Hot Sur (29 page)

“Is that friend you?”

“No, a friend,” he responded. “A classmate in high school.”

But aside from his rudeness and obscenities, Sleepy Joe wasn’t someone I disliked entirely. On the contrary, I tended to like him. Physically, I mean. That’s what really disgusted me. Greg was becoming for me more of an old man, and with Sleepy Joe it was like the version of Greg when he had been younger. They had similar height and features, but Joe showed off his body in Lycra shirts with sleeves neatly rolled up over the biceps, and he wore tight stretch jeans to emphasize his ass and legs and to provocatively delineate the package up front. It was clear that he took very good care of himself. He must have spent hours at the gym, lifting weights and then on the tanning beds. God knows when he did all that, maybe while he was at his other house, the one he kept me far from, although he always denied there was such a thing. He assured me that for him settling down went no further than the roadside motels.

“What else do I need?” He looked at me with the eyes of a calf that has just been castrated. “During the day I have my truck and at night I don’t need much: a television, a bed, and a bar open twenty-four/seven, and I can find all that at any motel on the road.”

He sighed and played up the martyr angle. I was overcome with crazy feelings of just wanting to hold him, protect him, shelter him, and he noticed, of course he noticed, and took advantage of this. But he wasn’t a good liar. You couldn’t believe anything he said, and it was obvious that the only true thing in his life was his brother, who always lent him money when things got tight. Or just gave him money. He was a womanizer who abused the bonds of fraternity, a frightened boy who prayed away his fears, a good-looking good-for-nothing, with no job and of benefit to no one. That was Sleepy Joe, more or less. And yet when he stayed with us and he came out of the bathroom with his hair wet and a towel wrapped around his waist, I couldn’t take my eyes off his gorgeous six-pack tanned by ultraviolet rays. I’m telling you, Sleepy Joe with a towel around his waist was a god, and I had to bite my lips to restrain myself. Unfortunately, the temptation was ongoing because he took many showers, at least twice a day, in the morning and early evening, and if it was hot, in the afternoon also. The fight between the brothers often concerned those fifteen or twenty minutes that he spent in the shower. Greg would pound on the bathroom door yelling at his brother and asking if he was going to start paying the bills. And he was right, all that water and electricity for hot water weren’t cheap. But Sleepy Joe didn’t turn off the water; instead he yelled back at his brother that he was a pig, a dirty goat. And this too had some truth in it.

What a strange twist of fate, I thought when I saw my brother-in-law pass by me half-naked with steam coming out of his pores. That body, specifically that one and no other, is the one I’d have wanted beside me on my honeymoon, when I sunbathed on the Hawaiian beaches. Sleepy Joe knew exactly what was going on and he squeezed all he could out of the triangle, an electric triangle that vibrated dangerously when he was in the apartment: an older man, his young wife, and the younger brother. But now that I’ve told you about Joe’s six-pack, I should also tell you about the double-beamed cross on his chest on which I was almost crucified. One day, Sleepy Joe and I were seated on the sofa
 . . .
but wait, not yet, that part comes later. I can’t help it; I keep jumping around and messing up the story. No problem, Mr. Rose, you can fix the order later before it is published.

The weird thing is that Greg didn’t even notice, naive as can be, sticking an Adonis in the house thinking that his young wife would take no interest in him. Greg, who was suspicious of everyone, jealous of everyone, who when we got home would make a scene if he had seen me speaking with anyone in the office, even if just on friendly terms. And who would threaten me with having to return the green card if I didn’t stop being such a whore. No man escaped Greg’s false suspicion, not the grocer, the neighbor, the insurance representative, his retirement buddies, my past loves, my doctor, and especially my gynecologist. My husband tortured himself imagining that I did things with all of them, or would if I had the chance, with all of them except one. When it came to Sleepy Joe, my Greg never had a single suspicion or bad thought, only brotherly chastisements, paternal affection, and the instinct to protect, my poor Greg; meanwhile the kid and I, pure lightning and thunder.

