FOR SEVEN NIGHTS in a row, after days on the road and nights in the arena, Sierra knocked on his door, and for seven nights in a row, Diablo did not open it.
Nor had he answered the phone any of the times she called thereafter.
For the past two nights she had not come at all. Neither had she called.
In the same amount of time, he had not been able to get in touch with his grandmother.
Worrying about her, gnawing on the mounting certainty that something wasn’t right, was perhaps the only possible distraction that could have dragged his attention away from Sierra.
If he wasn’t so worried, in fact, he might have even been grateful.
But this was not like his nana.
He’d tried both the home number and her cell multiple times, every day, and each time it had simply rung through to her ancient tape-recorded answering machine, or gone through the automated voice mail inbox that she’d never gotten around to recording a personal greeting for.
There were challenges that came with having a family of two, and one person not answering their phones was one of them.
Diablo had no other kin, which meant there was nobody else to check on her, their visit welcome or not.
The old man hadn’t been picking up, either, but that was more normal. With him, Diablo at least knew that he could trust him to check on her as soon as he got the message.
But over a week was a long time to go without hearing from both of them.
To no one’s surprise by this point in the season, Diablo had placed second in Oklahoma City, as he had done again in Denver, just last night.
Despite the predictable outcome for him, however, Denver had been a wild night.
Denver had marked the final stop of the regular season, which also meant it was the last hurrah for all of the bottom-tier cowboys who remained in the bullpens. It was the last chance for all the remaining contestants to compete against each other as a whole group because after the points were tallied for the evening, only the top three would continue on.
Points were given, but even though it had been theoretically possible that one of the bottom scorers could catch up to and replace Dillon in the final three if he scored high enough, nobody had expected any real upsets, given how consistent the top three contenders had been this season.
In fact, going into it everyone had taken to calling it the filler stop—the episode in reality TV leading up to the finale in which nothing really happens.
The event was set to be a roping showcase, showdown style, in which cowboys pitted their ropes against each other to loop into hard-to-reach places, as well as aim and striking at finite points.
What no one could have predicted, however, was the fact that there had been a roping savant lurking in the bullpens.
Casey O’Brien from Idaho, a tenacious but oddly forgettable cowboy who’d advanced through the whole contest by the skin of his teeth week after week, it turned out, could have run away and joined the Cirque du Soleil with how good he was at roping.
With long-shot odds that Diablo hoped someone had made a little money off, Casey beat every other cowboy present—including himself and Julio—and by a wide margin.
Genuinely. He’d won by a shocking number of points.
Diablo—the runner up—had ended the event trailing him by a whole thirty points.
And in the process of his domination, The Closed Circuit got its second perfect score for the season, giving forgettable Casey his moment of glory.
Of course, nothing was more glorious about his moment than the fact that in having it, he knocked Dillon Oliver, the PBRA’s current regular season champion, out of the final three along the way.
Diablo roping out a surprise victory over Julio for the event had given him just enough points to hold his sweet spot in second place.
In the end, Dillon was out, Diablo was in second, Julio remained in first place and Casey O’Brien from Idaho was going into the final challenges in third place.
While Diablo might have liked a little more pain in the going, being up close and personal to witness Dillon being dragged away from the arena by security after having launched himself at poor Casey was at least some form of karma.
And though Diablo knew it was a long shot, he held on to the fact that there might even come a day when Dillon realized that getting pulled off stage kicking and screaming was, in reality, more humiliating than getting knocked out of a competition by a “nobody.”
After the roping, the rest of the show had been an opportunity for the cowboys going home—including Dillon—to show off in their best events one last time, and they gave the audience a rough-stock smorgasbord of bulls and broncs for their viewing delight, while the top three riders—now Julio, Diablo and Casey—kicked back, watched and rested up for the final challenges and the finale ahead.
This season The Closed Circuit had announced that, rather than being flown around the country for challenges in their home towns, the three of them were going to return to the road, Casey taking over Dillon’s RV, and make stops for the final three showdowns before the finale.
Under normal circumstances, Diablo would have been grateful for that.
