Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

  “I’ll take a Coke,” Jaime said.

  I shook my head.

  “¿Estás seguro?”

  “I’m sure,” I said. I would know if I wanted something to drink. I watched him walk inside the store—then looked at Jaime. “You’re gonna let him buy you a Coke?”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “You can’t buy your own damn Coke? What’s wrong with you, Jaime?”

  “Órale, what’s wrong with you, Sammy? The guy’s buying me a Coke. Big fucking deal. ¿Qué te duele?”

  “So you guys smoking pot together—or what? ¿Se ponen grifos? Getting sky high—that’s what everyone says.”

  “Since when do you care what everyone says, Sammy?”

  “Never have. Still don’t.”

  “¿Entonces? We hang out together. What’s the big deal?”

  “Seems weird.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why, Jaime.”

  “No. Why don’t you tell me, cabrón?”

  “He doesn’t know who you are.”

  “Oh. You do? You do? You know me, Sammy?”

  “Since you were four.”

  “And what do you know about me?”

  “You’re from Hollywood.”

  “And that’s all you know.”

  “It’s enough.”

  “No.” That’s what he said. I almost got out of the car right then. Right there. But there was Eric, two Cokes in his hand. One for him. One for Jaime.

  “Mind if I smoke?” I said. I didn’t really want one. It was a test.

  “Mind if I bum one?”

  Shit. I tossed my pack to Jaime. They lit up. Jaime tossed them back. I didn’t light one. By then, we were passing The Cork and Bottle. “You can leave me off here,” I said.

  Eric pulled into the driveway. “You sure?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Jaime opened the car door. Pulled the seat up so I get out the back seat. Eric looked at me. “Something eating you?”

  “No. Guess I’m just tired.”

  “You don’t like me, do you?”

  I decided I wasn’t going to lie. Probably wouldn’t get any more rides in his car. “No. I guess I don’t.” I looked at him. “Sorry. Look, thanks for the ride.”

  I saw the look on Jaime’s face. He wasn’t smiling anymore.

  I didn’t feel so good about myself as I walked home. I sure as hell didn’t.

  The house was empty. My father wasn’t home. He was out, doing good somewhere. There was a note on the table. Your sister’s at the Apodacas. Bring her home. I’ll be late. If you have to go out, well you have to go out. I’m sure Mrs. Apodaca will take her. I already told her you have my permission, so she won’t give you a hard time. I smiled. Dad was always looking out for me. He knew Mrs. Apodaca was always giving me the third degree. I shook my head. He was a funny guy, my dad, always getting involved with stuff—cleaning up the neighborhood, planting trees, helping the Knights of Columbus raise money for this or that. His way of loving the world. “You’ve got to love the world, Sammy.”

  Sundays he took us to breakfast after mass and Sunday nights he’d cook. Sundays he gave me a day off. Tomorrow was Sunday. Good day. I’d read. Great Expectations, that’s what I was reading. I’d read it before, liked Dickens. Even if he was English. They weren’t all bad. I knew that. I thought of Eric Fry. Yeah, that’s what I’d do, I’d read. And then I’d help Elena with her homework. I’d watch football with Dad. It didn’t matter that I only halfway paid attention. I’d sit with him, halfway read, halfway watch the game. In the evenings we’d watch The Wonderful World of Disney with Elena. Then we’d watch Ed Sullivan. Yup, tomorrow was Sunday. But tonight, tonight was Saturday. And I wanted to go out. Because I wanted to feel something else, anything besides what I was feeling. I wanted to go out. Maybe I’d call René. Maybe we’d go out. Cruise. Have a few beers. That’s what I thought. I picked up the phone. Dialed. He answered.

  “René. What is it?”

  “Hey, Sammy, ¿qué dices?”

  “Nada, nada. Hey, you got plans tonight?”

  “Gotta date, Sammy.”

  Figures. He was one of those guys who was always looking. Always. Desperate. “Anybody I know?” I asked.

  “Yeah, you know her. Angel. Angel Rosas.”

  He was goin’ out with Angel. Shit. Not that I would’ve ever asked her out. But Angel? I tried to be a good sport. “She’s fine,” I said.

  “Yeah. Wanna ask someone out? We could all four go out.” He was being decent.

  “Nah,” I said.

  “Why don’t you call Gigi?”

  “I don’t want to call Gigi.”

  “C’mon, ask her out.”

  “She wears too much makeup.”

  “Ask her out.”

