V

Curing the Common Need

Only months before Marylin Sweeny’s first film fest she began the arduous process of failure. She wondered later if she’d known deep inside that it was a bad idea, that it was doomed to failure all along. Some people are destined to propagation and labor; others simply keep themselves down.

Marylin wondered like an athlete reliving each flex of a critical play, to savor it or else isolate the germ of its failure. Contemplation intensified until her once-endearing oddities turned harsh. Her thick glasses on a safety chain pinned to a cardigan sweater, her clipboard, her pleated skirt and wedge pumps, her focus, synthesis and conclusion described a woman comfortable to be in charge. In charge of what didn’t matter; in charge of lunch, in charge of seating, in charge of the blue sky or the lazy afternoon. In charge of the general welfare of those around her. She was content until she wasn’t, until caring became matronly and then turned frumpy. She outgrew her self-perception and no longer fit her own sensibilities. The brujas would have diagnosed demons, perhaps of a minor nature but foul ether nonetheless, who would darken the situation until purging or death cast them out.

In the meantime, instinct haunted her. Like a mouse in a terrarium discovering a strange lump of muscle, she contemplated hunger and feeding, who and when.

Hardly unaware of vagaries in auric perambulation, she hunkered down on positive thinking. She considered her life in its waking moments, one to the next. She thought she needed psychotherapy, even if just for a spell, and she decided to give in. She would call the number advertised weekly in the gringo tabloid, if she still suffered in a week or two. She focused on nothing and let go, as the age prescribed. Then she wondered what next. She sought goodness and called upon the skills of application that endeared her to friends. She wondered about her skills and those people she considered her friends. She let go more, as the saying goes. She assayed, eyeballed and sought feeling from those in her radius.

The Film Festival of the Hills, Year I, required drama in execution. Marylin knew this going in as she contemplated the event in her own center stage. She smiled the savory smile, understanding that glory often requires the same promo as buffoonery. What if nobody came? Because you should be at least aware of downside potential. She thought these things through with great sincerity, sometimes in public, folding her arms, tapping her cheek and wondering what. She looked impatient, on the verge of a scolding, like she could cry at any moment, ‘People, please, whenever you’re ready.’

Tony Drury crashed her contemplation with, “Cut. Cut. Cut. This is all wrong. Okay, let’s take it from the top. Quiet!…”

Marylin gathered her things and left, because a playful pup isn’t cute if he keeps missing the paper.

Many people in the forty-to-sixty age group come to town traveling light, free of material need and competitive pursuit. Many simply throw in the towel and grin ear to ear with welcome. They welcome themselves, mostly, to the kingdom of relief, to the little town in the faraway hills where a person can greet and be greeted, where someone can’t care less with the kindest intentions, where social contact seems spontaneous as flies on meat, where compulsion fuels the engine of good cheer, good friends and good times.

Most come from years of effort and a nest egg. Most gain clarity on arrival, suspicions confirmed: life in America is fucked, mas o menos, but here, here one can prosper in the non-industry of living. Just look at the Mexicans, happy with the basics of meal preparation, cleaning up, crafts, elegant, spicy meals with drinks for two for under thirty dollars. Well, some of the Mexicans can find happiness.

Unlike the expatriate majority, however, Marylin was not far enough along. She needed money and demanded fulfillment. She fended off the defensive frame of mind, avoiding that mentality that calls for a woman’s rights. And she achieved success, mas o menos. Yet she considered untapped potential as some consider a hangnail; she picked, she tugged, she nurtured inflammation. Success was a concept; you get it or you don’t. Year I would fall short on money but could enrich life for everyone, with films. She nearly laughed at the astronomical prospects for excellent conversation. What a change, a possible benchmark in the sediment. How could it fail? Wouldn’t you choose movies if you could? The really great ones? She would bridge the gap, down to up, then to now, empty to full, mañana to esta hora. It could work, and if it did, the money would come next. She held faith.

She rose to the challenge. Joan of Arc didn’t give in. Nor did Lady Godiva or Germaine Greer. Heroines rotated on a common standard, underdog women who would not be denied. She understood the late night clarion: Last call. She ordered up. Next year would be Year II, and it approached already. Time was running, not necessarily out but certainly at full speed.

The mails ran much slower. A canister enroute three weeks could only be suffered. A price increase or an unreturned call could trigger conniptions. Progress seemed elusive and euphoric. She viewed difficulty as pain at shorter intervals; she hated the process but thrived on it. It fulfilled her but she wanted it done. She squeezed toward the miracle. She was happy and glum. She spoke of cultural symbiosis.

“You mean like movies and burritos, and they keep each other, you know, from being extinct?” This from Cisco. But he was easily ignored. She mentioned organics as innate to the dynamic, and though she didn’t come out and promise jobs for the people, she raised an eyebrow or two with oblique reference to prosperity for all. She was willing to expound on the creative influence and formulate a theory, just an idea, really, that festival format was an extension of the creative process.

Rhonda could see her point.

Marylin said, “Creative film making should be organic, and so should the setting for the modern film festival.”

“It’s easy to see,” Rhonda said. “And you state your case concisely.”

“Thank you,” Marylin said.

Rhonda salted the rim. “Without creative people pursuing organic art and creative formatting, this burg would be a wart on the planet’s ass.”

“Exactly,” Marylin concurred. That’s the spirit. Neither one of them really believed the place was anything but uplifting. Both valued the place as unlikely refuge for the world’s moderately mobile women with plenty left to give. But Marylin appreciated the commiseration and confided to Rhonda that the filmfest could be a huge success. She said she simply felt it. “Don’t ask how. I sometimes know things nobody ever told me.”

“I know,” Rhonda said. They giggled.

Knowing things frightened Marylin at first, until she put away her fear and accepted her gift. “I thought it only looked like knowing but was really simple deduction, you know, at lightning speed. But that’s not it. I know things without the first trace of evidence. I’m a channel.” Rhonda’s eyebrows bunched with skepticism; not that she doubted Marylin’s insightful propensities, but that word, channeling, was so passé.

It was back in the freebooting, street-hip days in Los Angeles when Marylin first dabbled in channeling, even then suppressing her power, perhaps fearful of the heights a woman might scale, left to her own devices. Fearful no more, or at least endeavoring in the direction of fearlessness, she reveled in the aggregates conjoining within. A shiver up the spine with a titter and a giggle signaled encroachment of a different nature. Sexual overflow and giddy ignorance made a girl giggle then, but now the world was an oyster poised for shucking. Filmfest prospects felt like adventure and reward in a neat package. And in sudden ripples of knowing a woman of sensitivity could bask in the order of things, could take care and be cared for. Damn the niggling details; like all of life, they too will one day go away. In the meantime, she was the medium. The profit would be pure gravy—there; think of it: profit and prophet. She toyed with gravy, then came up to sauce. Perhaps … She ordered a drink to celebrate simple truth and humble knowing.

Because truth and sunbeams can be repressed but not denied. Realizing her power and accepting it were requisite to actualization. She sometimes laughed at the simplicity of form surrounding omniscience. In another blink she knew the importance of keeping these assessments to herself. She had only to find humility, stop resisting and let it flow. She considered a name change, to Mary Lynn, to tickle the fancies and wake the complacency and change change change, which is the most important step if you want to live live live …

But, no. No one would get it right. Besides, there are no separations; no more dualist bullshit for this gal, no sir. Everything was already worked out, was already everything, as it were, more or less.

“Oh, hello,” she said to Elizabeth Staley who just walked into the courtyard of the Posada Robalina. She could have said, “Hola,” as a way of welcoming Elizabeth in the spirit of transmigration, but sometimes she felt the local idiom could put a person off, a person like Elizabeth Staley who hadn’t yet let down her hair. “Don’t you look lovely?” Marylin said. “What I wouldn’t give for your highlights.”

