Big Red Tiquila - Rick Riordan (2 page)

Of course, Jay Rivas always seemed unimpressed when
it came to my family. He’d worked with my dad in the late seventies
on a joint investigation that didn’t go so well. My dad had
expressed his displeasure to his friends at SAPD, and here was
Detective Rivas twenty years later, following up on low-priority
assault cases.

"You made it out here awfully quick, Jay,"
I said. “Should I be flattered or do they normally send you out for
the trivial stuff?"

Rivas blew smoke through his mustache. His double
chins turned a beautiful shade of red, like a toad’s.

“
Why don’t we go inside and talk about that,"
he suggested, his voice calm.

He motioned for me to open the screen door. It didn’t
happen.

"I’m losing air conditioning, here,
Detective," I said. We stared at each other for about two
minutes. Then he disappointed me. He backed down the steps. He stuck
the cigarette in his mouth and shrugged.

“
Okay, kid, " he said. "Just take the
hint."

"Which is? "

Then I’m sure he smiled. I could see the cigarette
curve up through the whiskers. “You get your nose into anything
else, I’ll see you get some nice cellmates downtown."

“
You’re a loving human being, Jay."

“
To hell with that."

He tossed his cigarette onto Bob Langston’s "God
Bless Home" welcome mat and swaggered back to I where the two
uniforms were waiting for him. I watched their unit disappear down
Queen Anne Street. Then I went inside.

I looked around my new home—the bubbled molding on
the ceiling, the gray paint that had started peeling away from the
walls. I looked down at Robert Johnson. He was now sitting in my open
suitcase and staring at me with an insulted expression. A subtle
hint. I called Lillian’s number with the thirst of a man who needs
water after a shot of mescal.

It was worth it.

She said: "Tres?" and ripped away the last
ten years of my life like so much tissue paper.

"Yeah," I told her. "I’m in my new
place. More or less."

She hesitated. "You don’t sound too happy
about it."

"It’s nothing. I’ll tell you the story
later."

"I can’t wait."

We held the line for a minute—the kind of silence
where you lean into the receiver, trying to push yourself through by
sheer force.

"I love you," Lillian said. "Is it too
soon to say that?"

I swallowed down the ball bearing in my throat.

"How about nine? I’ve got to liberate the VW
from my mother’s garage."

Lillian laughed. "The Orange Thing still runs?"

"It’d better. I’ve got a hot date tonight."

"You’d better believe it."

We hung up. I looked over at Robert Johnson, who was
still sitting in my suitcase.

"Deal with it," I told him.

I felt like it was 1985 again. I was still nineteen,
my dad was alive, and I was still in love with the girl I’d been
planning on marrying since junior high. We were going seventy miles
an hour down I-35 in an old VW that could only do sixty-five, chasing
down god-awful tequila with even more god-awful Big Red cream soda.
Teenage champagne.

I changed clothes again and called a cab. I tried to
remember the taste of Big Red tequila. I wasn’t sure I could ever
drink something like that again and smile, but I was ready to try.
 

3

Broadway from Queen Anne to my mother’s house was
lined with pink taco restaurants. Not the run-down family—owned
places I remembered from high school—these were franchises with
neon signs and pastel flamingos painted along the walls. There must
have been one every half mile.

Landmarks in downtown Alamo Heights had disappeared.
The Montanios had sold off the 50-50 Bar, my father’s old watering
hole. Sill’s Snack Shack was now a Texaco. Most of the local places
like that, named after people I knew, had been swallowed by faceless
national chains. Other storefronts were boarded up, their
half-hearted "For Lease" signs weathered down to
illegibility. The city was still a thousand kinds of green, though.
In every block the buildings were crowded by ancient live oak trees,
huisaches
, and Texas
laurels. It was the kind of rich green you see in most towns only
right after a big rain.

It was sunset and still ninety—five degrees when
the cab turned down Vandiver. There were none of the soft afternoon
colors you get in San Francisco, no hills for shadows, no fog to
airbrush the scenery for tourists on the Golden Gate. Here the light
was honest—everything it touched was sharply focused, outlined in
heat. The sun kept its eye on the city until its very last moment on
the horizon, looking at you as if to say: "Tomorrow PM going to
kick your ass."

Vandiver Street hadn’t changed. Sprinklers cut
circles across the huge lawns, and wraithlike retirees stared
aimlessly out the picture windows of their white, post-WW II houses.
The only difference was that Mother had reincarnated her house again.
If I hadn’t recognized the huge oak tree in front, the dirt yard
covered with acorns and patches of wild strawberry, I would have let
the cabby drive right past it.

Once I saw it, I was tempted to drive past anyway. It
was stucco now—olive-colored walls with a bright red clay tile
roof. The last time I’d seen the house it looked more like a log
cabin. Before that it had been pseudo-Frank Lloyd Wright. Over the
years Mother had become close with several contractors who depended
on her for steady income.

"Tres, honey," she said at the door,
pulling my face forward with both hands for a kiss.

She hadn’t changed. At fifty-six she could still
pass for thirty. She wore a loose Guatemalan dress, fuchsia with blue
stitching, and her black hair was tied back with a festive knot of
colored ribbons. The smell of vanilla incense wafted out the door
with her.

"You look great, Mother." I meant it.

She smiled, dragging me inside by the arm and
steering me toward the pool table at the far end of her huge living
room.

The decor had shifted from late Bohemian to early
Santa Fe, but the general theme was still the same: "put stuff
everywhere." Shelves and tables were overloaded with antique
knives,
papier-maché
dolls, carved wooden boxes, replica coyotes howling at replica moons,
a neon cactus, anything to attract the eye.