  “It’s almost six o’clock. Yeah, yeah, I’ll call her and say, ‘Gigi, what is it? You wanna go out? Pick you up in an hour and half.’ She’ll call me a pendejo and a menso and a pinche and a cabrón and she’ll hang the phone up on me. You don’t call a girl half hour before you pick her up, ¿sabes?”

  “Cálmate, ese.” And then he put on this real white hippie voice, “Don’t be a bummer, baby, be cool. Stay cool. Everything’s far-out and bitchin.” René, he could be funny.

  I laughed. “Nah, I’ll pass.”

  He got real quiet. I knew something was up. “I was gonna call you,” he said. “Gigi’s kinda comin’ along on our date.”

  “What?’

  “It’s the only way Angel would go out with me. She said she didn’t trust me. She said she’d go—only if Gigi was going. So—”

  “So that’s why you want me to ask her out? Screw you. Forget it.”

  “Ah, come on.”

  “To babysit Gigi.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “Yeah, you pinche, it’s just like that.”

  “Look, I really like Angel. No seas culo.”

  “I don’t like it when someone makes a pendejo out of me. Look, just pick me up, damnit.” I hung up the phone. I wasn’t gonna have a good time. Hell no, I wasn’t.

  I sat on the porch, lit a cigarette, thought about Gigi and what a pain in the ass she was. I thought about René. He was gonna kiss Angel. I hated the thought of that. Then I thought about Eric and Jaime and what a pinche I’d been. They were trying to be friendly. And I was a complete cabrón. And then it came to me that I was thinking less and less about Juliana. That made me sad. The living, they forget. But that’s what we do. I didn’t want to forget. Didn’t matter, though, what I wanted. Each day I forgot a little more.

  I wondered if my father had forgotten my mother. But if he had, how come he never went out on dates? I wanted to ask him about that. I mean, he probably carried my mother around with him every day—just like I carried Juliana around. Only it was probably worse for my Dad. But I knew my father would never talk about that kind of thing. Not ever. I guess that maybe my mom and dad had loved each other so much that it just wasn’t right to talk about it. When you really loved someone, you wanted other people to know. But you wanted to keep it a secret, too. That’s what love was: a secret. Mostly, that’s what love was.

  Chapter Fifteen

  So we went out. The four of us, me and Gigi and René and Angel. We went riding around. Then we went to get some burgers at Shirley’s. Went inside and everything. Not just the drive-in. We talked. About stuff. I didn’t like the way René was looking at Angel. But she wasn’t looking at him the same way. That was good. “There’s a party at Charlie Gladstein’s,” Gigi said. “We’re invited. He wants us to come.”

  Yup. That Charlie had a thing for Gigi. I knew that. I did. “He wants you to come to his party,” I said.

  “Don’t be like that, Sammy. He’s nice. He likes you.”

  I nodded. “I like him, too. Nice guy. Yeah, yeah, everyone likes everyone.” I laughed, remembering what he’d told me. “Except Charlie doesn’t like Protestants.”

  “What?”

&n
bsp; “He was at a party once, and that’s what he told me. Said that Protestants thought they owned the fucking world. Hates them. That’s what he said.”

  Angel laughed. “Well then, he doesn’t like a lot of people.”

  “Guess not.”

  And I thought right there, right then, that the good thing about hating a whole group of people was that you didn’t have to be specific. You could stay nice and general. And vague. I don’t know why I thought that. I did that, sometimes, left the conversation and thought things.

  I paid for Gigi’s burger. “It’s not a date,” I said. “I’m just paying for a friend. Friends can pay.”

  “Next time, I’ll pay,” she said. “Then we’ll be even.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  “Fine,” she said. But I could tell she was mad. She was touchy, Gigi was.

  So then we go to Charlie’s party. Lots of Protestants there, far as I could tell. A keg, no parents, no shitkickers, no Future Farmers of America types. When those types came, there was always a fight. No fights. Not tonight. Nice house. Nicer than Hatty Garrison’s—who was there. Party girl. “Hey Hatty,” I said, “how is it?”

  “Sammy!” she said. Always nice. Didn’t know if I liked her boyfriend, Kent. Hey, but he’d helped Gigi on her campaign. Couldn’t be all bad.

  Everyone was in the back yard, which was bigger than three Hollywood lots. People were dancing. Rolling Stones. Didn’t like Mick Jagger. Soon as we got there, Charlie heads straight for Gigi, asks her to dance. Half drunk already, that Charlie. So they dance most of the night. So did René and Angel. I sat there, drinking a beer, watching. I thought of Juliana and got sad, but I didn’t want to sit there and feel like that.