The idea of doing a special Diablo-themed challenge back home in Houston was asking to be insulted and tokenized on national television.
His grandmother’s strange behavior and lack of contact, however, had passed the point beyond unusual and made their way well into concerning. A brief stopover in Houston under these circumstances would have been a relief at this point.
He would have at least been able to check on her.
According to the contract he signed, going to check on one’s grandmother constituted forfeiting.
He couldn’t do that to the old man.
And so he was on his way to New Mexico, Fort Sumner to be exact, instead of Houston, where he and Julio and Casey were supposed to chase each other around acting like outlaws, rustlin’ each other’s cattle in an arena that Diablo assumed would be some kind of southwestern desert simulation.
Yet another opportunity for a live audience to watch a group of grown men play cowboy.
It wasn’t the most charitable way that he’d ever thought about The Closed Circuit, but it had lost some of its Back in the Saddle sheen as soon as the producers had waited for the fight to end before they stepped in to pick sides.
Before Sierra had denied him, not with an obvious lie but a painfully believable bit of acting.
Did it matter that they both knew it was only make-believe, if to the rest of the world they had to pretend like it wasn’t? What percentage of a life was lived publicly, and if it was greater than half, did that make the lie the truth?
That the season and tour were rapidly approaching their end was a profound relief, nothing more.
By this point Diablo was more than ready to walk away from Sierra—this time, in more than just spirit.
He was ready to not see her every day, to not hear her voice.
He was ready for her not to be within arm’s reach at all times when it was critical that he keep his hands to himself.
He was ready for the wound to scab over without being ripped off fresh anew each day.
He had more than fulfilled his commitment to the old man, having put in the best performance he possibly could, over and over again.
And if he hadn’t inspired any new signups for the CityBoyz, then he had been the wrong man for the job.
He was ready to get back to real life. He needed to. His heart couldn’t take any more of this.
He would figure out what was going on with his nana and finally just spend some time with her at home. It was something they both needed.
THAT NIGHT THE arena was as done up as Diablo had imagined it would be, but this time rather than a swamp, the crew had re-created the arches of Moab.
They could have perhaps tried something that looked a little more New Mexico, but he wasn’t going to pooh-pooh the impressive feat they’d accomplished. It was a set that evoked the West, while also giving contestants plenty of place to hide their cattle as well as their intentions.
They had two options by which they could rustle: stampeding or sneaking up and separating from the herd. Their goal was to rustle the most cows while retaining their own herd of five. As with the first simulation challenge, each cowboy entered the arena alone, but this time around, instead of finding the cows, they had their own to manage from the start.
While Diablo preferred bulls to broncs, he couldn’t say he was a huge fan of cows in general.
Yes, because of CityBoyz and college, he could rope and wrangle with the best of them, but he just didn’t have an appreciation for cows bred into him like some of the folk he’d encountered in rodeo.
His current bunch were fine as far as cows went, but still slowed him down with a tendency to fan out that he wasn’t thrilled with.
The challenge had a two-hour time limit, and once again in the style of The Hunger Games, the set designers had projected an enormous ticking countdown along the top of the stadium.
Casey, high on being promoted to the final three and seemingly cut from a genuinely eager and earnest cloth, had no doubt charged in, guns blazing, completely under the impression that he would be able to steal quickly and protect his cows—all at the same time.
Casey wasn’t who Diablo needed to worry about.
His mind was full of concerns about canny Julio and suddenly moving set pieces, and the sounds of snakes and scorpions being projected through the loudspeakers—things that could really set him back.
Or so he thought. Because, of course, in the end it wasn’t Julio or scorpions or snakes or the set that came back to bite him in the ass, but the thing he’d brushed off.
Once again, he had to worry about Casey.
With the same stealth he’d employed to push Dillon out of the top spot, the little shit made off with two of Diablo’s cattle.
He’d turned his back for one second and, just like he’d warned them several times, the two stragglers at the back were gone.
And in the instant of bitter realization, Diablo was faced with the choice of killing time trying to find his lost cattle, or trying to find someone else to steal from. In that instant, as corny and overproduced as it was, The Closed Circuit transported him back to the West of old.