Around the pool table were three old acquaintances
from high school. I shook hands with Barry Williams and Tom
Cavagnaro. Both had played varsity with me. They were here because my
mom loved entertaining guests with pool and free beer. Then I nodded
to Jess Makar, who had graduated when I was a freshman. jess was here
because he was dating my mother.

They asked the standard polite questions and I
answered them, then they resumed their game and Mother took me into
the kitchen.

"Jess is aging gracefully," I told her.

She pursed her lips and glared as she turned around
from the refrigerator. She handed me a Shiner Bock.

"Now don’t you start, Jackson," she said.

When she called me that, the name I took from my
father and grandfather, I never could tell whether she was scolding
me or the whole line of Navarre men. Probably both.

"You could at least give the man a chance,"
she said, sitting down at the table. "After the years I had to
put up with your father, and then years of getting you through
school, I think I’m entitled to my own choices for once."

Since her divorce my mother had made a lot of
choices. In fifteen years she’d gone from the pecan pie baking
champion of the Wives of the Texas Cavaliers to a freelance artist
who preferred big canvases, younger men, and New Age.

She smiled again. "Now tell me about Lillian."

“
I don’t know," I said.

Expectant pause, waiting for an admission of guilt.

"You knew enough to come back," Mother
prompted.

What she wanted me to say: I’d marry Lillian
tomorrow, at the drop of a hat, just based on the letters and calls
we’d exchanged since she’d phoned me out of the blue two months
ago. Mother wanted to hear that, and it would’ve been true.
Instead, I drank my Shiner Bock.

Mother nodded as if I’d answered.

“
I always knew. Such a creative young woman. I
always knew you couldn’t stay away forever."

"Yeah."

"And your father’s death?"

I looked up. The air of frenetic energy that usually
swirled around her like a strong perfume had dropped away totally.
She was serious now.

“
What do you mean?" I asked.

Of course I knew what she meant. Had I come back to
deal with that too, or had I put it behind me?

Mother stared at me, waiting. I looked down at my
beer. The little ram on the label was staring at me too.

“
I don’t know," I said. “I thought ten
years away would make a difference."

“
It should, dear."

I nodded, not looking at her. In the next room
someone sunk a billiard ball with a heavy thud. After a minute my
mother sighed.

"It hasn’t been too long for you and Lillian,"
she told me. "But your father—that’s different. Leave it be,
Tres. Things have changed."

Fifteen minutes later, after three attempts at
automotive CPR and lots of strong language, my VW convertible coughed
itself back to life and chugged fitfully out of the driveway. The
engine sounded bad, but no worse than it had a decade ago, when I had
decided it would never make the trip to California. The left
headlight was still out. A cup I had been drinking beer from in 1985
was still wedged between the seat and the emergency brake. I waved to
my mother, who hadn’t aged in two decades.

I drove toward Lillian’s house, the same one she
had lived in the summer I left.

"Things have changed," I repeated, halfway
wishing I could believe it.
 

 
4

"Now I know I’m in love," Lillian told me
after she tasted her drink.

The perfect margarita should be on the rocks, not
frozen. Fresh-squeezed limes, never a mixer. Cointreau rather than
triple sec. No tequila but Herradura Anejo, a brand that until a few
years ago was only available across the border. All three ingredients
in equal proportions. And without salt on the rim it might as well be
a daiquiri.

I sat next to Lillian on the couch and tried mine. It
had been a few years since I’d worked behind a bar, but the
margarita was definitely passable.

"Well, it’s not Big Red . . ." I said
ruefully.

Lillian’s smile was brilliant, a few new wrinkles
etched around her eyes. "You can’t have everything? Her face
had a little too much of everything, just as I remembered. Her eyes
were slightly large, like a cat’s, the irises flecked with too many
browns and blues and grays to call them only green. Her mouth was
wide, her nose so delicate it bordered on being sharp. Her light
brown hair, which she now wore shoulder-length, had so many blond and
red streaks it looked off-color. And she had too many freckles,
especially noticeable now when she had a summer tan. Somehow it all
worked to make her beautiful.

“
It sounds like your day was hell, Tres. I’m
impressed you’re still standing."

“
Nothing an enchilada dinner and a beautiful woman
won’t cure."

She took my hand. "Any one in particular?"

I thought about it. "Green or chicken mole."

She slapped me on the thigh and called me names.

We knew better than to try making reservations at Mi
Tierra on a Saturday night. You just throw yourself into the crowd of
tourists and native San Antonians in the front room, wave money, and
hope you get a table in under an hour.

It was worth it. We got seats close to the bakery,
where trays of cinnamon-smelling
pan dulce
in neon colors were brought out of the ovens every few minutes. The
Christmas lights were still up along the walls, and the mariachis
were as thick as flies, only much fatter. I threatened Lillian with
having them play "Guantanamera" at our table unless she let
me buy dinner.

She laughed. "A dirty trick. And me a successful
businesswoman. "

She had promised to show me her gallery the next day.
It was a small place in La Villita she co-owned  with her old
college mentor, Beau Karnau. They mostly sold Mexican folk art to
tourists.

“
And your own art?" I asked.

She looked down briefly, smiling still but not so
much. Sore subject.

Ten years ago, when I left, Beau Karnau and Lillian
had been talking big about her career—New York shows, museum
exhibitions, changing the face of modern photographic art. As soon as
the world rediscovered Beau’s genius (which they’d apparently
appreciated for about three months during the sixties) Lillian would
ride his coattails to fame. Now, ten years later, Beau and Lillian
were selling curios.