Dove Season (A Jimmy Veeder Fiasco) (12 page)

“Okay,” she said, nodding her head in short, quick movements.

“Thanks.”

She took my hand and squeezed. “There’s a conversation that we haven’t had yet. It’s not time. You’ve got your father on your mind. I’m sorry about Jack, about what you’re going through. I should have told you that earlier.” She turned to me. “When I’m here, when I’m working, I can’t get close. I turn something on. Or off, I guess. People die here once a week or more. I keep a distance. I like your father. And shit, Jimmy, I like you. I’m sorry to see what you’re going through. Sometimes I forget that the people here are people.”

“You have to,” I said, trying to give her an out.

“But you’re my friend. You were right. Despite the time, despite our issues, despite everything, we are friends. No matter if I’m mad at you, you’re still my friend. It should hurt me to see you in pain. It’s fucked up that it hasn’t until now. It’s fucked up that I haven’t even realized how much pain you’re in.”

At that moment, I wanted to hold her. I wanted to kiss her. I did neither. I just sat with her in that shitty chapel, holding her hand. Holding her hand and wishing things were different. Wishing the impossible.

The house looked marginally presentable when I left the house that night. My primary method of cleaning consisted of piling boxes and boxes of stuff into the extra bedrooms to the point of ridiculousness. As long as Yolanda stayed in the living room, kitchen, or my old bedroom, the house would pass muster.

It was about eight thirty when I walked across the road. I was bored with cleaning and a little antsy, so I decided to head over early and knock back a few drinks. I hadn’t had a drink since that night in Mexicali, and I was due.

I immediately spotted Bobby’s Ranchero parked between a couple of mud-covered pickups in front of Morales Bar. Hopefully the relaxing drinks that I planned on having wouldn’t end up as a bar fight. One can dream.

“What are you doing here?” I asked Bobby.

“I bought you beers,” he said, darting his eyes toward two bottles on the table in front of him.

I gave his shoulder a squeeze and sat down across from him. I held the bottle in front of me for a second, looking at the liquid inside, and then I took a long, cold pull. “You come to see Yolanda?”

“Of course. You fucking kidding? What am I going to do, read a book and stop before the last chapter? No way I was going to miss it. No fucking way,” he said, grin in place.

“Don’t let me get drunk, okay?”

“I’m probably not the best person to hold that responsibility. I’ll grab a couple more beers.”

Two hours later, I was buzzed, but not drunk. I had willed myself to nurse my drinks rather than gulp them. With the heat as it was, it was hard not to just guzzle every liquid in front of you. But the last thing I wanted when Yolanda showed up was to be shit-faced and falling over.

A little after ten thirty, Little Piwi entered Morales Bar, his massive bulk filling the door frame. He glanced around slowly and then entered. Alejandro followed him. They were immediately accompanied by five women, all of them dressed in what looked like discarded maid of honor gowns. A lot of ruffles and taffeta. The men in the place perked up. I even caught a couple of muddy-booted field-workers adjusting the collars of their plaid work shirts and taking off their sweat-stained caps. Next thing you knew, they were going to lick their fingers and straighten their eyebrows.

Alejandro made eye contact, gave me his best shark smile and a nod, but walked to Mr. Morales, who moved to the end of the bar to greet him. They shook hands and had a few words, leaning in and speaking directly into each other’s ears. From a distance it looked like they were necking. The girls stayed close to Little Piwi near the back door. The younger ones peered wide-eyed and scared at the leering men who surrounded them. The older ones, their age obvious by the amount of makeup that caked their faces, looked too tired to care.

None of the girls fit Pop’s description of Yolanda. They were all short, under five foot five. Bobby read my mind.

“I thought you said she was tall? A couple of these girls look they snuck over the border of Oz, not Mexico.”

“You think he’s trying to pull something?” I said.

“I don’t know what he’d be pulling, but I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?” Bobby nodded up toward Alejandro, who was walking to our table.

“
Buenas tardes, amigos
,” Alejandro said, one hand on each of our shoulders.

“Where’s Yolanda?” I said, starting to believe this was a big waste of time.

Alejandro smiled. “Yolanda is outside in my van. I bring her in, everyone thinks she’s available, for sale, for them. I leave her outside, no confusion. No trouble. Everyone knows who everyone is for. She, your Yolanda, is for you.”

I started to stand, but Alejandro put some light pressure on my shoulder. Enough to make me sit back down. “Finish your drinks. I have small business. Make some money. Money always comes first.”

I decided not to push it. After all, Tomás was doing me a favor. And in a sense, so was Alejandro. Although it appeared to be through some reluctance. But he was right. What was the hurry?