It made me shudder to think that Sleepy Joe was watching me. Greg had to punch his time card at eight in the morning, but since my hours were more flexible, I gave myself the luxury of leaving the apartment a little later. During that difference in time—twenty minutes, half an hour, an hour at most—Sleepy Joe and I would be alone. Sometimes he simply stood in the doorway not saying anything while I brushed my hair or buttoned my blouse.

“You need something?” I asked his figure in the mirror.

“No, I don’t need anything,” he responded with longing and sarcasm, as if to say, I need you, my little bitch.

And not a single suspicion from Greg. Is that maybe why I ended up in bed with Joe, the only man who could approach me without the threat that I’d lose my green card? I’ll confess it here: I tore it up in bed with Joe, touching the sky with my hands, making love to him not once, not twice, not three times, but many hundreds more, and to make it worse, right there, in the same marital bedroom I shared with Greg, on the same mattress and sheets, under the glare of the very same Christ hanging from the cross.

And since I mentioned my bedroom, I should describe it, because it is my great pride and joy. Even before I got married, I decided to do it first class and not spare any expense. I chose mint green for the spreads and curtains; I knitted pillow covers in white and arranged them against the headboard; I bought a double bed with an orthopedic mattress, which was actually a mistake because it did not leave enough space for the two night tables in white wood, or the dresser and the bedside lamps with their bell-shaped fringed amber shades that emitted a warm, intimate light. Over the dresser, there was a wide mirror where I’d apply my makeup in the morning light, because there were no windows in the bathroom and Bolivia had always warned that if you put on your makeup under artificial light you would end up looking like a sad clown. Later, when Greg moved in with me, he put up that crucifix over the headboard. I abhorred it because it was so realistic, so bloody, a nightmarish thing that clashed with the décor. I don’t know if I’m being clear, but that crucifix is some antiquated disagreeable thing that had nothing to do with the mint-green blanket and curtains that I had chosen to brighten my life.

A double-beamed cross on three blue mountain ridges, that’s how Sleepy Joe described the tattoo in the middle of his chest, some Slovakian symbol for something about the native land, and under the cross, in Gothic letters, the legend “Lightning over Tatras.” My Greg had exactly the same tattoo, double-beamed cross on three blue mountain ridges, and the same legend, “Lightning over Tatras.” Just like Sleepy Joe, the tattoo was in the middle of his chest. Neither of them liked to talk about it, but I realized that it had religious and patriotic importance for them. Was it the mark of a legion or some rebel group? Did it have to do with a place of origin, some fraternity, or the mafia? I never knew. Sleepy Joe liked to recount how he had ordered his two lovers to get a tattoo of the same cross on their asses, but smaller, thumb-sized. More bullying from Sleepy Joe, with the touch of a truck driver. If he was a truck driver. He said that his two girlfriends or wives or lovers, whatever they were, worked at night, in bars or other dives, and he showed me pictures of them that he carried around in his wallet. I hated him for that and at the same time was obsessed and demanded details, and asked questions that were tormenting me: Do they know about each other? Do they know about me? Of the three, which one did he like best? And other such nonsense.

“What did they offer that I don’t? Tell me. What did they offer that I don’t?”

“They let me sleep during the day and don’t bug me about it.”

That topic had become a permanent conflict between us, so much so that at times it seemed as if I were more interested in Sleepy Joe’s girlfriends than in Sleepy Joe. I imagine that’s how jealousy works; they set up a blind boxing match against someone you don’t even know, and because of this you’re overcome with the zeal to dominate every minute detail about your rival, to know her by her short hairs. Only then can you realistically calculate the chances of defeating her. As to my brother-in-law, I was slugging it out in a phantom ring not with one contender but two. One was called Maraya, and she was a disco chick. Judging from her picture, she’d have been pretty if not for her wide nose and her protruding front teeth with a gap between them, not to mention the face of not having slept for a few months, and the bags under her eyes that made her look sick. I thought she was a drug addict. But she had a hell of a body, impossible to deny that. She was one of those women granted the miraculous power to remain thin where it is desirable to remain thin and full-fleshed in those areas where it is desirable to remain so. At least that’s what it looked like from the pictures where she was wearing a black spandex top, hot leopard-print pants, platform boots, a sailor’s cap, and huge hoop earrings. She danced at Chikki Charmers, a roadside bar for truckers in the countryside, twelve miles north of Ithaca, New York. According to Joe, Maraya specialized in ballads, because Chikki Charmers would put on themed shows depending on the time of night, and she performed striptease and karaoke with slower songs such as Billy Joel’s “She’s Got a Way,” Rod Stewart’s “Tonight’s the Night,” and the Commodores’ “Three Times a Lady.” Because I bugged him so much for details, Joe once told me that in Maraya’s contract there was a clause that said that each night she had to perform dressed according to the era, whether it was the sixties or the
Saturday Night Fever
period of the seventies, when they danced hard to release the stress of the week. That’s the mood that she had to create for the scene, and to show off that stunning body, she had to wrap it in clothes made out of Lycra and spandex, elastic, satin, silver pants; and she had to wear platform shoes to appear six inches taller than she usually was, and do pirouettes and other moves on the pole, while removing her miniskirt, hot pants, and crochet bikini. I think that was it, the seventies.