  I saw Jaime and Eric pouring themselves a beer at the keg. I wondered if they’d been here a long time. I decided I should go up to them, you know, make nice. Why not? Make love, not war. Such bullshit, really. More people were into war than were into love. Sex didn’t count. Sex was sex. Hell, everybody knew that. So I go up to Eric and Jaime. I offer them a smoke. “Peace,” I said. Then I laughed. I just couldn’t say that kind of crap with a straight face. Charlie. Charlie could get away with stuff like that. But not me. Then I felt like a pendejo for laughing. “I was in a bad mood this afternoon. Sorry.”

  “I’m not a pendejo,” Eric said.

  “No one said you were a pendejo.”

  “You always look at me like I am.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Sorry.”

  So we stood around the keg and talked about things. Jaime said he wanted to go to college. I never knew that about him. “U.C.L.A.,” he said. “I’m getting the hell outa Dodge.” I wondered if his grades were any good. Didn’t know. Didn’t know anything about him—except that he’d hung out with Pifas and Reyes. And they weren’t good for each other. Always getting into fights. As bad as René. Maybe worse. But we’d lost Pifas to the Army. And Reyes, well, the last time I’d seen him, he was all strung out on heroine. Looked like shit. Threatened to kick my ass if I didn’t give him my cigarettes. So now, Jaime hung out with Eric. Maybe it was his way of leaving Hollywood without having to leave town. Maybe I didn’t blame him. Maybe I did. “I hear you’re going to college, too,” Jaime said.

  “Yeah,” I said. Not U.C.L.A. “Probably staying here. New Mexico State. Local boy. Local college.” I made like that was okay with me. I didn’t mean it. But I smiled.

  “You should leave,” Jaime said. “Everyone knows you get good grades.” I always wondered how people knew these things about me. “You could get into all kinds of schools.”

  I thought about my dad and Elena. What would they do? If I left? “Maybe,” I said. “Maybe I’ll leave. Who knows?”

  But I knew. “You, Eric?” I was trying. I could be nice. I could.

  “Penn State,” he said. “That’s home. Pennsylvania. We moved here because my dad works at Johnson Space Center.” The way he’d said Penn State like he already knew that school belonged to him. I nodded. And kept smoking my cigarette. I went back to watching René and Angel dance. Time went by real slow that night.

  Later, I saw Jaime dancing with Pauline. Eric was dancing with Susie Hernandez. Bad dancers both of them. Worse than me. But Pauline and Susie, they could dance. And God. Susie’s dresses were getting shorter and shorter. Mrs. Apodaca would’ve dragged her off the dance floor and sprinkled holy water on her. But then again, Mrs. Apodaca would’ve sprinkled holy water on everybody in the room. She wouldn’t have spared anyone. I pictured her, sprinkling us all and saying prayers. Made me smile. Yeah, I thought, maybe that’s what we all needed. Holy water.

  I don’t know why we decided to go to the river when the party ended. But that’s what everyone used to do—either cruise Shirley’s hanging out the window looking for trouble, yelling things like “Fuck you and your dog and your turtle!” Fun stuff like that. It was either go to Shirley’s or go to the river. Going home wasn’t one of the options.

  It was two in the morning. I was tired. Angel was staying with Gigi so she didn’t care what time she got home. And Gigi’s parents kinda let her do whatever she wanted. Sometimes it hurt her feelings, that her parents didn’t care more. I could tell. But sometimes, she didn’t give a damn. Her idea, that we go to the river. She’d heard about some keg party. So we went.

  “You’re a bummer, Sammy, you know that?” What was I supposed to say? I’d been working all day. I’d been making ice cream cones, I’d been listening to little kids all damn day long as they changed their minds about everything. I’d been taking crap from angry mothers, crap, crap from everyone. And for what? For pocket money so I wouldn’t have to touch my savings. For college. God, sometimes I just hated guys like Adam and Eric Fry and Charlie Gladstein. They’d never had to work at Speed Sweep Janitor Service or Dairy Queen because they needed to. They didn’t know what that was like. Never. Nunca. “Yeah, Gigi,” I said. “I’m a real bummer.” Then I laughed. I don’t know why. Maybe I wanted to have fun.

  “Give me a cigarette,” Gigi said. It wasn’t really a request. More like what’s mine was hers.

