This is the story of the world: A man gets into a car. He takes a drive. It is not an unusual thing—to get into a car and drive it down the street. For an instant, the man is distracted as he drives. This, too, is not unusual—the world has many distractions. Too late, he sees a car has run a red light. He tries to react—the reflex of his foot on the brake—and though his reflexes are good, there is no reflex quick or agile enough to avoid the impact. There is a screeching—a look of panic on the faces of the two drivers who realize, God, God, all the angels and saints—and then a crash. Metal on metal. Metal on bone. Blood. Perhaps a scream, perhaps a final prayer I am heartily sorry for having offended thee, and I detest all my sins and a man or a woman or a child who was alive a second ago is dead now. The man, who was in the middle of his life, has suddenly reached an early end. There is a randomness to this ballet of death. This is the order of things. This is the secret to understanding the universe.
Everything happens in an instant.
Normalcy. And then apocalypse.
Mister and Liz took the day off. To prepare. They cleaned the house. They dusted all their books, cleaned the already clean wood floors, mopped the bathroom, scrubbed the tile, put a new bedspread on Vicente’s bed, fussed with it out of nervous energy. They sang as they worked, lost and happy in the pleasure of their pedestrian tasks. Mister hung up a Diego Rivera print that Liz had found in a vintage store. Children breaking a piñata. He would tell Vicente stories of the painting, would give a name to each child, would tell him about the artist one day, and about the murals he painted in Mexico City, largest city in the world. And Vicente would come to know it, to see it, to understand everything about this image that he had chosen to hang on his wall.
They did not stop until everything was spotless—the kitchen, the bathroom, the hallway, the two bedrooms. The back porch was swept, and reswept. Everything was rearranged, for a blind boy to find his way around. Everything was ready. In this house, nothing would ever hurt him.
When they were done, they showered.
They made love to each other in Vicente’s new room.
Grace closed the file, made sure it was labeled properly, then placed it back in its rightful place. She nodded approvingly as she thumbed through a cabinet full of her files. It was a good system, her records beyond reproach. She was proud of that—a symbol of her professionalism. She hated people who were careless with other people’s lives. Perhaps her files were as much a tribute to her care as they were to her pride. Not a virtue, your pride, Grace. Sam’s accusations had been too gentle. And he had always been too quick to forgive her.
She looked over her files one more time. So many of them. So many cases. So many lives. Well, this had been her life’s work. Maybe she was an archivist after all. Maybe her sense of order would survive her, if only in the files she left behind. But maybe they could still be of use. Too many of her clients were recidivists, addicted to their broken lives, always returning to their crippled ways. Her files could still be of use.
She was confused now about seeking treatment. Maybe she’d just been angry over the news. Maybe she’d lost hope. Or maybe she was just afraid. That made her normal. The dream had come to her again. Sam and Mister were clinging to each other, spinning each other around. Around and around until they became the light itself. She woke, their names in her throat.
But God had sent another day. She’d almost wept at the sight of the morning sun.
And then Mister had called.
In the lateness of the afternoon, Mister called the Rubios. “I’m on my way.”
If Mr. Rubio was sad to let Vicente go, there was no trace of that sadness in his voice. “He’s waiting for you. He spoke today, for the first time. He patted his heart and said, ‘Mister.’”
Mister hung up the phone. And patted his own heart.
He stared at Grace’s picture on the shelf as he was walking out the door. He picked it up and kissed it. “I’m not afraid, Grace.” He put the picture back down and walked into the kitchen. Liz was grating cheese for the tacos. “Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you?”
“No. I want you to be the first thing he senses when he walks into this house.”
Andrés didn’t come back to his house that night. He thought of Ileana, and then remembered it was his fifteenth birthday, and maybe this was the best gift anyone could have given him—his little sister wasn’t dead, and she didn’t have to live like them, like him and Yolie.
But he wasn’t going to do this anymore. Not anymore. He would wait and hide and lurk in the streets and get Silvia to help him. He would stay until Carmen got word that Ileana was safe. Then he would leave. Not that there was any going back to Mrs. Fernandez. It was too late for all that. But he knew there were people who took in children, and though he didn’t feel like a child anymore, he was still only fourteen. He knew that you couldn’t do anything when you were his age—except maybe what he was doing now. And he would never do this again. No one would ever touch him again. Not ever. For any reason. He’d kill them first.
