out for doing that, Gigi,” I said. “Public display of affection.” We looked at each other.

  “Yeah, yeah,” she said.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said.

  So the rest of the day I’m trying to hit people up for money. I wasn’t too bad at it. I managed to collect $4.50—all in quarters. Between fifth and sixth periods, I asked this guy Eddie Montague for some money. He was a doctor’s son. I knew him a little. He went to confession every Saturday at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church. Either he was a good person or a bad person who had plenty to confess. “Give generously,” I said.

  “Why don’t you run, Sammy?”

  “Why would I run?”

  “Because people like you.”

  “People do
n’t even know me.”

  “Everyone knows you.”

  “People don’t know me,” I said again. They didn’t. No one knew me.

  “Look, Sammy, people take you seriously.”

  “Not interested. My money’s on Gigi.”

  “No one takes her seriously.”

  “I do.”

  “She won’t win.”

  “Why not?”

  “You know why not.”

  “No, I don’t. Why don’t you enlighten me?”

  “Okay. Gigi doesn’t know the word enlighten. For starters.”

  “Don’t sell her short.”

  “Wake up, Sammy.”

  “You wake up, you sonofabitch.”

  “Don’t get mad.”

  “Screw you.”

  “Look, don’t get mad. I’m just tellin’ you how it is.” He stuck a five-dollar bill in my hand. “Here.”

  “But you won’t vote for her, will you?”

  “No, Sammy.”

  I shoved it back in his hand. “Keep your fucking money.”

  I went straight to the bathroom. I slammed my fist against one of the doors. “Damnit to hell!” The campaign was a few hours old, and already I was losing it. It pissed me off the way he said Gigi doesn’t know the word enlighten. He’d already decided she was stupid, that she didn’t measure up. He’d sized her up. She was just a brainless Mexican broad from Hollywood. I hated him for thinking that about Gigi. But I’d thought it, too. I guess I couldn’t hate him without hating myself.

  Chapter Eleven

  There were twelve of us—not counting the candidate. Not twenty. But twelve. We stood right behind the cafeteria, right where we’d stood at lunch time. Eric Fry stood with us. And Hatty Garrison—and her new boyfriend, Kent Volkmer. Some guy from Chiva Town named Jorge North. Jorge North—what kind of name was that? Jaime Rede. He and Eric seemed to be pretty tight. Maybe there was something to the talk of him and Eric smoking pot together. Mota. Weed. And Charlie Gladstein was with us, he who was Jewish and who liked Mexicans more than he liked Protestants. I knew that because he told me. “Fucking Protestants,” he told me one time at some party. He was drunk. “I hate them. They own the fucking world.” I liked him. I liked his anger even though he was kind of rich. Still, he was like the words I used to write in the margins of the novels I read. Not a real part of the story. I think he had a thing for Gigi. And the Torres brothers were there, Larry and Mike, who didn’t live in Hollywood but who wanted to. They were the only Mexicans I knew who wanted to live in a poorer neighborhood than the one they lived in.

  We all looked at each other. It was my show. I’d said okay. And now I had to come through. Okay, I thought. This is what okay means. I didn’t like it that we were all gathered at the back of the school. In the smoking section. Bad idea. Not a good way to start. “Let’s go sit on the front lawn,” I said. So that’s what we did. We all sat around, talking. And Gigi told us why she wanted to be class president. “Because I’m not mainstream.” That’s what she said. I knew exactly what she was saying. “And because I work hard. And because this screwed-up rat’s nest of a school needs a little shakin’ up.” She did a little dance. We all clapped. Go Gigi. “And besides, which one of us voted for Sandy Ikard? And which one of us voted for fuck-face, what was his name, the vice president who moved?” We all laughed. “Okay,” she said. She looked at me. “Sammy’s the organizer. He’s gonna show us how to do this thing.” I nodded. What the hell did I know? But what did we have to lose? It wasn’t like Pifas who’d been drafted. No one was going to get shot. It wasn’t like the protesters on the streets of Chicago. No one was going to get hurt.

  There wouldn’t be any blood.

  I gave out assignments like I knew what I was doing. A committee to come up with a slogan. A committee to plaster the school with signs. A committee to make ¡Viva Gigi! buttons out of construction paper. And everyone agreed to get everyone they knew to vote for Gigi. “How much money do we have?” I asked Angel.

  “Twenty-six dollars! We’ve collected twenty-six dollars in one day!” She couldn’t hide the excitement in her voice. I’d never seen Angel so animated. She wasn’t this passive female thing—she was alive. Really. God, she was so beautiful. She reminded me of Juliana. A little. Only a little. Juliana was a lot tougher. I liked tough. “Twenty-six dollars!” she said again.

  “Good,” I said. I reached in my pocket. “Here’s $4.50 more. That brings us up to over thirty. Great. Great!” I clapped my hands. I thought of Eddie Montague, what he’d said. “Let’s win this thing,” I said.

  And we got to work.