“I wish I could sell them for half what I paid,” Elizabeth said. They laughed, and Marylin explained that the Robalina courtyard had been a special hideaway for years, where a person could gather her thoughts over a half-decent café leche. Elizabeth nodded regally. “Do you mind?”

“Oh, please,” Marylin said, making room at the table as well as in her heart for another denizen of the forgotten class now gathering below the border. Elizabeth ordered the recommended coffee with warmed milk and smiled and waited, legs crossed under her silk gabardine pleated skirt and very smart jacket in carob mousse with raw-chocolate trim and raisin buttons. “Tell me you didn’t get that outfit here.”

“I didn’t. I don’t know if I could tell you anything I’ve gotten here, except confused.” Marylin understood, and so began the balance of an afternoon on new friendship with compassion and alliance. Mr. Staley wouldn’t be coming.

Marylin wasn’t surprised. She said, “Don’t worry. Listen to what I’m doing.” And she shared her dream that went only one way, forward. Because Mr. Staley and his ilk and their schedules and dispositions plain didn’t matter down in the hills of Mexico. What was his ilk? Non-present. Plenty more right here to fill the gap. Just look around. We can live here, really live in whatever context we like. If it’s men, have at it. If it’s something else, your wish is your only command. Elizabeth Staley didn’t exactly see the light but caught a glimmer of womanly purpose in a small town in Mexico, as others that very minute rolled chilies in flour and egg.

Purpose is a novelty in town. Dirt and sweat come with the territory, but for them not us, except for those of us down on our luck. Many people work every day, but not back-bending, dirty work. For us, work means artistry; painting, writing or making music, the colony stuff, the stuff of fantasy sustained. Careers can now be given to freedom for the few years remaining, call them golden, call them amber, call them anything you like, these are they, here and now. Colony means snug harbor, where art and life and liquor can live in peace together. You can see what draws them, what lets them know in the first blush that this is it, what keeps them and their dream alive. For color and form in nature, rhythm and passion in daily life you can search the world and come no closer. Society among gringos comprises a community and more, an elixir administered daily to those for whom reality blessedly alters, for whom love is an embrace as big as the firmament. Glad to be here and so glad to see you here; the eyes said it above, the mouth flowed under.

Over common ground, cities and professions, Marylin and Elizabeth shared experiences of the long ago, flowing to the realm of social fulfillment. At mere pesos, they were home. Can you believe our good fortune?

Marylin insisted: You can live in a small town in Mexico for the rest of your life and never miss a single iota of the old grind. You can enjoy a comfort and camaraderie bubbling with warmth and acceptance in a dimension possibly remotely rare on the face of the earth.

Or, you might need a tad more. Marylin Sweeny understood the imprudent side of sharing and so shared additional wonders carefully. “We need perspective here. Otherwise, it’s nothing but drunks wasting their lives. We have so many creative people with so much experience, so much to offer. We need format.” Format was key to the future; Marylin was key to format.

She wanted to be good and enjoy the benefits of goodness. She wanted to be known for her goodness and greatness. Fame and fortune should be by-product of greatness and goodness. She wasn’t in it for the money—that’s good. “But I sure as fuck didn’t set out to lose money,” she said later, when her manners failed her. Earlier, she planted a seed in the recently harrowed soil of Elizabeth Staley’s garden. It was a little kernel that could blossom beautifully with a richness including but not limited to equity interest in the creative process. Because a woman needs to apply her resources, even when the settlement is months away. Marylin sowed gently, the woman was so distracted. But it was a lovely outfit and a productive hour. Elizabeth cried—a wonderful purging experience—then shared her pain over accessorizing in silver after so many years of Mr. Staley’s customary gifts in gold. And where was the value now? Marylin listened to profound musings for another hour, ending with a yawn and apology.

Because a small town requires gentility, lest those in close quarters step on each other’s toes. Marylin applied the gentle touch to a chance acquaintance as she did to all of this unique place, so that she and it could achieve potential. She went home feeling twitchy and unpacked her gongs then hung them outside her window. They were magic gongs that clanged in the night with a refreshing reminder of life. She got complaints, small ones at first. Doorbells, one man said, doorbells all night long. Interference with the church, a woman feared. A chorus rose in the neighborhood; yes, doorbells, and the church. Marylin explained that her gongs were wind chimes, not doorbells. She explained the magic: Alonzo Brookner, author of Songs the Wind Can Sing to You if Only You Will Hear, designer and chief creative director in the manufacture of the chimes, gave them to her, Marylin Sweeny, as a gift, in person, making them a special treasure of her global travels. Besides that, the Zen temples have wind chimes; “I mean, you know about Zen. Don’t you?” Nobody said nothing, so she explained Zen too: “They’re organic, for chrissake.”

“What is organic?” asked the man who couldn’t sleep with doorbells.

“It’s like … from the planet,” Marylin said.

“You mean like dirt?”

“No, no. Organic.” She flopped her hands in exasperation and took the goddamn gongs down. Third world charm is one thing, but this was stupid. The town folk watched her little fit pass, watched her calm down and find creative tolerance yet again. Their oblivion to the great wide world was hers to cure no less than the burden of accuracy was on the very large men who drive leather balls through steel hoops or across chalked lines. She needed these people as missionaries needed the heathen and the heathen needed the mission and Marylin.

It was another insight, organic and planetary if not churchly. It framed her challenge with consequence greater than points on a Scoreboard. Her smile interfaced with conflict in nature. She wondered who saw it thusly—the smile, the interface, the consequence—and murmured, “Thank you. Thank you all.” The crowd murmured too, dispersing. She felt like a lone metal pipe with no kin to clang. She went inside to write that thought down for sharing with someone in the near future. Elizabeth Staley might be a good one, and you never know what might trigger germination.

The next day over notes at her coffee spot for Mondays, she was miffed again when Tony Drury asked how things were shaping up. He seemed harmless enough, and a woman is responsible for her own actions. So let it go and let it be, bygones be gone. Yet he insisted on a particular vibration that a sensitive woman takes offense to, coming on, as it were, killing time while his dungareed girlfriend was out bronco busting. Well, you couldn’t beat hormones for honesty, but the way of the world was changing, and though a person like Marylin Sweeny liked to keep an open mind, she didn’t need her byways strewn with litter. This man was a litterbug. Rhonda called him a pooch, which was less kind than Marylin’s view and certainly funnier. Didn’t he know it showed?

Nevermind; every challenge is an opportunity. Marylin Sweeny knew what he craved and chose tolerance, even if shamelessness was his strong suit. She’d taken the bait one afternoon in what he called “a pleasant distraction.” It started out pleasant enough, with lunch at La Brigòn with Tomàs and Professor Kathryn. They only met, Tony and Marylin, and walked back together because it was the same direction.

“I’d love to see your place,” he said.

“Why not?” She honestly asked it of herself and the town at large, a town evolved on feeling and knowing the personal print of its people. Yet who knew a man of such innocent expression would seek the hinterland of places? A woman with creative decor likes showing it to those who care. She said yes to another glass, a short one, and read him like a book when he stared and asked what she would look like without these pins, just here, here and here, the ones staying her hair so formally.

His advances were uninvited but pleasant, his arousal accompanied by soft manners. He helped her off with her sweater when she flapped the front of it to cool off. She knew he wanted to see her carriage and stature and frankly didn’t mind the opportunity to see what he would see. Not that it matters in an age like this one and especially in a time and place like this one. What difference can a specific number make, attached to a woman’s years? None, not with dynamic potential in the sensibilities of an entire world. And frankly, the carriage and stature of a woman like Marylin Sweeny in a satin blouse and lovely lace brassiere could scoff at gross chronology. Fifty shmifty; it plain didn’t matter, much less count for currency. But some of the girls can fudge and some cannot, and Marylin Sweeny knew good and well she could sustain her forties as long as she damn well wanted to or at least to sixty-one or so, when she would evolve so far past the gross physical that it really wouldn’t matter.