He didn’t care about Yolie anymore. And Yolie didn’t care about him. She was lost. She was in a worse hell than him. She wouldn’t last long. He knew that. The drugs were in her and owned her, and she spent all her money on getting them. Silvia had tried to get her to stop. Even Silvia, who thought everyone could be saved, even Silvia thought Yolie was lost.
He didn’t know what time it was, but it was late. He decided to go to La Brisa to see if he could find Silvia. The bar was dim. He sat at the bar, the bartender poured him a Coke, and he lit a cigarette, and as he lit it, he saw her. He waved at her, and she came up to him and kissed him. “Mi hombrecito.”
She was the only one who could touch him now. He told her everything, what had happened, what he’d done. “You did the right thing,” she said. “I know a place you can stay—until we hear word about Ileana. Then I’ll take you to El Paso.”
She took him to a house that was not very different from the house where he lived. A lot of people lived there, a group of transvestites. She told them Andrés needed a place to stay. They were nice to him, and told him he could stay for as long he needed to. He was tired, and they made a space on an old couch and told him that was his new bed. He fell asleep, even though there was a lot of noise in the house. He had already learned to sleep through every kind of noise.
When he woke, he found a suitcase at the foot of the couch with all his things in it. And a note from Silvia. “Never tell Yolie where you are. She’ll sell you to Homero for another fix.”
He stayed there for a few weeks. He didn’t know how long, maybe a month. Silvia told him not to go out. “Homero has people everywhere,” she said. “He owns half the whores on the street, and if they see you, God knows what that bastard will do to you.”
So he didn’t go out. And every day, Silvia would go and visit Carmen and ask about Ileana. Andrés felt like he was a prisoner, like he would be a secret forever. That was his punishment for agreeing to leave Mr. and Mrs. Fernandez with a broken heart. You have to pay for everything you’ve done. His mother had told him that. And so now he would have to pay, for everything he’d done for the past three years. He knew that God had stopped believing in a boy like him.
One day, Silvia came by early in the morning. She seemed sad, and he knew something was wrong. “Ileana?” he said. He felt his heart throbbing faster and faster.
“No, it’s not Ileana. Carmen has heard nothing.”
“What, then?”
“It’s your sister, Yolie.”
“What?”
“Carmen found her lying in an alley, most of her clothes torn off. She’s dead, Andrés. She’s gone.” Andrés didn’t know why Silvia was crying. Yolie hadn’t been nice to her—not ever. But there she was, sobbing for Yolie, and he wondered why some people stayed soft no matter what happened to them. Not him. He was hard, now. Maybe harder than Mando or Yolie had ever been. He’d been a soft little boy. But that boy had been killed, and this hard boy was the only thing that was left—a boy so hard that he didn’t even cry when he heard his older sister was dead. He didn’t even ask where she was going to be buried. He didn’t care about anything.
He lit a cigarette, and told Silvia not to cry. “No llores. Ya basta de laigrimas.”
“Silvia made sure Yolie had a church funeral. She made all the arrangements. Though I don’t remember how she did it. I do remember that she changed back into a man when she went to see the priest at the cathedral. It was strange to see him dressed as a man. He was a woman to me. I never even asked him his real name. You know, I didn’t go to the funeral.”
Grace nodded.
“You don’t disapprove?”
“Why would I disapprove?”
“She was my sister.”
“You have every right to hate her.”
“I do hate her.”
“And so you’re a bad man—because when you were fifteen, you were so angry and so numb that you refused to go to her funeral?”
“I don’t forgive myself.”
“One of these days you’re going to stop beating the crap out of yourself.”
“You don’t know about some of the things I’ve done.”
“And if I knew, I’d hate you, is that it?”
“Yes, you might.”
There was a softness in his voice that she had never heard before. “I don’t think so.” She smiled and nodded at him. “You wouldn’t mind, would you, if I had one of your cigarettes?”
“I thought you quit.”
“I’ve picked it up again. You see, Andrés, the thing about life is that we’re always backtracking. We think we’ll never pass a certain street again—not ever. We think we’re done with it. And years later, we’re on that street again. Retracing our steps. Looking for something we left behind.”
“Cigarettes. We’re looking for cigarettes.”
