Maybe he would go for a run. Maybe that would help. But how would running help anything? He walked to the window and opened it. He looked at his watch. It wasn’t that late. Just before midnight. He wasn’t sleepy. He turned away from the window as he heard the phone ring. It could only be Dave. Nobody else had his number. He walked up to the phone and stared at it. On the fourth ring, he answered it. “You asleep?”
“No. You always call people this late, Dave?”
“Sometimes. Yes. You wanna grab a beer?”
Andrés walked to the window and lit a cigarette. “What are we, pals?”
“Let’s grab a beer.”
Andrés blew out a smoke ring and watched it. “Sure,” he whispered. “Why the hell not?”
“I’ve been wanting to tell you something. For a long time, now.”
“So what’s been stopping you?”
“Not everything’s so easy to say.”
“I thought everything was easy for a guy like you.”
“Why? Because I’m a gringo?”
“A rich gringo. A rich gringo lawyer.”
“Oh, the whole fucking world belongs to me? Is that it? The world doesn’t belong to anyone.”
“Oh, that’s a pretty lie you tell yourself.”
They stood there for a minute. On the street. Talking in the dim light. Just like they’d talked that night when he’d bailed him out of jail.
“So you got a place where you like to go have a beer? You know, wind down?”
“I don’t think I know anything about winding down. I don’t think you do, either.”
“Common ground. At last.”
He lit a cigarette. “I know a place. It’s called El Ven Y Verme.”
Dave laughed. “That’s funny. I like that. Do they allow rich gringo lawyers?”
“Only if they’re with people like me.”
His foster mother was stable. That’s about all Andrés had to say for her. She was strict and decent in a dull kind of way. He called her Mrs. H. For Mrs. Herrera. Mrs. Herrera sounded too formal. And she wasn’t his mom. And didn’t want her to be. And Mr. H—well he was even duller than his wife.
He wasn’t allowed to smoke. He wasn’t even allowed to have cigarettes. So he started taking a toothbrush in his backpack, so he could find a place to brush his teeth before he came home. He called it home even though it wasn’t. It was just going to be a place where he waited until he was emancipated.
That would take three years.
In his house in Juárez, he thought, sometimes, that he would die from worrying. Here, in the house of Mr. and Mrs. H, he thought he would die of boredom. But they bought him a computer, and he was learning things, and he was back in school, and even though he’d missed more than three years, they put him in the same grade he would’ve been. Only he had to catch up on his math. And so he did that. He studied and studied, and fell in love with the computer. Because it saved him from his boredom.
At school, he didn’t have any friends. He didn’t care. He kept to himself. Once an older guy stopped him as he was walking back home after school. He asked him if he wanted to go for a ride. He knew about older guys. He said no. The guy offered to buy him beer or cigarettes or anything he wanted. So he just looked at the guy and said, “Fuck you.” And the guy got mad, but he didn’t care. He could go to hell. Everyone could.
And one day, he got in a fight. Some guy was telling another guy in the bathroom that if he didn’t get him some money, he was going to kick his ass. And Andrés got mad, and told the guy to leave the other guy alone, “Just leave him the hell alone.”
“Fuck you. I’m gonna stick a knife up your ass.”
And so they got in a fight. The other guy got in some good jabs, but Andrés was faster and angrier, and soon Andrés had the other guy on the ground. And the school cop came into the bathroom, and before he blinked, he was in the principal’s office. They called his foster mother, Mrs. H, and she cried and said she didn’t know what was wrong with Andrés. “Never says anything. Never does anything, either,” she said. And Andrés knew she didn’t care for him. He was just a project. She’d wanted someone who would love her. And he wasn’t doing his job.
And Andrés got mad and said he didn’t have anything to say—not to her. Not to anyone.
That’s when they sent him to his first counselor. He didn’t remember her name anymore. She told him that he needed to work on his anger. And she wanted to know where his anger came from. And Andrés didn’t care, and so he looked at her and said, “From God.”
And he and that counselor never got along. Because she was a Christian, and she didn’t like jokes about God.
That first day, she kept asking him what had happened at the school, and Andrés wondered why it was wrong to help someone, why wasn’t that other guy in counseling? Why didn’t they do anything to him? So he would talk to the counselor, but not much. She asked what had happened to him in Juárez. She said she knew about that from the social worker—but he never told her what really happened. Maybe a little piece. But just a piece of it. But what had really happened to him, he never told her. Fuck her. He wasn’t going to tell her.
But everything was okay, because every week, he would go to meet Silvia. Sometimes on Saturday mornings, and sometimes on Saturday afternoons. He would call her and leave a message at her sister’s house. And then she got a cell phone, because it was easier to get a cell phone when you lived in Juárez than to get a regular phone. And he would leave messages, and they always managed to get together. They ate something together. They talked. And she was like having a home, Silvia. She was the only person in the world who knew him.
He never told anyone about Silvia—not the H’s and not his counselor and not his social worker. No one knew about Silvia. She was a secret. Because Andrés knew they would never let him see her, if they knew. Not the H’s and not his social worker and not his counselor, who was a Christian. They would tell him that Silvia was an abomination, which was Mrs. H’s favorite word. A word she found in the Bible, she said. He’d read parts of the Bible, but he didn’t remember that word.
School was okay. And the H’s let him keep his computer, and he learned so many things, and he thought that all he needed in the world was a computer and Silvia. So everything was okay. Sometimes girls would talk to him. And he knew they were flirting with him. And he was nice to them, but when they wanted to go out and do something, he said no.
He joined the running team, and he listened to the guys talk about girls, about what they wanted to do with them, and he thought he didn’t like guys much. He thought guys were all pieces of shit—and he was a guy, so he knew he was a piece of shit, too. He wasn’t any better than they were. And so he ran with them. He was the best runner. So they left him alone. If you were the best at something, people let you be.