“This has been a lovely day,” was hardly a sexual encouragement. They drank the wine.

He said she looked like a woman who pursued sexlessness.

“What?”

“The glasses, the pins, the sweater. You cover up.” She turned to set him straight but too late. The masher stepped in, pressing his nodule delicately to the realm of promise.

“You are a nice man. But I …”

“You’re nice too,” he said. Marylin Sweeny had rarely enjoyed kissing, so many people have coated tongues and iffy breath and strange flakes on the edges of their lips. This man, Tony, was better than most but gave off a false sweetness as if physical presentation should not be a hurdle but a welcome, and at his age, which was at least as hard to tell as her own. At least he had the good taste to keep his tongue in his own head. When she thinks about the diseases ravaging the world these days, and not just the media epidemics but the billions of new and insidious microscopies, she shudders; add that to tongue rubbing and disgust is a short order.

Whether he sensed her view of saliva exchange or shared it, he surprised her with his gentle playfulness, merely touching her where a gentleman would not, unless he was a gentlemen in amorous pursuit. An adult female of any species enjoys sexual control. She simply saw no harm in lying down or allowing him inside her blouse, if for nothing else but to see if he would share her appreciation of her breasts, which are lovely as ever, still good to hold, still bountiful and a wonderful thing to share. Next thing you know, the wine, the lazy afternoon, the half-decent kiss, the erogenous stimulation, and she, Marylin Sweeny, was great gobs smarter. Maybe she knew it all along and only fooled herself, but in faith, she welcomed herself inside as well.

Who knew? It could have been good.

But it wasn’t good. Worse yet, it was dangerous. What can you think when a man turns away and fiddles with his ding dong prior to genital contact? Did he not sheath himself? Once engaged she knew it was a ruse, but what could she say in the throes of passion? Whoa, buddy? He conceded later that it was just his luck, to be out of rubbers with a rare bird like Marylin on line. But he did weigh the odds. How likely is it for a woman so prim to carry a common disease much less an exotic one? Besides, who could predict the pay out?

In twenty minutes he had to leave. She asked why the rush. He said he had a date. She asked if a gentleman should be lying with a lady if another lady waited. He said he wasn’t tight with his date because it had only been a few days and might not last, but he was giving it a chance.

“Giving it a chance? What do you call this? Insurance?”

His look of serious consideration showed that he accepted her point. Then he looked foolish and uncertain. “No. I’d call it … Um …”

“Get out,” she said.

“I enjoyed meeting you,” he consoled.

She called him later and told him he shouldn’t have done that.

“Done what?”

“You got laid.”

“What did you get?” he asked.

“You got laid. You subjected me to unprotected sex.”

He said, “You’re right, it was a mistake. Mistakes happen.” She hung up. She avoided him aggressively. He regretted her display. She seemed so open, then as quickly hostile. The little town could fool you.

She approached in a few days when Tony and Heidi sat at the bar. She stared. Heidi looked at her and then at Tony, who said, “Marylin and I had sexual intercourse after a couple bottles of wine one afternoon. She’s very upset with me.” He kept his eyes down. Heidi looked at Marylin and shrugged.

“Unprotected sexual intercourse,” Marylin said, walking away.

“It was a mistake,” he said.

Heidi asked, “Think you can correct it?” He didn’t answer. She asked why he was such a fool. He said it was before they met. She told him foolish boys who get all muddy usually blame it on the mud.

Marylin was still indignant on the Monday morning Tony Drury wanted to know what was up, but she nodded in the general affirmative; she was up; life was up, the whole wide world but you was up. Because breaches in the social edifice are unsightly and inconvenient. Just as the local masons do, she gooped a little stuff on the crack, shmushed it in, feathered it nicely and presto, restoration of sorts.

He sat beside her because that’s the kind of town it is, in which society functions like another public utility that sometimes needs maintenance. He sat because her special glare said they both knew what was up, said that he could go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars, and I mean never, ever, never, not ever. He said their afternoon together was an experiment, and that was wrong. “You can’t tamper with someone’s heart.” He said he was sorry.

“You certainly are,” she said, reviewing her notes and her new tickets, pleased that he helped with repair work.

“New tickets,” he said. “They’re perfect.”

“Aren’t they?” She pulled her blouse closed.

“At least.” He said, resentful yet tolerant. He held a ticket up. “You have little film strips and castanets and movie stars. Some burros and sombreros. What, no tamales?” He laughed to assure her he was joking. She took it back. “Marylin. Can I buy three? Please.”

She blushed, only minutes before she wondered when her first ticket would sell, and if. “Thank you.” It was hardly a peace summit, but the white flag flew, and both sides understood the benefits of peace. He read: “The FIRST ANNUAL FILM FESTIVAL of The HIGH PLATEAU.” He stated her dream, voiced her vision. “How much is it? Marylin, you forgot the price. And the time and date.”

What? Forgot what? She scanned the new tickets and stewed. “It’s like you,” she said, “pointing out the negative.” Because this had nothing to do with the peace. This was soft aspersion, a casting of stones. This was public ill will to an innocent for no earthly reason than to keep denominators common. “You know, sometimes I’ve had enough of that sort of thing. I just want people to see movies. Is that okay with you?” No, he could not buy three or one or five, because she stood up and stormed out to get the goddamn tickets reprinted.

He gathered the few loose fliers, receipts, chits, notes, doodles, clips, ribbons and lint balls she overlooked in her huff, and he ordered up. These things would serve as another peace offering, once she calmed down. He would present them with his mouth shut, put his hands together in supplication, bow like a monk and back off. What a wacko. But she was looking good. He looked around. He drank. What in the world would a man have today if he could choose anything?

Hurrying out of Monday’s coffee stop as if Tuesday might as well begin for all the good Monday was turning out to be, Marylin continued her tour de force in one act. It was a grandly produced morality play about women and identity, making progress in Mexico. She knew about movies and the business, or knew enough at any rate. Born and raised in Pasadena, she hitched to Hollywood young enough to learn how to make a script work. You have to see the big picture. You have to believe. You have to lean into it.

With her tickets fixed, she spent the balance of her savings—now called capital—on advertising in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston and Dallas. Those people can afford travel and love movies and may be receptive to a wonderful vacation opportunity. They could be waiting en masse just below the surface like the seven tenths of an iceberg that wants to plop up any minute. Or is it eight tenths; yes, I think it is; seven tenths is how much water covers the earth’s surface; well, that too. Because all you need, really, is a few of those stately, poised, exquisitely dressed people down for the dining, the bargains, color, warmth and society of the place before you get the rest of Texas and California, because who wouldn’t love this stuff? If only they knew, and why shouldn’t a film festival tell them? “Wha, thaink you, Ah believe Ah will.” She could practically hear their gratitude.

Marylin contemplated gratitude, running errands and seeking minor fulfillment until early evening, when she sat on a bench in the jardin. The birds chattering madly overhead electrified the air and infused all thought with insane possibility—with psychedelic flavoring perhaps. Because magic was in the air, perhaps for aeons, awaiting energetic synapse to whorl the vortex any time, like now. Marylin didn’t think magic extraordinary but rather as a daily force of nature, accessible to all who properly apply.

The ads, Sunday extravaganzas of film-classic stills in montage, gave the prices, dates, times and a toll-free phone number to Mexico at the bottom. They ran four grand each. The phone line was free—well, free of capitalization. Calls were billed collect, as they came in, which, after all, would be concurrent with interest and moolah. Wouldn’t it? Marylin wanted a personal slogan to capture her daring yet avoid sexual innuendo, nothing like Never up, never in, and certainly no reference to balls and blue chips. She simply needed reaffirmation in times of doubt. Something maybe with butterflies or butterfly wings or the need to flutter for flight; something like that. She wrote a few ideas on her notepad. The screech thickened with auspicious potential.

She got thirty-two calls in a week and was very excited. Then the calls stopped.