He was smart and could say such charming things. If life had been different for him, he would have been like Sam—educated and sophisticated and intellectual. And she wondered if maybe that’s what she saw in this young man—a stunted beauty of a man who might still grow. Even in his damaged state, he could light up a room. He could fill it with a presence that was large and rare. Like Sam. And wasn’t it funny, that this young man should come into her life even as she was dying? She could feel it, that death. It was beginning to have a presence, too. Yes, wasn’t it funny, that she should feel such affection for this young man. That she should care so much. They were friends, that’s how it felt. She, who never let things like this happen with her clients. But it didn’t matter anymore. Because he was the last. And she was free of her professionalism. But she wasn’t free to be careless. And anyway, she didn’t have to worry about carelessness. She didn’t have it in her.
She let him light her cigarette. “Tell me. I want to know how you came back.”
“To El Paso?”
“Yes.”
Mister didn’t notice. Not at first. Mister didn’t notice that there was a man and a woman at the Rubios’ front door. He was in his head, having a conversation with Vicente, What should we name your bear? When he stepped out of the car, he did notice. The man was holding a gun to the woman’s head. He could see the whole scene clearly. Everything became perfectly clear to him in that instant. It was Vicente’s mother—he recognized her. Mr. Rubio tried to wave him away, but it was too late.
The man turned to Mister and pointed the gun at Mr. Rubio. “I’ll kill him, you fuck. If you say a word, I’ll kill him. Then fuckin’ kill you, too.”
Mister nodded. Grace had taught him to stay calm when things went wrong. So he tried his best to be her son, stay calm, steady, calm. But his beating heart wasn’t cooperating. He told himself everything was going to be okay. Everything was going to be fine. He and Vicente and Grace would be having dinner in an hour.
The woman wore a look of panic and disbelief. She looked at Mister, and he knew she was saying, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, and he wanted to tell her that it was okay, that everything would be okay and that it wasn’t her fault and he hoped she knew that with the way he looked at her—but it was so hard to tell what she saw in his face. Maybe he was wearing a look of panic, too. He didn’t know.
For an instant, he thought of running. He could save himself. But he emptied himself of the urge. Everything would be okay. None of this was happening. It was a joke or a bad dream, and he would wake soon, and he and Vicente would get in his car and go home. Go home to Liz, who was waiting for them. And Grace would be coming, too.
“You’ll regret one day that you didn’t say good-bye to Yolie.”
Andrés nodded. “I’ll regret everything one day.”
“You don’t talk like a boy.”
“What do I talk like?”
“Like an old man.”
He shrugged.
“Amor, it’s time for you to go back.”
“I won’t. Not until I hear word about Ileana.”
“She’s everything, isn’t she?”
“Somebody has to make it out alive.”
“What about you?”
“I’m already dead.”
“Don’t talk like that. You’re just a boy.”
“I thought you just said I talked like a very old man.”
“You’re still a boy.”
That’s what they said to each other, Silvia and Andrés, the evening of Yolie’s burial. They talked and smoked, and then walked to Carmen’s house, even though Silvia said he shouldn’t be out on the streets. Carmen was packing her things when they arrived. “I’m leaving in the morning. I’m going back to Jalisco. Homero gave me a day to leave.” She smiled, such a sad smile. “I should have left a long time ago.” Then she laughed. She handed Andrés a handwritten note. Andrés unfolded the note. “Ileana’s living in California. She’s safe.” He found himself running down the street, running and running and running and running, and he found himself in that bar where Homero had taken him and Ileana one night, and when he rushed into the bar, he saw him, Homero, and he jumped on him like a tiger pouncing on his prey, and he was pounding on him, pounding and knocking him to the ground, and he heard himself yelling, “I hate you! I hate you! You sonofabitch! Rot in hell, you sonofabitch!” Andrés didn’t remember anything after that—except that Silvia and another man carried him out of the bar before Homero could get up from the floor where he was lying. And he remembered Silvia whispering, “I’m taking you back tonight.”
“We won’t take anything,” Silvia said. He watched her change and become a man again. He didn’t like it, that she changed back into a man. He hated men. He hated them because of the things they did. “I was born in El Paso, did I ever tell you? My name is Guillermo.”
“I like Silvia better.”
“Me, too. But not tonight.”
“Where are we going?”
“My sister’s house. She lives in El Paso. You’ll be safe, now, like Ileana.”
He nodded. When they were both dressed, they went out into the streets. They made their way to the bridge. At the top, over the river, in between the two flags of the two countries, Andrés looked back.
“Don’t,” Guillermo said, “Never look back. Nunca, nunca, nunca.” As they walked toward the American side of the bridge, Guillermo whispered, “When they ask you to declare your citizenship, just say American.”
