Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club (2 page)

“And here we are. One real Mexican and one Mexican who’s American.”

“My grandfather was born here,” I said.

“My grandfather was born in Israel,” he said.

“So I’m more Mexican than you are.”

“I wouldn’t say so.”

That made me laugh.

He was still studying the painting. “Why is the man grieving?”

“He’s tired of war.”

“I’m tired of war too.”

“Israel,” I said. “Israel and Mexico. A true child of war.”

“Yes. Maybe that’s what circumcision is all about.”

That made me laugh.

“You too,” he said. “I think you’re circumcised.”

“Such a tragedy,” I said, “to lose your foreskin. Not that I’m Jewish. You don’t mind, do you—that I’m not Jewish?”

“I didn’t say I was Jewish.”

“But you said your father was born in Israel.”

“He was an Iraqi born in Israel. He fled to Mexico. He married my grandmother in Chihuahua. He was killed in a bar. He liked to fight.”

“A child of war,” I repeated.

He laughed. “So why are you circumcised?”

“I have no idea. I woke up one day and there it all was.”

“Real Mexican men aren’t circumcised.”

“It’s settled then. I’m not a real Mexican.”

He knew the conversation was making me uncomfortable.

“You don’t enjoy talking about circumcision?”

“It’s never come up in a conversation before.”

“And do you like to fight?”

“No. I don’t like to fight.”

“Certainly you’re not a Mexican,” he said.

I took the paper cup out of his hand and replaced it with a fresh cup of coffee. I let him drink out of my favorite mug, the one with Van Gogh’s face on it.

“You didn’t lie.”

“About what?”

“Your coffee was waiting for you.”

“I always put on the coffee before I go get my newspaper.”

“What do you like about newspapers?”

“The world’s a big place.”

“And you need a newspaper to tell you that?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Really?”

“It gives me the specifics.”

“The world you live in can give you all the specifics you need.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

Already we were arguing.

“I need facts.”

“What for?”

“To help me form an opinion.”

“You don’t know what you think?”

“I’m not always right.”

He laughed. “You study me,” he said.

“Study you?”

“When you walk into the coffee house, you study me.”

“You seem oblivious.”

“I don’t know that word.”

“You seem not to notice anything except the book you’re reading.”

“Carlos, I notice.” He had a pensive look on his face.

“That means you study me too.”

“Yes.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Javier, you’re beautiful. And me? Not so beautiful. And your English is perfect.”

“Perfect but with an accent.”

“Which makes it even more perfect.”

“You’re something better than beautiful,” he said.

“What’s better than beautiful?”

“Interesting. Interesting is much better than beautiful.” He reached over and ran his fingers across my cheek. His hands were rough. His fingers were calloused.

Maybe he played the guitar.

I wanted to kiss his fingers.

“You’re quiet,” he said.

“If I don’t say anything, I’ll stay interesting.”

He ran his fingers through my salt and pepper hair.

“I’m older than you are,” I said.

He kissed me.

I kissed him back.

4.

We sat on the balcony and drank our coffee—and listened to the rain.

“I don’t know you,” I said.

“What do you want to know?”

So he told me. About how he was caring for his uncle who was dying of lung cancer, about how he had helped care for his aunt who was paralyzed in an accident. About how he came every weekend from Juárez—Friday night till Sunday night—and other times whenever he could. About how he worked as a chauffeur for the U.S. Consulate in Juárez, and how he’d lived with his uncle and aunt who lived on Florence Street so that he would be able to go to school, and how they’d passed for his parents, and how he went home on weekends for twelve years of his life to stay with his mom who worked as a social worker, his mother who had a passion for working with transvestites, about how his father had been killed and had maybe left another family in Chicago or Los Angeles or Chihuahua (I wasn’t the only one who made up things about other people). About how his aunt had died of cancer and how he’d helped his uncle take care of things, and how he took care of him now. But only on weekends.

“Do you love him?”

“He was good to me. My aunt was hard, but not him. He was soft. Can you say that in English? Soft?”

“Yes.” I leaned over and kissed him. God, he was beautiful. That wasn’t just a story I was making up.

“I didn’t like my aunt,” he said. He pulled out a cigarette. “Do you mind?”

“No. I don’t mind.”

“Would you like one?”

“I quit years ago.”

“Why?’

“I can’t remember.”

“Are you a man who has amnesia about certain things?”

“
Cuando me conviene.
”

He laughed.

I watched him light his cigarette. I remembered how once, in a bar, a woman had walked up to me as I smoked a cigarette and told me I was beautiful. She kissed me. I let her tongue linger in my mouth. She tasted of cognac and cherry.

He let out the smoke through his nose. “Are you sure you don’t want to start smoking again?”

“No. I want to start something new, something I’ve never done before.” I watched him smoke. “So you didn’t like your aunt.”

“I didn’t like her—but I loved her. She was so hard on people.”

“Some people are like that,” I said.

“You’re not,” he said.

“How do you know?”

“I’ve read your books.”

“They’re just books. You don’t know anything about me.”

He put out his cigarette. He ran his fingers through my salt and pepper hair. He kissed me. “I make up stories about you,” he said.