  “Give me one, too,” Angel said from the front seat.

  I smiled at Angel. “Tell your boyfriend to give you one.”

  Gigi laughed. Good smile. Beautiful. I wondered how come she didn’t have a steady. Pain in the ass, that’s why. I handed her a cigarette. When she lit it, she blew the smoke out through her nose. Like a real smoker. Like a pro. She’d been practicing. And she seemed older to me right then. Like she’d become a woman. Pifas hadn’t looked like that before he left for the Army. He’d looked small. Not like a man. Like a boy. But a boy with big hands. I hoped his hands would help him.

  Gigi was staring at me. “What are you thinking?”

  “I was thinking about Pifas. I got a letter.”

  “I got one, too,” she said.

  “How do you think he sounds?”

  Gigi got real quiet. “Well, I don’t know. My letter was, well, it was kinda private.” She looked out the window.

  I nodded.

  She turned back to me. “What did yours say?”

  “He sounded like he was tired. ‘Fuckin’ A, Sammy,’ he said, ‘the Army’s kickin’ my butt.’ He says he doesn’t get enough sleep and that most of the guys are okay. Says he gets on with most everybody. Says some of the guys are badasses and he hasn’t gotten in any fights. Except once—but that was in a pool hall, and one of his pals named Buddy got him out of there.” I shook my head. “He’s the same. He says he stays up at night and thinks about us, all of us Hollywood types. Wonders what we’re up to.” I laughed.

  “What? What’s so funny, Sammy?”

  “Pifas. He said he saved the ¡Viva Gigi! campaign button as good luck.”

  She started to laugh. But right then, her laugh was sad. I pictured it, that piece of blue construction paper with the words written in black magic marker. I pictured Gigi and Angel the night they made them. I picture
d me and Jaime handing them out at lunch time. I pictured Pifas holding it in his big hands. Staring at the words. Maybe he asked himself what he was doing in those Georgia barracks. Maybe he kept whispering Gigi’s name over and over.

  The radio was playing something by The Turtles, and Angel was sitting real close to René in the front seat and they didn’t seem to know that Gigi and I existed. That’s the way these things went.

  We didn’t say very much else on the way to the river. Gigi smoked her cigarette and let the air through the open window hit her face. I sat there, trying to think of something to say.

  When we got to the river, there were cars parked in bunches, here and there. Sometimes, a solitary car off by itself. No keg party. We parked away from the other cars. Soon as René stopped the car, Gigi got out. I thought maybe I’d get out, too. Leave René and Angel some privacy. Yeah, that’s the way it was, love was a private thing.

  Gigi sat at the edge of the river. I watched her, then sat next to her. She took her shoes off. She stared out into the water. “Did they tell you stories of La Llorona when you were growing up?”

  “Yeah. My mom.”

  “Did you ever wonder if it was true?”

  “I believed everything was true.”

  She laughed. “Tell me the story.”

  We’d both heard it a million times. Don’t know why she wanted to hear it again. But it was night and we were at the river and we were killing time, so I said okay. I’ll tell it. “There was this woman. Black hair. Pretty. And she was happy and she had a husband who was pretty good to her and he was good to their three kids. You know, lived in a small house in Hollywood.” I could tell she was smiling. “Anyway, they had a happy family. And one day, he doesn’t come back. Just doesn’t. She goes crazy. Crazy, crazy. She’s poor, and she’s going up and down the street asking if anybody’s seen her husband. And she doesn’t have the money to feed her kids, just doesn’t. She doesn’t know what to do. So one day, someone tells her that her husband’s run off with another woman. Mrs. Lopez. He’d run off with Mrs. Lopez.” Gigi laughed. Mrs. Lopez liked other women’s husbands. “So she really goes crazy. What’s she gonna do? Three hungry kids, no husband. So, to make herself feel better, she goes to the river every night. And she cries. To console herself. So, one day, no food in the house, the kids crying for food and for their father, she decides what she has to do. She brings her three kids to the river and drowns them. One at a time, she drowns them. She doesn’t have to worry about them anymore. Except that after she does that, she really goes crazy. Crazy, crazy. Totally mad. I mean like one of those women in the Vincent Price movies. Like that. And ever since that day, she’s searched the river looking for the bodies of her drowned children screaming, Mis hijos. Mis hijos. That was her punishment, to search the river forever until she finds the children she drowned. Wailing and wailing, Mis hijos, ayyy, mis hijos.”