Are you surprised, Mr. Rose, that each detail has been engraved in my memory, even the silliest ones? You probably know from your own experience that nothing bores more into memory than jealousy. Sleepy Joe’s second girlfriend went by the name of Wendy Mellons. She spoke Spanish, had children by other men, and was considerably older than Maraya, and older than I was, and taller and fatter, and apparently much older than even Joe himself, although he’d deny it. With a spectacular pair of tits and a formidable ass, according to him, but as far as I’m concerned she was a hammy grandma, a diva past her prime. She worked as a bartender at a place called The Terrible Espinosas in Ca
ñon
City, south of Colorado Springs, Colorado, the birthplace of the two Slovak brothers, which is maybe why Sleepy Joe loved her so much. This Wendy Mellons must have been like a second mother to him, for there is no other way to explain why he’d be so in love with that Little Red Riding Hood granny.

“Your two girlfriends are a pair of whores,” I liked to tell him.

“What do you want from me?” he responded. “If honest wives like you don’t give it up for me.”

And we laughed about the situation. What else could we do? In the end, I was married and in no position to demand a fidelity that I could not give in return. Of course, with Joe the laughter did not last long; it was but a brief ray of sunlight in between the thundershowers of the day, because he was just as soon overcome with a rage that poured from him like streams of black vomit.

“Get out of bed,” I said after we made love, “we have to get dressed and pick up this lion’s den; your brother will be here soon.”

And it was as if I had cursed his mother. Did not he, after all have a right to nap a little after a good fuck, or was I some pitiful whore that had to get up right away to wash off what men had dumped between my legs? When it came to offending others, Sleepy Joe had no limits. Rudeness. But not that kind of rudeness that is innocuous but the kind with malicious intent.

“I’m leaving this place!” I screamed at him in the midst of my frustration, and I didn’t know what to fear more, that Joe would stop me with a whack or that Greg would discover the whole scenario.

So I just started to clean, clean like a madwoman, not overlooking one hair or leaving one drool unwiped, one wrinkle unsmoothed, not the smallest bit of his sperm floating around, nor any traces of what had just happened, not even the memory of so much desire and so much sex and so much rage that had transpired in that bed. I opened the windows wide and sprayed air freshener throughout the house and doused myself with perfume behind my ears and deodorant between my legs. At the last minute, I was able to grab Joe’s underwear, hanging from the feet of the Christ, to whom I’d beg,
My beautiful sweet Jesus, you who died on the cross, close your eyes, pretend you have seen nothing, forgive my sins and promise me you will keep my secret.

At times, Sleepy Joe would disappear for weeks, sometimes even months. During those times we knew nothing about him, did not get any calls or any other signs of life from him, as if the earth had swallowed him up. And then one day when I came from work the little red-and-green candy wrappers would be there, scattered on the floor of the living room, the ashtrays would be full of butts, and Sleepy Joe would be stretched out on the couch watching some shopping channel.
Where have you been? What were you doing? Why didn’t you call? We thought you were dead
and so on. They were useless questions and expressions of concern, because he never responded or explained. He reappeared just as he had disappeared, Casper the Friendly Ghost. One time he did say something. He had returned with one of those black armbands used for mourning, and I asked him who had passed away.