I wish now I would have told him that I made up stories about him too.

5.

“¿Tienes hambre? I can cook something.”

“Somehow I knew you liked to cook.”

“Something you made up about me?”

“No, there’s a lot of cooking in your novels.”

“Well, people have to eat. Even people in novels.”

He laughed. “I like the people in your novels.”

“They’re mostly fucked up.”

“That’s what I like about them.” He looked at his watch.

“That’s a beautiful watch.”

“It was my father’s.”

“You need to go?”

He nodded. “I need to get back to my uncle. We always eat Sunday dinner together.”

“Do you take him out?”

“Those days are gone. He used to love to go out. He would laugh and tell me about how life used to be for him. Now, he won’t go out. He’s afraid. Before, the only thing he was afraid of was my aunt. Now, he’s like a boy. He cries. He reads the newspapers. He thinks he’s living in Juárez. I tell him that we’re in El Paso, that he’s safe. But he doesn’t believe me. He’s afraid to go out.
Nos matan
, he says. I try to tell him that no one’s going to hurt us—but it’s no use. Every time I go out he tells me to be careful.”

“And are you careful?”

“I’m not afraid of getting killed. Are you?”

“I don’t live in Juárez.”

“There are murders in every city.”

I didn’t want to get into an argument. Not about this. What good was that? And he knew Juárez better than I did. “You’re right,” I said.

“I just learned something else about you.”

“What?”

“You’re not a very good liar.”

“I used to be.” I wondered what look I was wearing on my face. “I would be afraid, I think, if I were you.”

“What good is being afraid, Carlos?”

“No good at all,” I said.

He studied my face.

I wanted to kiss him again. Maybe he would kiss me. Maybe I would just stand there feeling like a perfect idiot. I wasn’t any good at any of this. I never had been. Some men were graceful when they loved. I was tentative and awkward.

“What?” He looked at me.

“Nothing.”

“You were studying me again.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t mind. I like the way you look at me.”

“I could look at you for a long time,” I said.

“You can kiss me again,” he said.

He bowed his head and looked down. He was shy. Or maybe he was just humble. That’s the one thing I hadn’t made up about him—that he was humble. That he was sweet. That he was decent. Good-looking men were rarely any of those things.

I kissed him again.

He whispered my name. I wondered how my name felt on his tongue.

“Javier,” I whispered back. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve kissed anyone?”

He looked up at me. “Does it matter?”

“Kissing is serious business.”

He kissed me again. “That didn’t seem so serious, did it?”

“Yes,” I said. “It did.”

We didn’t speak for a long time.

“I have to go,” he whispered. “He’s waiting for me.”

“You’ll cook for him?”

“Yes.”

“I confess to being jealous of your uncle.”

“You’re not a jealous man,” he said.

“Maybe I am.”

“No.”

He was so certain of who I was. I didn’t want him to leave. He stepped closer. I started to say something but he placed his finger on my lips. I didn’t really know what I was going to say. And anyway, sometimes it didn’t matter, the things we said. It just didn’t matter.

He didn’t want a ride home. “My uncle doesn’t live far—I want to walk.” Maybe he needed some time to think.
About me
. Maybe. I wanted to stop. I wanted to stop writing the story of who he was and what he was thinking. Writing that story was starting to hurt.

When he left, I listened to his footsteps as he made his way down the stairs. I rushed out onto the balcony and watched him walk down the street. He turned around when he reached the corner. He waved. “I knew you’d be standing there,” he yelled.

I didn’t yell anything back.

I just stood there, leaning on the railing to the balcony. And watched him as he disappeared into the horizon of the city.

6.

Monday morning, I got this text from him:
I thought about you when I woke up
this morning
. I read the text and then re-read it. And then re-read it again.

I felt like a school boy reading a note from a girl. No. A note from a boy.

I didn’t know how to answer his text. I only engaged in the practice because my nephews and nieces demanded it of me. We wrote silly and affectionate things to each other. But this was different. Finally around noon, I texted him back.
Stay safe
. That’s what I wrote. That’s when it occurred to me that I was afraid. I didn’t like to think of Javier walking the streets of Juárez, doing an errand, going to a store and getting killed, randomly for no reason. What good does it do to be afraid? He was right. Of course, he was right. But so many people had left already. Why couldn’t he leave too? I knew the answer to that question even before I asked it. He wasn’t the leaving kind. He loved his Juárez. I could see that in his eyes, in his unshaven face, in the way he moved and talked. I could almost taste his love for that poor and wretched city in his kisses. It enraged me that Juárez had become so chaotic and violent and capricious, a city hungry for the blood of its own people. How had this happened? I was sick to death of it, sick to death of the body count, sick to death that every killing went unprosecuted and unpunished. You could kill anybody. And what would happen? Nothing. The fucking city no longer cared who was killed. Soon, they would just be stepping over the bodies.
Stay safe. Stay safe. Stay safe.

7.

The next Sunday, he appeared at my door. It was early. “They admitted my uncle into the hospital last night.”

“You look tired,” I said. And he did look tired. Tired and sad, his white shirt wrinkled.

“I slept in a chair in his room.”