She blew her wad and tasted failure, not officially but personally, stepping back and seeing that her vision was sullied as a finger-painting, naïve, marginally foolish. Who was she kidding, anyway? You can’t even get to the airport from downtown in less than an hour plus two more hours for security and delays plus five or seven hours flying time and bus time. And for what? To see a movie in Mexico for a few hun? She moped and mumbled, “No. You wouldn’t. But, I could … No. I couldn’t … I could … Well …”

“It happens,” said Tomàs offering vino rojo and sympathy in a fell swoop, drawn to this pool of thought apparently deep and murky as his own. He sat beside her, stared ahead, sipped his drink and said, “Let it go.”

“Let it go, he says,” she said, head hanging as if by a noose. She accepted his offer by drinking half of it, staring at the other half in glum resignation. A woman like Marylin Sweeny could appreciate a man like Tomàs for his unobtrusive manner, his attentive awareness and soft demeanor. If only he could apply these skills while keeping his mouth shut; but then his febrile brain would have no ventilator. Was that nice? No it wasn’t, not a bit nicer than the whole wide world banging a good woman on the head with its painful reality. And at her age.

They drank in peace in the early afternoon while most of the town slept. Tomàs would recount their exchange later, when it would become prima facie. He sensed her gratitude for solace with silence. She stared at her wine, looked up at him and back to the wine. She raised her palms imploringly. “I lose my money. He says let it go.”

“What else can you do?”

“What else can I do?” She shifted in her seat and stared at him, her face reiterating life’s frequent question.

“It’s not over,” he said.

“It’s not over, he says.”

“It’s a setback, first step of the greatest drives.”

“It’s not over. Only a setback. Please, Tomàs, not now.”

“No, I mean … Who … Who likes films the most?” Tomàs cocked his head and ran a pinkie over an eyebrow—a mannerism for years of a gentle man given to deliberate movement. Tomàs meant to suggest a smaller scale, he would later attest. He meant to focus on the hometown crowd with possible test marketing on a regional level, expanding to Mexico City if the indicators warranted. That was all.

But she grabbed a straw on the mud bank and pulled. It held for moment, which was all she needed to rise from the muck and once again rise to the power incoming—“Yes!” She lunged at the reed-thin man beside her. “Oh yes, yes …” She hugged him. He absorbed it, until she squealed, “The gays!”

“What?”

“They love the cinema. They live the cinematic.”

The amazing simple sense of it seemed profound and obvious as blue in the sky, green in the trees. It was there all along awaiting alignment, awaiting Tomàs, her catalyst, who clearly saw human need beyond his own as well as hers. She didn’t think he was gay, not that it mattered, except that most men lean toward masculine certitude. Well, a woman loves a man with a mind so open it accommodates the needs of the gay community, needs that a woman of vision could fill, in part. From setback came the surge.

From within the warmth of her grateful hug, Tomàs chirped, “That’s not what I meant. I mean, I’m not sure about the gays. And film, you know.”

She held him by the shoulders. “Silly boy. Not sure? The gays? And film? You have seen the light.” Tomàs could not help but ponder eventualities. Marylin was sanguine; synchronicity lived, plain as the nose on her face. Tomàs wondered if she was gay and supposed it possible, because she chummed only with women, and if looks could kill, Tony Drury would be last week’s chorizo.

Absorbing her affection, he felt something change inside. His heart was still heart-shaped and paper thin, but Marylin Sweeny was a woman; just add water. From her first touch, she flowed into him. Then she flooded his banks. The swift, deep current that carried her along sometimes dunked them both. She clung to his buoyant perspective.

He fought for the surface, talking fast of market segment, market share, demographic manipulation and statistical support. But she grabbed him and said, “I can get more money.” He moved into it, to help her, but she let go and hightailed it to the high ground of destiny. Her scent lingered.

Or so he said. He didn’t say the part about the reconstitution of his freeze-dried heart or swift currents or destiny because he didn’t need to. His ruddy hue and quickened speech tell the story. People have eyes; they see. Yet he forswears the beanstalk growing menacingly skyward, down which the wicked giant will descend.

Tomàs can reason with her, comfort and help her work through it. He can share her hopes and deny her fears. At her place they can interface over dinner and dialogue on the global kitchen appetite. But he is afraid, so he treads more softly than the softest of men. She takes it for respect.

“Shit. Tomàs looks like he might not ever get laid again,” Cisco says. “I think I won’t ever get laid again sometimes. It’s a bummer.” Cisco lies. He can find gross distraction when he wants it for hardly two dollars and two dollars more for the liquor. Neither Juanita nor Rosita will open the gates for just anyone for six grand. They make allowance for Cisco. He’s so big, so strong, so good-looking and simpatico, they say, and don’t charge more for saying it. Just remembering their sweet nothings and hot salsa stirs his ashes, makes him dig for the money and head out for awhile. It’s what daily life comes to for him: finding a place to plug in.

Marylin keeps pace for convergence on schedule, wondering if Tomàs left his libido in his socks or on the empty page. She loves his personal commitment and calls him the paradigm for success. He says her focus is at least equal to his own. He watches her like a scientist observing behaviors. She reshapes her format to fit her new niche.

Some say his patience turns her on. Some say subtlety is lost on Marylin. Some take the compassionate view, the one resigned to life in the hills, the one allowing Marylin and Tomàs intimacy in private.

But some say no, this is not a private situation. For the second most delectable human pursuit is speculation on love, without which a lovely town is reduced to quaint masonry. And this particular tasty dish is for all to savor. Some think they will, but some think they won’t. Most think she’ll insist. Most think neither is gay and certain needs must be met. She can make a pleasing presentation, and he, well, you can only wonder, but surely he has the faculties. Surely logic will lead to conclusion.

She consults him on where to show, what to show, when to show. They lunch regularly. She pays. Tomàs loves a heady lunch with a light, dry wine. They progress, then evolve. He opens up, she calms down. He gives her honest answers to simple questions. She is relieved. Many fear tourism, they say. Marylin knows better, diagnosing homophobia in a heartbeat. She knows what looms but ignores the naysayers, until Tomàs joins the chorus by conceding his apprehension for a certain potentiality.

“That’s why you can’t write a decent lyric,” Marylin snaps. “Sixteen thousand dollars down the drain in one weekend. You think I care about potentialities? Whom do you think cares for me? I mean about me. Do you think an effort like this one should defer to bar talk?”

“No, no. I don’t think that, and I …” He falters on caring for her regardless of fallout. She pegs him there, stuck, failing to find the next note.

Because the long and short of it come down to caring. She does. Everybody else does not. Maybe one or two make a show of it, like Rhonda or Elizabeth Haley or Paley, but those two mostly want to eat popcorn and lament awful men and accessorize for their fucked up empty lives. She can count on no one once Tomàs becomes last man out. She mocks his stuttering silence with a hurtful grin. Then she gets up and leaves, shutting him down with sheer momentum.

That afternoon she writes to the National Unified Task Squadron on Creative Recreational Events Allowing Merriment for guidelines on compliance. The six-page response outlines current theory on social/sexual justice, rights and integrity. Its ground rules pledge that each of its half-million members will consider attending those events approved by the N.U.T.S. ’n. C.R.E.A.M Board of Directors, according to the organization’s by-laws and rules of membership. The enclosed application is step one in achieving that approval. Marylin presses on. She knows about approval.

She knows Filmfest I might not suck her through the black hole of greatness, but it’ll pucker things up good and plenty. She knows it. She completes the application in adherence to the ground rules, with an essay on moral turpitude in Mexico and film.

Gray Bruce, National Unified Task Squadron Chair, calls with congratulations on passing the review. She shrieks into the telephone—can’t help it. Gray chuckles in a moment of warmth and sharing. A single person can change society with charity and goodwill and can earn her fame and fortune, if she has the backbone to do it. Even half of a half million at two hundred bucks a head will be … huge.

