A Texas Operetta
She likes to say she’s “Spanish,” but she’s from Laredo like the rest of us—or “Lardo,” as we call it. Her name is Berriozábal. Carmen. Worked as a secretary for a San Antonio law firm.
Big chichis. I mean big. Men couldn’t take their eyes off them. She couldn’t help it, really. Anytime they talked to her they never looked her in the eye. It was kind of sad.
She kept this corporal at Fort Sam Houston. Young. A looker. José Arrambide. He had a high school honey back home who sold nachos at the mall, still waiting for him to come back to Harlingen, marry her, and buy that three-piece bedroom set on layaway. Dream on, right?
Well, this José wasn’t Carmen’s LUH-uv of her life. Just her San Antonio “thang,” so to speak. But you know how men are. Unless you’re washing their feet and drying them with your hair, they just can’t take it. I mean it. And Carmen was a take-it-or-leave-it type of woman. If you don’t like it, there’s the door. Like that. She was something.
Not smart. I mean, she didn’t know enough to get her teeth cleaned every year, or to buy herself a duplex. But the corporal was hooked. Her genuine guaranteed love slave. I don’t know why, but when you treat men bad, they love it.
Yeah, sure, he was her sometime sweetheart, but what’s that to a woman who’s twenty and got the world by the eggs. First chance, she took up with a famous Texas senator who was paving his way to the big house. Set her up in a fancy condo in north Austin. Camilo Escamilla. You maybe might’ve heard of him.
When José found out, it was a big escándalo, as they say. Tried to kill her. Tried to kill himself. But this Camilo kept it out of the papers. He was that important. And besides, he had a wife and kids who posed with him every year for the calendar he gave away at Christmas. He wasn’t about to throw his career out the window for no fulanita.
According to who you talk to, you hear different. José’s friends say he left his initials across those famous chichis with a knife, but that sure sounds like talk, don’t it?
I heard he went AWOL. Became a bullfighter in Matamoros, just so he could die like a man. Somebody else said she’s the one who wants to die.
Don’t you believe it. She ran off with King Kong Cárdenas, a professional wrestler from Crystal City and a sweetie. I know her cousin Lerma, and we saw her just last week at the Floore Country Store in Helotes. Hell, she bought us a beer, two-stepped and twirled away to “Hey Baby Qué Pasó.”