“I can’t prove it.”
“You can prove it with your English.”
“What about you?”
“I have my papers. If they ask, tell them I’m your uncle.”
Andrés felt his heart beating as he waited in the long line. When it was his turn, he smiled and said, “American citizen.”
The man in the uniform looked at him. “Are you alone?”
He thought his heart would burst. “I’m with my uncle.” He turned around and pointed at Guillermo, who was waiting right behind him.
The man nodded and motioned him to keep moving.
Andrés smiled and walked on. When he left the building, he waited for Guillermo. When Guillermo caught up with him, Andrés broke into tears. Guillermo held him and told him he was safe now. “It’s over,” Guillermo kept repeating the words. Andrés repeated the words, too. He wanted to believe. It’s over.
“It’s still not over, Grace.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“I never even bothered to look for Ileana.”
“It’s not too late.” She opened her drawer, then took out the sheets of paper. “I think these belong to you.” She placed the pages on her desk.
“Where did you get those?”
There was a fire in his eyes. She was glad for the fire. She picked up the pages and handed them to him. “Take them. I’d read them if I were you. You might find something that’s at least worth the paper it’s written on.”
Andrés took the sheets of paper and stared at them. He folded them carefully and placed them back in his shirt pocket.
“That’s why you got mad—because they took what you wrote away from you.”
“What do you suggest would’ve been the appropriate response?”
“Did you at least give one of them a decent punch?”
“One of them had to go to the dentist.”
She laughed, then shook her head. “I don’t approve of violence.” She looked at him and searched his face. “You should look for her.”
“And if she’s dead?”
“And if she’s alive?”
“Alive. There’s a word.”
The man waved him inside with the gun. Mister watched the man, the look of rage and confusion on his face. He stared at the waving gun. It’s like a movie, he thought to himself, one of those movies with a familiar plot, the part of the crazed man played by a mediocre method actor.
The first thing he saw when he entered the living room was Vicente clinging to Mrs. Rubio. She looked at him, but said nothing.
“Sit down. Everybody, sit the fuck down!” The man, the crazed man, kept Vicente’s mother by his side.
He sat down next to Mr. Rubio on the couch. Mr. Rubio squeezed Mister’s hand.
“What are you doing?”
Mr. Rubio shook his head and shrugged.
“Don’t fucking move unless I tell you to.” He looked at Mister, then looked at the woman. “Puta. You’re nothing but a puta, Alicia.” Spanish wasn’t his first language. “That the guy you gave our son to? That the guy?”
Alicia shook her head. Mister knew her name now.
He slapped her hard, and she stumbled to the floor. He pointed the gun at her. “I asked if he was the one.”
“Yes,” Mister said. “I’m the one.”
Andrés remembered waking up in Guillermo’s arms. He looked around the room and saw the picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The flames were calm, calmer than the flames in his own heart. He slipped out from under Guillermo’s arms and went to the window. He looked out into the backyard. There was a hummingbird sucking on a blossom on the pomegranate tree. He didn’t know anything about hummingbirds except that his father had told him that they liked to fight. So maybe you could like to fight and still be beautiful, like the hummingbirds.
On that first day, Guillermo took him everywhere. They walked through downtown, and Guillermo bought him clothes—shirts and pants and shoes and tennis shoes and underwear and T-shirts and socks and everything. “For a new life,” he said. Guillermo borrowed his sister’s car, and he took him out to eat at a place called the State Line, and they ate ribs and potato salad and bread and barbeque beans, and they ate and ate until Andrés thought he would burst.
And afterward, they went back to his sister’s house, and they sat on chairs in the backyard and smoked and talked. “Tomorrow, you have to go see a caseworker.”
“I don’t want to.”
“You have to live somewhere. They’ll give you a nice family—unless you want to go see if Mrs. Fernandez will take you in.”
“No. Let her alone.”
“Then we have to get you into the system.”
“The system?”
“You know, there are people who care for kids—”
“I’m not a kid.”
“Okay. But you’re a minor.”
“I don’t want to live with anybody but you.”
“I live in Juárez.”
“Move back here.”
“That’s my home. I won’t come back here. And besides, you need a decent family.”
“You’re decent.”
Guillermo kissed him.
Andrés looked at him. “I want you to be Silvia again.”
“I am Silvia. Only when I come to El Paso, I have to be Guillermo—and that’s not who I want to be. You understand, Andrés?”
Andrés nodded.