But, Gray Bruce explains, support will be political, spiritual and moral. “It may not translate to sales. We require our members to consider those events in compliance with guidelines, and they do. We have so many events now vying for support. But don’t be discouraged. We are activists. We are organized. We tend to follow through. And don’t forget, we have more gays than Republicans in San Francisco now.”

Marylin contemplates San Franciso. She understands the hazards of desire and seeks neutrality in her tentative relationship with success. She knows about wanting a thing so badly you can bugger it up and worse, bugger yourself in the process until the thing becomes incidental to the mess you can make. None of that here, no thank you, until two months pass with only two-hundred requests for film festival info. It’s hardly snit out of a half million, but if they all come … She multiplies tickets and other sales times two hundred. She sighs over expenses. Then she sobs, failed again.

Tomàs doesn’t exactly hover but is ready for a proper cue. He swoops more gently this time with a glass of vino rojo and counsels, “More will come.” He resists elaboration and in fact succeeds in chivalrous endeavor by locking eyes for a telltale moment and withdrawing.

When five hundred requests convert to sixty deposits, he says it again, “More will come.” She thinks he’s whistling in the dark, which is better than blowing smoke up her ass like he’s blown it up his own these many years and like the others try as well, watching like voyeurs at her expense. He points out that over half the deposits are for the entire program, and two-hundred dollars each, along with popcorn, beer, wine, and the T-shirts due any day now from LA, will nearly pull the enterprise halfway back to even money. And it’s only taken a year.

Marylin understands that long odds are heroic odds, and women of valor never had it any easier. She asks if reaching for the stars is wrong. He says no, it is not. She says she doesn’t care, because if reaching is wrong, she don’t wanna be right—this in loose rendition of a similar soul song of recent decades. She laughs at her own foolishness. Tomàs observes and says, “I think success is a probability greater than zero.” She cries again. She orders tequila in a tall glass. He stands by, resolute and silent.

Twelve cancellations two weeks before the fête entitle those subscribers to a full refund. Tomàs writes the checks and presents them for signature. He then mails them. Marylin stares into the universe. She over-ordered on perishable peripherals and now faces the potentiality of eating the popcorn, beer, wine and T-shirts from LA—nice ones, Technicolor, like she dreamed of.

Gray Bruce, National Chair, suggests dedicating the festival to those fighting the dreaded disease, to stimulate participation. Marylin’s head hurts, but she goes along. The National Unified Task Squadron sends a black wreath and a liaison committee. Participation swells, but in the end Marylin’s loss compounds, since dedication to the dreaded disease requires dedication of revenues, fifty percent. Tomàs argues for percentage of the net, since nobody but an idiot would expect a percentage of what has to cover expenses, unless the whole lot of them want to wallow in liquidated damages.

Gray Bruce stands tall as Cisco with less threat. His sweeping coif, also gray, shines silvery in the lamplight and offsets his sharp facial features and deep tan. He stands up, looks down and asks, “Who is this little man? Are you a principal? Do you have authority here? Are you in a position of control? Do you know who I am? Do you know what I represent?” Tomàs also stands but sits back down, fuming with enough indignation for anyone with half a brain to see.

“It’s fine. It’s fine,” Marylin insists. She puts her hand on Tomàs’ and says, “Fifty percent of the gate. The peripherals stay intact.” Gray Bruce looks straight ahead and nods once. Salvage efforts lead to a week like most others in town, except for the twelve movies to see and a few visitors schmoozing at el jardin.

But small towns so remote can fall behind the times. Neither mean nor fearless, the place lives by tradition. Men of flamboyant behaviors are certainly nothing new, and few men in history have more swollen pingas than the Flamenco elite. Yet this new flavor of flamboyance curdles the common sensibility like limon in the leche; men have strolled arm in arm in town. But these men come on poignantly predisposed and in great numbers relative to the drastic nature of their longing. They drift in groups speaking their own dialect and retire to their hotels for perversions fundamentally different than those popular in town. Some old timers sense trespass or at least encroachment. This organized subculture could facilitate decomposition much faster than Northern Italian, Szechwan or psychotherapy. They’ll come in waves to a place like this, if they can fit in and order a drink in English. Sunset would pale forever if the grackle song competes with the man giggle.

Just look: the wayward crowd has changed already. The misfits, kooks and free spirits no longer stumble onto a place at random. No, the word is out, and a secret place can get jam-packed overnight. Holiday in Mexico or Glorious Mexico or Viva la Mexico will first indicate the rube realists coming down expensed from the Miami Herald or the Los Angeles Times or anyplace in between. In and out in four days of fabulous dining and glorious, marvelous, bright and shining profile of the adventure that can be yours to live. Because every discovery of isolated beauty like this marks the beginning of the end. Discovery leads to rediscovery, first by more adventurers seeking adventure, then the desperately poor seeking refuge from a world entirely too demanding, followed directly by the desperately rich seeking that long lost time, this time with money. Together these classes of critical poverty and wealth will form a third world nation of their own, one that speaks English.

In time the middle takes note of places with no malls, no McDonald’s, no media, the middle and its media call these places charming for their lack of modern convenience. And in trickles the mobile middle, hungry for charm, because it’s all used up back home. Yet it cannot go far without its needs, its values, its missionary zeal for comfort, security and those rights we hold self-evident, including fabulous dining. And what could be so wrong with a mall? And who but a totalitarian dictator would ban tourism? Nothing and nobody are what and who, but alas the free spirit becomes organized and visible, tethered to tours, filtered with promotion and homogeneity.

The gringo newspaper carries ads for hypnotizers, aura integrators, colorists, counselors, consultants and choreographers—these alongside colorful accounts of Pedro scratching the dirt for thirty dollars a week while his wife brings in another thirty as a housemaid. This feature article by Margaret Donahue Mayweather Hughes reports the advent of the two-income family in the hills of Mexico.

And here come the gays with their shrill threat, their public affection, their bone of contention. The filmfest becomes a Trojan horse carrying the means of the end. What if? The question lingers. What if they like it here? What if they come back in droves? What if we …

Fear fuels reaction. Reaction leads to purpose; or maybe another drunk gives rise to reaction, and purpose is another delusion. Momentum compounds when two moviegoers touch privates in public and hold there as if on a D-double dare, or maybe they simply crave attention. A few heads turn. Some stare. Some mumble. As if encouraged in their bid for stardom, the two kiss. One thrusts, the other moans. It’s no different than a display of hetero lust, except that such displays don’t occur in the jardin for obvious reasons. And then, of course, this is two men. They writhe, rubbing each other front and center. They may enjoy the natural freedom that should be theirs by rights, but it’s a taunt, a test, a line in the sand. Hey, it’s guys, tongue jutting, bone rubbing, dry humping—right up next to greasing it up and corn holing in public! So the story makes the circuit.

“Well, it’s indiscreet, no argument there. But what the hell, I’ve had blow jobs in the jardin!” This from Charles at the top of his form, several months prior to his disappearance. “I’m not bragging. I’m only telling you it ain’t the first time. Sure, it’s usually late at night and empty when I get my blow jobs. And nobody can say these guys ain’t weird. They practically insist that we imagine them at home packing fudge. But that’s only because you haven’t been around it. The theater’s full of it. I never minded. More of the other for me. You know? Besides, what would you have thought when you were thirteen, if you knew you’d grow up to be an alcoholic in a … a pueblo?” Charles quells the howl for action, until a group strolls into La Mexa and stands at the bar. Two hold hands; two giggle; all blink innocently as fawns for mercy and acceptance.

Cisco says, “Yeah. It’s like a whole world, on account of these guys fucking each other in the ass.” Well, it was a blow to collective sensibility all right. Nobody appreciates that kind of language or that kind of sentiment. Unfortunately, the group of new visitors spook and leave. Sentiment then varies in waves rolling up and down the bar. Some regret meanness no matter what the situation, others disagree, insisting that life is full of difficult indications, and Cisco concisely stated the difficulty growing here. No one is hurt, not really.