So everything was okay. Except that one day Mrs. H wanted to know what he did on all those Saturdays when he took the bus downtown. “I just like to walk around,” he said.
“And do what?”
“Just walk around. I watch the people. They shop, they do things. I just like to watch all the people.”
She didn’t believe him. Not that he cared. “You can’t go anymore,” she said. “And it’s time you started going to church.”
He didn’t like her church. “I’m Catholic,” he said, though really he wasn’t anything. He would never be anything.
“You live with us. You don’t know. You’re only a boy. You’ll go to church with us. And you won’t be going downtown anymore. There are things boys shouldn’t see.”
He didn’t say anything. He’d been there almost two years, and he was sixteen now, and he only had two years to go. Less than two years. But he wasn’t going to stay. So that night, he called Silvia on her cell phone. She didn’t answer. It was night, and he knew she was working. At La Brisa. So that night, he put a few things in his backpack, and he left. He had to leave his computer. He thought of his typewriter. That made him sad. But one day he’d buy his own computer.
He walked across the bridge to Juárez, though it scared him. He knew he shouldn’t be going back. He shouldn’t. He knew that. He was trembling, and he smoked all the way to La Brisa, one cigarette after another. And when he got there, he ordered a beer. And the bartender recognized him and told him he shouldn’t be drinking, but he poured him a beer, anyway. “You looking for Silvia?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“She’s working. But she’ll be back.”
So he waited for a long time. He smoked and sat at the bar, and a few of the girls said hello to him, girls he knew. They were really boys, but they called themselves girls, and so he called them girls, too. And they told him he looked like a man now. And they were nice to him. Nicer to him than the social worker or Mrs. H or his first counselor. He’d started seeing a new one, and she was nicer, but not as nice as the girls. Not as nice as Silvia.
And that’s when everything happened. As he was sitting there at that bar, thinking about things and smoking too many cigarettes, Silvia ran into the bar, and he could tell something was wrong. “He’s after me,” she screamed. “Homero, he’s after me. Me va matar. Me va matar!” She kept screaming that.
She didn’t even notice Andrés sitting there. Not until Andrés said, “It’s okay, Silvia. It’s okay.”
Silvia embraced Andrés, calmer now, though she was still upset. “You shouldn’t be here,” she said. “You crazy boy. You should be home playing with your computer.”
“I left,” he said. “She was going to make me stop going downtown. I was never going to see you again.”
“You crazy boy,” she said. She lit a cigarette, then downed a shot of tequila to calm her nerves. “I have to get you out of here. If Homero finds you here, he’ll kill both of us. He’s still mad about what you did. And I helped out one of his girls, and he came after me tonight. He beat up the guy I was with. He said he’d kill anyone who was with me from now on.”
“You have to come back to El Paso, Silvia. You’ll be safe there.” Andrés begged and begged her, until she agreed.
She knew Andrés wouldn’t leave without her.
“I don’t remember exactly everything that happened that night. Only that we came back across. And that somehow someone told Homero they saw us. He was one mean sonofabitch. We didn’t know it, but he followed us into El Paso. He must’ve been right behind us.”
“You never told me that you’d been to Juárez that night.”
“No. I guess I didn’t. It wouldn’t have made me look very good in front of the jury.”
“The jury wouldn’t have known. The jury knows what we tell them.”
“Maybe I didn’t trust you.”
“Maybe you still don’t.”
“I’m here having a beer with you. That’s as close as I get to trust.” Andrés downed his beer. “I didn’t mean to kill him. We stopped to get a cup of coffee at the Hollywood Café, Silvia and I. And she said I was going to have to go back to the H’s. And I told her no way in hell. I told her I’d have to get new foster parents. I told her I didn’t care. And I made her promise that she wouldn’t go back to live in Juárez, and she said yes, but I knew she was only telling me that so I’d shut up. And as we walked out of that place, and turned the corner, that’s when it happened. He had a knife. He grabbed me and put the knife to my throat, and I thought I was dead. And for a second I didn’t care if I died. I didn’t. And he made us go into the alley. And then he lunged at Silvia with the knife and kept digging it into her. Again and again, and it happened so fast. And I don’t even remember what I did. I think I was screaming. I don’t know. I don’t remember. I just remember cop cars—and me standing over Homero. And I knew what I’d done to him. And I didn’t even care. I didn’t mean to kill him. But it’s—I mean, well, look, it’s fucking hard to be sorry.”
“You never told me that she was your friend.”
“I loved her.” Dave could see his hands trembling. He hated to see him like that—wounded and hurt. He hated that more than anything.
“You could have told me.”
“I don’t want to talk about her. I don’t.”
“You didn’t kill Homero.”
“Sure, I did.”
“He died of a heart attack.”
“As I was beating the crap out of him.”
“His bruises were minor.”
“So why did they charge me?”
“It’s complicated. What do you remember about your hearing?”
“Not much. You made some kind of deal. Look, you want to know the truth? I wasn’t paying attention. You cared more than I did. You got me off. That’s all I know. I guess I never cared to know the details.”
“Those details are your life, Andrés. You can’t just check out like that.”
“Why not?”
“It’s your life.”
“And what a life it’s been, Dave.” He pointed at the bartender and then at his empty glass. “Look, Silvia was gone. Everyone was gone. Even Ileana. But at least she wasn’t dead. She was out there somewhere in the world. But she didn’t belong to me anymore. So Silvia was the end of all that. So I didn’t care. And then you decided that it wasn’t the end for me, so you rode into town on your goddamned BMW and rescued me.”
“And you’ve never forgiven me for it.”
“I told you then I didn’t give a shit. What you did, you did for yourself. You did it for Dave, not for Andrés Segovia.”