Should he follow the law when breaking it was tacitly allowed?
Fortunately and unfortunately, it wasn’t the kind of question that kept a man up at midlife.
He’d answered it long ago. He didn’t follow the law; he embodied it, even when breaking it wasn’t against the rules. He wasn’t a thief.
In the end, Diablo neither searched for his missing cattle nor stole anyone else’s. He maintained the three he had for the remainder of the time and, in the end, his choice served him well.
Casey might have made off with two of Diablo’s cattle, but then he lost them, plus the rest of his herd to Julio—who wasn’t playing against himself, as Diablo was, but for the real-life stakes of his family’s future comfort and stability.
And at the end of the night, everything had settled the way it always did, with Julio far ahead in first place, and Diablo taking his easy time in second, while the third placer slunk in from behind.
“He might not have rustled any cattle, folks—and did we really think our lawman would?—but he sure as sugar held his spot in second place going into final challenge number two, folks! Will his rock-steady approach lead him all the way to buckle glory? It just might! Give it up for the Closed Circuit man of the law, Diablo Sosa!”
Hearing his name in Sierra’s voice felt like tiny blades running delicately along his skin, first registering as shivering pleasure but leaving a trail of lacerations in their wake.
The audience loved it, though.
He loved it.
He loved her.
But there were some points that could not be compromised upon.
He didn’t hold it against her; understood, even, that the world had set them up.
She couldn’t do anything but deny him, while he refused to be anyone’s secret lover.
And if his running away from her was cowardly, he at least admitted it to himself as he fled the arena after the show, deliberately chatting with a social media intern for his post-performance interview while Sierra was tangled up with Casey’s flood of emotions, before quickly leaving the scene.
He retreated to his tried and true RV, his partner as reliable as his hold on his second-place position. The vehicle was an ideal partnership—a comforting friend he could count on being there for him, as long as he performed.
What more did a man really need?
He was glad that Sierra had stopped knocking.
Silence was better than enduring the urge to give in to her.
And because he’d so effectively exited the arena after the show, it was a great deal of silence that stretched out before him.
He tried calling his nana again, unsurprised when she didn’t answer.
By this point, he realized, he would probably be more surprised if she actually picked up.
Maybe she’d gotten a new phone and hadn’t gotten it set up yet?
And a new phone number, and an entirely new sense of phone etiquette.
At eleven, he decided to get ready for bed and lie down.
He was still awake at 2:00 a.m., long after Sierra would have stopped calling, but not so tired that he couldn’t make it to the time at which his nana had called.
And by the time he got there, it wasn’t a big thing to stay up a little longer, in case that was when she decided to call again.
Getting three to four hours of sleep a night—up to five on the tour’s days off—was only as grueling as law school had been, and he’d made it through that just fine.
Of course, he’d been a lot younger then.
But he was making it work again.
As the tour dragged along, bloody and beaten, toward the finale of the show, Diablo knew an end was near.
Thank God.
He could catch up on sleep when he got back to his condo.
Thinking about his condo was almost as jolting as the ring of his phone.
Was a condo where he lived, and not in this moving ode to recreational travel? Did he have a home with furniture and mail service and a full-size television? It was hard to remember.
Scrambling into a seated position, he reached for his phone, hoping that his grandmother was on the other end, no matter how late it was.
“Alo? Digame.” The words rushed out, only a fraction of the worry he’d felt escaping in them.
“Diablo?”
It wasn’t his grandmother on the phone.
Pulling the device away from his face, he read the screen. Old Man Bowman.
Had he even looked at it before he’d picked it up?
Bringing it back to his face, he said, his voice dropping back down, “Yeah.”
“Son, I—” the old man’s voice broke, its rich baritone shaking and rumbling like a concrete crumbler when he picked back up with, “Son, I don’t know how to tell you this other than to say it straight. Your nana died tonight.”
It was the last thing he remembered before waking up on the floor of his RV the next morning.
His phone was dead and there was someone knocking on his door again, but it was broad daylight, and it wasn’t Sierra.