Cisco procures by profession, goods or services. Six-five in his boots with no hangover, he looks lithe with stringy muscles that didn’t come from body building, and his tattoos underscore his intention: Live Free/Ride Hard on one arm balances Live Hard/Ride Free on the other. He’d slung his share of hash and lived to fight about it. His pony tail isn’t chic but is left over from the revolution, from the day he said, “Yeah,” to the rider on the Quicksilver Messenger Service album. He never worked in a restaurant or considered cream rinse.

New people sometimes stare. He lets them stare, until he turns them off. The starers sometimes smile. He likes that, taking it as a lie down and roll over, flanks bared. He says he’s not nearly as bad as he used to be. “I used to be bad. I liked to fight. I mean I liked it. Didn’t care if I won or got the piss knocked out of me, I just liked it. Musta been fucked up or something. I don’t like it nearly as much anymore. I still got a wild three minutes in me though.”

He sees himself high on the food chain. Many others see him there too. Yet more importantly, he is known and appreciated in town for his link to original soil. Cast from the mold of crude adventurers wandering the earth in the last half of the Twentieth Century with long hair, tattoos, earrings and a fundamental instinct for survival and hedonism, Cisco’s future is secure for now.

He enjoys a niche in town. Aggressive when drunk, he confines his drinking to La Mexa, so you know where to avoid him. Up and in from down and out, he enjoys life in this hideaway paradise such as a canary might enjoy a song in a mineshaft, so long as suitable conditions prevail. Hardly a songbird, he looks like nothing to lose, and he doesnn’t give a good goddamn what you lose too. Maybe aging and beating have left him kind and gentle as an old diamondback with some dented rattles and a broken fang. He doesn’t need to throw punches anymore to prove who’s toughest or most fearless, because he knows and knowing is proof enough, not exactly like Marylin’s knowing, but not exactly not. Anachronism in his own time and proud of it, Cisco is a man, old style. He stepped aside from evolution, did not adapt and wound up in Mexico. Standing tall in private glory, he can get you excellent dope and cocaine to write home about.

A cheerful woman comes on the dish-fed tube as if in synchronous intervention. Pancho turns her up and says he’s been to New Orleans.

“I’m Valerie Varn,” the woman says. “And New Orleans is riddled with lush courtyards and walkways. Try remembering your way into this maze.” The camera goes to a tavern full of men. “McGirts is a bar catering to gay men but welcoming lesbians and straight people too!” The camera goes close on the bartender, a shaggy brute who looks like Cisco but smiles sweetly and guarantees that no place on earth has more beautiful men per square foot than McGirts. Valerie Varn goes close on a shy teenager, who says he loves McGirts, because he can fit in. The other men in the bar smile.

Cisco turns it off. “Anybody want to go to New Orleans?”

“Too big,” Pancho says.

Nobody else speaks. Discussion is closed. “This is easy,” Cisco says. “We mess ’em up. That’s all. Just mess ’em up. You know? I mean mess ’em motherfucking up.” He says he can make it look like three guys jumped the homos, and he’s the three guys for the job.

“No, no, no!” Tomàs intervenes. “You talk like a criminal. You want to hurt people because you don’t like them?” Maybe Tomàs steps up to appease his critics, maybe to keep the peace, which he does in the end, saving Cisco from himself, saving the town from notoriety.

“Why should we listen to you?” Malcolm barks. “You caused it.”

Tomàs ponders cause. Cisco says, “So?”

Some sit back. Some groan. Siesta time approaches. Tomàs looks up. “Leave it to me. They’ll be gone. They won’t be back.” He leaves slowly, thinking. Cisco watches, dazed by a world going stranger still, where a stoop-shouldered mental can clean up a situation better than he could. Someone orders one for the road, pre-siesta. Consensus rises like bubbles in salsa left out too long; yes, for the road, one. The afternoon thickens.

Tomàs comes back after dark in a light purple caballero shirt with a dark purple bolero jacket with pearl snaps and fuzzy balls. His patent leather pants squeak with each step, each breath, each thought. Sleek as stallion skin, his shiny pants swell over the sock in his crotch. His high-heeled fruit boots, holdovers from Carnaby Street when he was mod and wore them for real, attest to rock opera inspiration. He looks serious as usual but much different from a man with no moves. He cruises. He finds Gray Bruce and companion having dinner at Chez Nouvelle. He approaches boldly but with poise. “I was wondering, Mr. Bruce, if I could … join you for a drink.”

Dick Browning looks suspiciously at Gray Bruce, whose distinguished good looks and tweedy self-assurance won’t skip a beat over jealousy, not here any sooner than in the great cities of the world. Gray Bruce remembers the little troublemaker, but like a superior pressed for superiority, he says, “Of course you can.” He offers his hand for a shake and introduces his companion. “Call me Gray,” he says.

I’ll call you banished, Tomàs thinks, but he says, “Mi esta Rico. Rico Suave.” He pulls a hip flask from his pocket and adds a splash to a glass of water. He drinks it down. “Mm.”

“Rico,” Gray Bruce asks. “What’s that?”

“Yes, what is that?” Dick Browning wants to know.

“Just a very special tequila,” Tomàs says, offering to share.

Tomàs’ absence after that night isn’t so noticeable, because his presence isn’t either. The filmgoers fade in a hurry, losing interest in a town so … dirty. Barfly grumbling ceases, because the threat went away. A few people saw a movie or two. It was nice, so empty. Nothing changed, except for Marylin going from a frenzy to a mope to the depths of depression and down to self-loathing, until Tomàs resurfaces. He shuffles in thinner, gaunt in the face, unshaved, in need of a cocktail. Cisco says, “So? You bung-holed the head hot-dog. Big deal.”

Tomàs says, “Ah, Tutor. So, you don’t vant to be a drug dealer?”

“I’ll deal you a nice sedative,” Cisco says with no conviction, because it’s not right to fight little guys.

“You got your bunghole stretched and you know it,” Mal says.

“How indelicate,” Tomàs says, pulling his flask out again. “This is a special blend.” He pours three fingers.

Mal sniffs and drinks it down and shrugs. “Pshh,” he blows it off. “Tastes like cheap tequila and tap water.”

“You’re a genius,” Tomàs says. “Have I ever told you that?”

“Fucker!” Mal complains, scraping his chair and hurrying to the bar to suck limes. Everyone turns; foul language is so easy to leave at home.

“Take out the chief,” Tomàs says. “The braves will retreat.” He served tap water to the NUTS ’n CREAM Chair and companion. “Amoebae and Old Lace,” he says. “I was the perfect control.” He’d been down with amoebic dysentery, but not like Gray Bruce and Dick Browning. Tomàs has been around for years. Cisco nods slowly, seeing the simple truth: tap water. Kensho raises a toast to the Pied Piper of the high plateau. “They won’t be back,” Tomàs says. “They don’t like running on muddy tracks.”

Some laugh. Some moan. Some stare. Cisco calls Tomàs a little hero after all. Rhonda glowers from the end stool. “Why should anybody care about you,” she says. “You’re bestial.”

“Actually,” Tomàs begins, “the proper antecedent to your bestiality reference would be more …”

Beside Rhonda, Whippet slaps the bar with a riding crop. “You have no balls!” With blatant accusation she strides forth, garnering the kind of complete attention actors dream of. At least two weight classes below Tomàs, Whippet garners as well a five-to-one betting line in a toe-to-toe against him. This, later, in statistical analysis from Professor Kathryn, just for fun. “You have to hurt harmless people when a real man could work it out some other way.” Tomàs hangs his head, in no mood for exponentially negative potentiality. Refusing his concession to failure, Whippet engages his base of support. “How do you feel, saving a town for fascist alcoholics with no sense of anything. You just ruined a vacation for people who don’t want to hurt anybody. I’m sick of your smug bullshit, so why don’t you just …”

“Hey!” Cisco cuts in. “What about my fuckin’ vacation, Miss Smarty Pants?”