  I called Gigi that night. I told her, “Gigi, you gotta work on your campaign speech. You gotta make it really good. What are the rules? Did you get the rules?”

  “Yes, I have the rules.” I could tell I’d pissed her off, like she didn’t know what she was supposed to do. “I signed up at the office, shithead. And they gave me this piece of paper. And my parents have to sign it. And it says my speech can’t be longer than five minutes or they’ll make me sit down. And my speech has to be pre-approved by the principal.”

  “What?”

  “Es lo que dice, Sammy. It says, ‘All speeches must be turned into the principal’s office for approval two days prior to the student assembly.’”

  “It says that? In English? I can’t believe that shit!”

  “So what am I supposed to do about it?”

  “I don’t know, Gigi, but that really sucks.”

  “So, tell me, Sammy. What am I supposed to do about that?”

  “Write two speeches,” I said.

  “Two speeches. I can barely write one.”

  “Write two, Gigi. One for the principal. And one, well, say what Gigi would say.”

  “What am I gonna do with two speeches, Sammy?”

  “I have a plan,” I said. “Trust me.”

  For two weeks, we lived, slept, and ate Gigi’s campaign. We passed out flyers. We plastered the school with posters on butcher paper. Charlie Gladstein and Eric Fry and Jaime Rede—who seemed to be a changed man—made all the posters. They hung them up everywhere. Even in the boys’ bathrooms. We had three opponents. I thought we had them all on the run. I was beginning to think we might win. Maybe. Maybe was one of those words like okay. Those two words alone could kill you. Stay away from those words.

  Every night, I went over to Gigi’s and made her practice her speech. She wrote it herself. It was great. Really. She’d wanted me to write it. She’d begged me. “No,” I said. “Look, this is you, Gigi. It’s gotta be all you.” Okay, so I did a little editing. I swear, not a lot. It was all her. And I made her practice every night. “This is stupid,” she said.

  “No,” I said. Not stupid. No one won an election by accident. Every night she practiced. It was like preparing for a concert. That’s what I told her. “Pretend you’re singing. Remember that night when you sang for us at the river? Do that. Okay? If you can do that, then you win.”

  Two days before the election, Gigi turned in one of her speeches to the principal. That same day, we marched—Gigi’s twelve—that’s what we called ourselves—we marched down the hall between second and third period shouting, “¡Viva Gigi! What? ¡Viva Gigi! What? ¡Viva Gigi!” It wasn’t a great idea to do that. Not really great. But Angel said we should do it. So we did it. Beautiful Angel. And guess what? We were so hip. We were hip. The twelve. Viva Gigi.

  The night before the election, Gigi called me. “What should I wear?”

  “Not my category,” I said.

  “C’mon, Sammy, no seas así.”

  “Chingao,” I said, “I’m a guy. Wrong sex. Call Angel.”

  “Damnit, Sammy, what should I wear?”

  I wanted to tell her not to tease her hair. I wanted to tell her not wear so much makeup. I wanted to tell her not to fuck things up. “Wear blue,” I said. “And follow the script. Just like we practiced.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’m really scared.”

/>   “Smoke a cigarette,” I said.

  “Cabrón. You’re no help. You’re just a pinche.”

  “After all I’ve done?”

  “You were drafted.” I thought of Pifas. I’d written him a letter. His mother gave me his address. I’d sent him a campaign button made of blue construction paper that said ¡Viva Gigi! “Yeah,” I said, “I was drafted. But I might have enlisted, anyway.” I thought of Pifas again.

  We talked for a while. Me and Gigi. That’s all she needed. To talk. I liked her voice. And she was funny. And smart. And I still hated Eddie Montague for saying those things. I would never forgive him. I wouldn’t. I was becoming hard. That wasn’t a good thing. I couldn’t stop what I was turning into.

  That night, I couldn’t sleep. I thought of Pifas. I thought of Gigi. I thought of them together. In the back of some car, making love. Like me and Juliana. But I knew it wasn’t like me and Juliana at all. Juliana and I, well, we trembled. She never told me she loved me, but I knew she did. But Gigi didn’t love Pifas. There were other reasons to have sex. I knew that. Love wasn’t the only reason. And why was I thinking about Pifas and Gigi together in the back seat of a car? Focus, I said, focus on the election. I ran through a list in my mind. Was everything done? Had we done everything that was humanly possible? Had we talked to enough people? Had we—and then I stopped. I was doing it again. Relax. Relax. Why did I give myself lectures that didn’t work? I tossed. I turned. Sleep wasn’t going to come. I got up, put on an old pair of cut-offs and went out on the porch. I lit a cigarette. That’s what I always did. I sat there for a while, trying not to think of tomorrow.

  I heard the front door open. I knew it was Dad. “¿Qué no puedes dormir?”

  “Se me espantó el sueño.”

  “It’s easy to scare sleep off,” he said. It was a joke. So I laughed. Not convincingly. But I laughed.

  He sat next to me on the front steps of the porch.

  “What’s the worst thing that could happen?”

  “The worst thing? Lose.”