I watched Alejandro walk the girls out the back door past Little Piwi. He gave Little Piwi some last-minute directives as the men in the bar lined up. They acted like nervous children, hats and caps in hand and wonder-filled eyes anticipating the fun just outside. Alejandro stood back and watched as Little Piwi took the money from the first five men. Satisfied the transactions went smoothly, Alejandro whispered a final message, rubbed the bald monster’s head, and walked to the front door. When he reached the door, he turned and gave me a “What are you waiting for?” shrug. Bobby and I looked at each other. We downed our almost full beers.

I had to give Alejandro one thing. He had an efficient workforce. As I exited the front door, I caught the first customer returning from the back door out of the corner of my eye. He appeared more relieved than happy, but I guess that’s what you get for thirty-five seconds of love.

Alejandro’s van was parked under the salt cedars a little up the road. It was an orange late-seventies Dodge family van with a small, bubbly, heart-shaped window on the side and dingle-balls visibly hanging at the top of the windshield. Alejandro unlocked the van and whipped the sliding side door open.

Yolanda woke, her body curled catlike on the shag interior. She yawned, stretched, and sat up, looking at the three of us, waiting and ready for whatever was next. She was beautiful. Long dark hair, big dark eyes, smooth dark skin. I guess what you would describe as dark features. But there was something else. Three men, two strangers, were staring at her from the open door of a van. And she didn’t look afraid. Her neutral expression communicated a confidence and an acceptance that there was nothing we could do to her. That there was nothing to take.

“
Estás lista
?” Alejandro asked, holding out his hand to help her out of the van.

“
Sí
,” she replied, her voice surprisingly deep. She ignored his hand and slid on the carpet until her long legs struck ground outside the side door. The move pushed her skirt high up her thigh. Bobby gave me a look that said what I was thinking. Wow. She was a tall glass of
agua
.

Alejandro gave her a hard squeeze on the ass. No pleasure in it. A demonstration of power. Bobby took a step forward, but I held up my hand. He stopped. Yolanda turned toward Alejandro and made a face that should be reserved for the first time one cleans a fish.

She pulled an overnight bag out of the van and turned to Bobby and me with a big smile. “Hello,” she purred with a rehearsed lack of accent, as if that might be the only word she knew in English. She turned to Alejandro, her eyes on Bobby and me. “
Cual?
” she asked.

“Me, I, me,” I babbled like an idiot, momentarily forgetting that she wasn’t actually for me. A part of me wished she was. I took a breath and suppressed those thoughts.

She cocked her head and approached me slowly. The smile never left her face. Her eyes danced up and down me, not giving Bobby a second glance. It was as if everything else had dropped away except the two of us.

She set her bag down and held out her hand to shake. “Yolanda,” she said.

“Jimmy,” I answered, shaking her delicate hand.

“Jimmy,” she repeated, making a conscious effort to pronounce the J.

“Bobby,” Bobby chimed in.

I turned to Bobby, giving him my best “shut the hell up” look.

“Okay, okay,” he said, walking back to the bar. Yolanda and I stared at Alejandro until he got the hint and followed. We silently watched the two of them walk back to Morales Bar.

“
Donde está su carro
?” she asked as she took a few steps toward the row of pickups on the other side of the bar.

“
No carro
,” I answered. “
Mi casa
,” I said, pointing across the street. I picked up her bag and took a step onto the road. Yolanda stopped, the smile leaving her face. “
Su casa? No. Señor Veeder vive allí
.”

“
Sí
. I am
Señor Veeder. Yo Señor Veeder.
I mean,
Señor Veeder es mi padre. Yo soy
his son, his
muchacho
,” I said, mangling not only the language but its pronunciation.

“
Su hijo
?
Jaime
?”

“Yes.
Sí
. His
hijo
. I’m his son, Jimmy.”

“Jimmy.” She said my name again, but this time with a hint of recognition and affection. As if she had remembered some shared anecdote from the past. She walked up close to me, her nose inches from mine. I could feel her breath on my lips. Then she kissed me on the cheek and stepped onto the road toward the house. I watched her, came out of my trance, and ran three steps to catch up.

I woke up to the smell of coffee.

I’m not sure what I had expected when I stumbled into the kitchen. But I hadn’t expected Yolanda cooking at the stove and wearing Pop’s apron over a flower-print sundress. I’d only seen Pop wear the apron on the birthday I had bought it for him as a joke. “Quiche and Fondue Me” was printed on the front. It looked better on Yolanda.