“Yeah. What about that?” comes the meek refrain.

“Yeah. Who’s not supposed to hurt me where I live? You and your ideas?” Cisco insists.

“Oh, Christ!” Whippet says, raising her whip to make her point. Cisco stands up and squares off; a whip is a weapon, canceling all handicaps. Some call it a photo op, the giant and the smidgen, but it doesn’t last, and nobody has a camera, or film. Whippet marches to the door. “You make me sick!”

“He wasn’t harmless,” Tomàs pleads.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Pancho calls from behind the bar. “Por favor.” He holds up her unpaid check.

“I got that one!” Cisco yells. “Call it aid to dependent bitches.”

“Your dying ass,” Whippet shoots back. “You lop-eared, filthy prick.” She flings a few grand at Pancho and leaves, as the rest take up the mumble over right and wrong. Rhonda leaves on a swagger and a nod to Cisco, handing him her bill. In the end, heroism belongs to Whippet for going toe to toe with the outlaw. Victory is Pyrrhic for Tomàs, who saved something vague.

Guilt drifts low like fog in a valley. Tomàs questions his motivation. Was he hurtful, harmful, mean and hateful? He wonders. Tony suggests that he not be paid the reward, then buys the skinny one a drink. Someone asks, “What reward?”

“Hey. It’s a joke.” Tony says. “Based upon the poor judgment of the people of Hamlin, when they didn’t pay the piper and he led the children away?” Nobody laughs. “We don’t have any kids anyway.”

“I might be a dumb fuck,” Cisco says, “so would somebody please tell me what’s wrong.” He draws a laugh with his sincerity.

“Oh, no,” Charles says. “Once informed you wouldn’t be a dumb fuck anymore. Then what good would you be? No, nobody wants to outlive their usefulness, even you.” Cisco advances. Charles turns to him with a steady smile. “You failed to adapt, my friend. It’s why we’re here. Can I buy you a drink? Or would you rather fight? I’ll fight you. But first you have to tell me why we’re fighting.”

“You said something,” Cisco says.

“What. What did I say?”

Cisco thinks it over as he scans the high-end tequilas. Bar mumble drifts over the relative merits of Herradura, and if a true Reposado should recoil, even with finesse, when it cost three times Centenario.

Marylin watches from a corner booth, simmering in revelation. Her friends did her in. Now they dismiss the crime casually over drinks, as if that perversion is perfectly acceptable. She broods. Charles sees it, pays his tab with a few grand extra for diplomacy and leaves in a rare display of discretion.

Marylin fixes a stare then stands and carries it to point blank range of her most trusted friend. He wants to explain. She swells up and looks like her eyes will blow if she can’t somehow ventilate. But she can’t. She turns and leaves.

Tomàs slouches on his stool like a dummy with no one to work the stick. He endures Cisco’s praise, chin on palms, elbows glued to the bar. “Hey, little compadre,” Cisco says. “You look frazzled as a stump broke pony at round up.”

Tomàs speaks: “He’s right. We failed to adapt.”

“Don’t you start on that adaption stuff,” Cisco says. “You let a bunch of mentals take over a place you can just as easy say anything is okay to adapt.”

Tomàs asks, “Do you ever feel shame?”

Cisco says, “No.” And he calls to Pancho for more sauce all around, for victory, but not that fa fa stuff because some people have to watch their money because they’re not rolling in it like some people who never had anything better to do than spend their lives in colleges and then go out in the world and try to mess things up with what they learned in books. With the bar crowd placated and enjoying Pancho’s slow motion industry on their behalf, he leans over in confidence and says, “Hey, you always got some dead and wounded if the fight was worth a damn. Some people here used to think you’re a faggot. Not anymore. I know you messed it up with Marylin. That’s tough. She’d be some work, but goddamn worth it from eight to ten. I’ll tell you the truth, I haven’t been up next to a fair-skinned woman for so long I don’t know if I’d a blown that one if I was you.”

“The guy I made sick fucked with me,” Tomàs says, venturing in the language of the macho bond. Yet seeking commiseration on his own level as well, he explains, “He made me look bad and … feel bad.”

Cisco nods eye to eye with him, lip curled, and asks, “You’re not a faggot are you?”

“I experimented with it,” Tomàs says. “I didn’t like it.” Cisco stares in disbelief. Tomàs shrugs. “It’s not for me. I know that.”

Cisco’s brow compresses the muscle beneath it on a new idea: ex-faggot. He stands and says, “Good.” Tomàs is no faggot, not anymore anyway. Besides, the little man’s messing things up with Marylin improves his own chance of inspecting the contents of her underpants, and that’s good too, maybe even one of those potentialities he can plug into. He buys another round and says, “Drink up and stop looking so damn beat.”

Mal gets sick. For revenge he invites Marylin over to Casa Malcolm for dinner and TV. It could be so perfect. He’s considered Marylin for awhile, and now she can only be receptive in her need for revenge. But Mal is unhealthy and very fat, a wheezer and a grunter, so his lusty strategy makes no difference. Still he tries, she’s so depressed, so in need of what he can give her. She’s not up to it, so he insists. “Come over for some TV and a few drinks, anyway,” he says. “I got a hundred-four stations for chrissake.” But she can’t, not even for revenge.

She shakes the thing off. She stays away, indoors mostly, except for infrequent outings for produce. Two months later on a morning of apparent resolve or at least wearing its best face, she appears. She says she’s changed her name, Sweeny, to Swayne, and everyone knows she’s back to normal, kind of.

“You mean like John Wayne?” Cisco asks.

But she will not respond to that tripe. That’s what’s wrong with the place, and she finally sees what’s been banging her in the head all along, that if you want to live a positive life in a place like this one, you need to insulate yourself from the riffraff. She comes out of her funk calmer on the surface, eyes up, as if watching the big screen. A new season lies ahead. With it will come rebirth, another chance from a different angle. She knows it can work, the Second Annual Film Festival of the Hills. She speaks softly now, ignoring what needs ignoring, seeing only those who see the picture. “Sweeny,” she says. “It was an ice cream place, I think.” She laughs.

“That was Swensen’s,” someone says. But Marylin Swayne shakes that off too. She is busy. Busy hands are happy hands. Second Annual is her new letterhead—it has a ring, a perpetuity, a new light. She cannot meet Tomàs eye to eye, like he’s a rapist, and she knows. Discomfort prevails. They pass like fish in a bowl.

Their happiness one day turns to sadness the next. She holds him accountable. He knows his revenge on the ashen Gray Bruce was petty and mean-spirited. The National Unified Task Squadron Chair vowed never to return—“It’s simply not healthy.” Tomàs withdraws to deepest interior.

Marylin moves ahead with no regrets. Year I teaches her that show biz is like life; it takes you down. She learns resignation and calmness. She understands greatness from Year I, because she got so close she could taste it. She can score millions and knows it. She works toward Year II.

So it is that Tomàs shuffles down the street and into a bar for a drink if he has a few pesos or a lime wedge if he has nada. He slogs into a sultry afternoon in the summer of Year II. Into La Mexa and the heart of sleepy time he finds a gathering of sleepy people watching the dish-fed tube. He sucks a lime wedge for a minute and volunteers to check on Charles, by now conspicuously absent. Tomàs saves face and composure by leaving, because Marylin sits at the bar.

Cisco bellies up beside her when Tomàs is gone. He gives her the eye. She stares back with equal severity but doesn’t stare at his crotch. He’s not discouraged; some women take awhile to warm up. “Yup,” he says. “Movies. Good movies. Buy you a beer?”

She says, “I don’t think so. But thanks.” A minute later she says she will go herself to see about Charles, since Tomàs most likely went straight home to sit in a corner anyway. She says she’s over her trouble with Tomàs, and she’ll stop by the Little Casa as well and tell him so. She smiles sweetly, making it plain to see.