“My sister thinks I’m taking advantage of you. She gave me a lecture.”
“Then your sister doesn’t know you.”
“Well, a man with a boy—what is she supposed to think?”
“I’ll tell her.”
“Don’t tell her anything.”
“She just wants us to leave, doesn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“Will I see you?”
“Every week. We’ll make a date. Saturdays at noon at San Jacinto Plaza. We’ll smoke and talk and have lunch.”
“You promise?”
“And did he keep his promise?”
“She.”
Grace nodded. “She. Did she keep her promise?”
“Yes.”
“Almost every week for two years, Silvia and I saw each other.”
“And then what happened?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I have time.”
“When she died. No, that’s not right. When he killed her—that’s when I decided it was over. First my mother and father. And then Mando and Yolie. And then Ileana—”
“But Ileana may be alive.”
“I lost her just the same.” He lit a cigarette. “Mom and Dad and Yolie and Mando and Ileana. And then Silvia. And then I just said, Screw it all to hell. It’s over.”
“And here you are.”
“Yeah. Here I am.”
“Maybe you’re just in love with being an outsider. You can join the human race any time you want to.”
“What makes you think I want to join? I live in the kind of world that looks at me like I’m some kind of freak. You know, when I told Dave I hadn’t gone to college, he flinched. Just for a second. He was so surprised. I don’t think he could believe a guy like me could be smart or articulate about anything—because I hadn’t gone to college. Maybe it’s better if people think you’re stupid or slow. They don’t expect anything. I live in a world that doesn’t expect anything of me because it’s already decided I don’t matter.”
“What the world expects? What does that matter?”
“I wasn’t born a gringo, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“I wasn’t either, Andrés. In case you hadn’t noticed. And I wasn’t even born a man.”
“Big fucking deal, Grace. I was born a man and used like a woman. You don’t have a goddamned thing on me.”
“This isn’t a contest, Andrés. You win the one that says you’ve been screwed over more than anybody else in the universe. You win that one. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t know anything. I know a few things about what the world does and doesn’t expect of you. I never worried that much about it. I went to the University of Texas. Already that made me more successful than most people who grew up in my neighborhood. And every time I did spectacularly well in my classes, and I’m here to tell you that I did spectacularly well, I could always see the look of surprise on my professors’ faces. You don’t think I noticed? What you saw on Dave’s face, I saw every damned day of my academic career. So what, Andrés? I wanted to do something, to be something—and I did it. I don’t think I deserve a medal, and I don’t think I’m particularly special. I wanted to do something, and I figured out a way to do it. But I’ll say this, too, Andrés, I was lucky. I was a very lucky girl. I had someone who kissed away all my bruises.” She smiled. “Me and my Sam, when we were young, we had a lot of fight.”
“I’m glad for you.”
“Are you?”
He looked at her. He wanted her to understand this one truth. “Whatever you have, I’m sure you’ve more than earned.” He clenched his teeth. “The war I’m fighting—it’s not against you, Grace.”
“At least you’re fighting.”
“And you, Grace? Are you still fighting?”
She was surprised. By his question.
All he saw was the man’s eyes, dark as a sky about to let loose a flood on the land. He looked back and pleaded—but only with his eyes.
The man looked down at Alicia. “So you thought he’d make a better father? You think he looks like me? Do you? Do you, goddamnit!” He pointed the gun away from the woman and pointed it in Mister’s direction. He’d never dreamed an end like this. He looked at Vicente. That’s how he wanted to leave—looking at Vicente.
When the bullet struck his heart, he had enough breath in him to utter Liz’s name—and then Grace’s. Their names echoed in the room for an instant. And then everything was quiet. And the light was gone.
He was at least spared the carnage that followed. His turned out to be the kindest death.
Andrés arrived at Grace’s office at 4:00. Exactly on time for his appointment. Mister left his house at 4:30. He arrived at the Rubio’s at 4:54—exactly six minutes after Robert Lawson arrived with Alicia Esparza at his side. At 5:07, as Andrés was leaving Grace’s office, Mister was dead, warm blood still flowing out of his chest. At 5:25, when Grace was getting into her car to go home, everyone else in the Rubio house was dead—the gunman included.
Robert Lawson left a note and put it on the kitchen table before he pointed the gun at himself: “This is what happens in a world where fathers don’t count.”
He left the boy Vicente alive. Unable to wake anyone up from their sleep, Vicente decided to lie down next to Mister.