Cisco says, “What, stop and toss in a few fuckin’ hand grenades?”

“No,” she says. “I need to tell him, because I need a clean slate. Clear the air. Start fresh, I always say.”

“I never heard you say that.”

“He needs to stop moping around town.” And she’s on her way again.

Cisco says, “She needs to slit his throat.” But nobody har hars. It’s too dry, too sleepy. The swinging doors flap into stillness and the afternoon goes hazy. Missing nap time is cause for concern, a possible misjudgment on a community level. No siesta can lead to early fatigue, possible depression. The crowd thins. Most go home for some rack time, because a late start beats an early end any night.

“Big deal,” Heidi says, sprawled across a table, fag down to the plastic nub. “Rhonda had it right—he bagged another one. Big deal.”

Rhonda lights a smoke and breathes the truth of it. “I don’t know,” she says, uncertain on the cause of Charles’ absence and whether she should continue her thesis on the village influence on urban mural art in undeveloped nations. Maybe she should set it all aside for awhile to paint. She weighs pros and cons in a light sweat.

Tony contemplates the nature of sweat, how the droplets look macho but a light patina, well, you could run your tongue down her chest for a taste and … “What?” Heidi asks. He shakes his head—Oh, I was just thinking I’d like to lick Rhonda’s chest. “What?”

“Chicken butt,” he says. “Fried in grease. Five cents a piece.”

“What?”

“Chicken butt. Fried in …”

“Forget it.”

“Forget what?”

The fan groans on a bad bearing. A few flies buzz the lime bowl. The big blond Russkie calls for order. “Hot!” Mal calls out like the life of the party. But it’s not hot; it doesn’t get hot at six thousand feet, only dry and sunny with a stupefaction overlay allowing someone burdened by excess poundage to look up at the calendar, see July and say, “Hot.”

“You buying?” Cisco asks.

“Me? Buying? You know I got a rule about buying …”

“Will you shut the fuck up?” This from an elderly white woman with hair and earrings to match, a new woman in town who apparently thinks that kind of language acceptable among strangers. “I’m trying to hear the goddamn television, if you don’t mind.”

“Pretty stale around here,” Heidi says. “I’m going riding.” She gets up and leaves Mal, Cisco, Rhonda, Tony and a few transients. Maybe the booze is spiked or the barometer is falling. The afternoon slags like tired queso on yesterday’s relleños. Tony offers the waiter three grand to pour a beer over the white-haired woman. The waiter smiles nervously. “Okay, five grand.” The waiter wags his head. “Fifty-five hundred. Look, I’ll give you a thousand dollars and that’s my final offer.” A young couple with backpacks comes in. They unharness and order beer. The white-haired woman watches the tube with grave concern for a troubled world and grave contempt for the rude man in the corner. The waiter hurries off. Rhonda lights another smoke. “I don’t see the problem with pouring a beer over her head.” Tony says. “It’s hot. Beer’s cool.” It’s time to go. “What if we watched Wheel of Fortune?” The white-haired woman turns the volume up. “Heidi went riding. Where can she ride to? Charles is missing. What if he wasn’t? What if we weren’t? Missing in action. That’s us.”

Cisco says, “World’s all gone. You got these children here with their backpacks, talking about where they been. Credit cards and travelers checks. Think all you got to do is get off the bus and you’re there. Shit, I bet neither one a you knocked off a 7–11, much less shot up a Coke machine. Did you?” The backpackers smile to indicate humor. Cisco gives up on them, turning to his drink. “They’ll end up shirts.” He finishes. “That’s what we oughta do. I don’t know what it is about a Coke machine, but I swear it feels good. They bleed you know. Hey, Pancho. Where’s a Coke machine?”

“Esta una en la mercada.”

“Do you mind?” asks the white-haired woman.

Cisco asks back, “You think they ever shot up a Coke machine?” He drops his butt on the floor and mashes it. The backpackers finish their beer and leave. Cisco calls for another drink. “Hey. You want a drink?” he asks the white-haired woman.

“No, I do not want a drink,” she says.

“Oh. I thought maybe you wanted a drink.”

Mal calls out to make it a double, hell yes, he’ll have a drink. He looks at Tony and calls out, “Fuck it, make it a three-pack.” Mal enjoys a session like this, with the guys. “This place is changing. I first got here, it was …”

Cisco turns to Tony. “Boy, I’d like to fuck Heidi.” He turns back to his new drink. “I mean, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“She wouldn’t mind,” Rhonda says.

“I’d mind,” Tony says. “She might mind.” Cisco drinks. “I don’t blame you though, Cisco. Afternoons are best, you get that light sweat, makes everything slick.” Tony downs his beer, trying to cool off.

“I thought you liked it in the dark,” Rhonda says.

Tony shakes his head. He shrugs. “You pull the shades. It’s dark enough.” Cisco walks over and sits.

“Tell me what she likes.”

“Can’t you take that into the bathroom,” says the white-haired woman.

“I’ll take you into the bathroom,” Cisco says.

“I thought you wanted to fuck Marylin,” Tony says.

Cisco nods. “I believe I do. But I don’t think she’ll let me.” He turns to the bar. “Rhonda?”

“Mm,” Rhonda shakes her head. “I don’t think she’ll let you either.”

Cisco looks down then up at the white-haired woman. “M’am?” She ignores him. “M’am, would you consider, you know … you and me, I mean, you know, after we get acquainted and all?” The white-haired woman leaves too. Cisco calls, “You could show me how to be nice!”

Then there are four, still life in a bar with the news.

Tony gets up. “Sorry Cisco, you can’t fuck me either.” On the way out he says, “Mal? Feeling lonely?” Mal forces a laugh and falls into a coughing fit. Tony senses violence, a scene teetering out of balance. You have to be careful with Cisco in a mood. Heidi won’t do Cisco; he’s fairly sure of that.

Out on the street he takes his bearings, watches the haze for movement, for clues on the feel of the day. A fairly young beggar watches and makes the move, hand out with a beg.

“Señor,” the beggar says. “Do you speak English?” Tony looks peeved; the only reason to work this slot is for a shot at the gringos with mush for hearts when it comes to life’s difficulties, like children, dogs, hunger, violence and so on. “Señor, four babies for food.” The begging hand punctuates the plea. It thrusts softly for back-up. “Señor, four babies for some money. Hungry.”

“Señor,” Tony says. “Four is too many. You should have worn a rubber. Here.” He pulls a condom from his pocket and puts it in the beggar’s hand. “Food, clothing, new cars, college education, sewage treatment. It’s all right here. Sorry we didn’t talk sooner.”

The beggar stares at the condom, puts it in his pocket and stares at Tony.

Inside, Mal confides that a fucking gold mine is waiting to be had in subdivision. He’s looked into it and can cut his lot in two for about fifteen bucks in fees. Cisco looks pensive. Mal says he can build a cottage and clear forty, fifty grand easy. Cisco drinks, spits back an ice cube and chews another. Mal says, “Fucking Tony gets weird, doesn’t he?” Cisco is still as a reptile on a rock.

Outside, the beggar thrusts his hand out. “Señor.”

“No, Señor. We are responsible for our actions. Are we not?” He wonders what’s worse, beggars or alcoholics. He wants away from both, but what’s left?

“What are you responsible for?” the beggar asks.

He shrugs, stepping into the sunlight. “For me, I suppose.” He steps off the sidewalk like he knows where to go and why and heads downhill for less resistance. And because Heidi’s is downhill, and he needs a nap. Maybe he and Heidi can fix a pitcher of margaritas, or drink a few beers and smoke a joint, or have sex, or talk about life here in the hills. They’ll smoke some cigarettes, throw the butts out the window and have another round. He keeps his pace downhill and feels sleepy just thinking about the carefree life available to those willing to live it.