She turned, gave me a brief smile, and then went back to her frying eggs. “
Buenos días. Hice café. No habia comida, pero las gallinas tuvieron huevos
,” she said casually, but too quickly. I got the gist of it. Good morning, coffee, no something food, the
gallinas
something the eggs. What the hell was a
gallina
?

“Morning.
Buenos días
,” I answered. “
Qué es un gallina? Un pollo?
”

“
Sí.
” She giggled, realizing she had taught me a new word. “
Una gallina es un pollo
.”

“
Gracias
,” I said, pouring myself a cup of coffee from the full pot. “
Café
?”

“
No.
” She smiled. She had made the coffee just for me. And she was cooking breakfast. I had to give Pop credit. He had excellent taste.

“Can I help?” I said, and then I took a second to translate in my head. “
Puedo ayudar usted
?” I winced at how bad that must have sounded, hoping I communicated something. I held out my hands in an effort to pantomime cooking and then pointed at myself.

“
Gracias, no.
” She skirted past me and walked directly to the silverware drawer. She pulled out two forks and then opened the cupboard above and took down two small plates. She squeezed past me again and brought the plates to the edge of the stove. She snapped her fingers as if remembering something and reached for the salt and pepper shakers hidden behind the sugar bowl.

She knew where everything was. She knew her way around the kitchen. Not any kitchen, but this kitchen. I didn’t even know where the salt and pepper shakers had hidden themselves. When the toast popped up in the toaster, I jumped a bit. I was staring so intently that I had lost myself in her.

She dished the eggs onto the two plates and pulled the toast out, smelling each slice before putting one piece on each plate. She held up both plates and walked past me to the dining room, turning in the doorway. “
Desayuno
,” she said. Then in rehearsed English, “Breakfast.”

The night before I had been worried that the language barrier was going to be a problem. My Spanish was obviously awful, and Yolanda’s English appeared to be close to nonexistent. I was concerned that she would misunderstand and come on to me before I could fully explain that I wasn’t the customer. It had ended up being far easier than I thought, as if she already had a good idea of why she was there.

“
Tú no es por mio. Tú va a Señor Veeder mañana
,” I had explained. My high school Spanish teacher, Mr. Huerta, would have cried or hit me on the back of the head with an eraser in disgust.

“I go to Jack.
Mañana. Sí. Donde está Jack?
”

“Jack,
Señor Veeder es enfermo
. He has cancer. Cancer?
Entiende
?”

“Cancer.
Sí, entiendo.
” Her eyes had dropped to the ground, the smile leaving her face for the first time.

“
Señor Veeder puede para tú.
He asked for you. He’s dying,” I had said, not knowing the right words.

And with that, she kissed me on the cheek and walked down the hall. I watched her until she disappeared into the bedroom, giving me a weak, uninspired smile and a small wave before closing the door.

Breakfast was pleasant. We said almost nothing to each other while eating our eggs and toast, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. It was that kind of silence that old couples earn after being together forty years. A mutual peace. I was eating breakfast with the prostitute that I had found for my father, and it felt perfectly normal. Better than normal. Yolanda looked up at me from her food, smiling in a way that made the rest of the world go away.

I smiled back and said, “
Bueno huevos
,” because I’m an idiot.

“
Gracias
,” she answered, and then she reached over and pushed the hair away from my face. “
Muy guapo. Parecido a tu padre.
”

I’m not a blusher. I’m just not. But at the moment, I could feel my face flush. I looked down at my plate. The three minutes of silence that followed didn’t have the peace from before. Yolanda made me nervous in the way a crush makes you nervous around a woman you barely know.

Eventually, Yolanda said, “
Me gusta su padre. Me gusta Jack
.”

I like your father. I like Jack. That’s what she said, but this is where any subtlety of the language was completely lost on me. I like your father. I like Jack. Is that
like
like or just like? They knew each other. That was pretty obvious. But knew how? I knew Pop liked her. He had asked me to find her. It was like I had no idea what the word “like” meant anymore. I answered in the best way I could think of. I shrugged and jammed my mouth full of eggs.

Yolanda refused to let me wash the dishes, going so far as to slap the back of my hand playfully when I reached for a plate. I showed Yolanda the bathroom and shower and tried to explain to her about the cold water/water pressure issue. It occurred to me that Yolanda, depending on where she grew up, might be used to cold showers. For fifteen minutes I mangled the Spanish language by stupidly repeating, “
Agua frío.
” I tried to decipher her words until I realized that she was trying to tell me that she had already showered while I was asleep. What is life without a little comedy?

After I took my shower and dressed, Yolanda was nowhere to be found. Walking from room to room, I kept expecting to see her sitting in a chair or thumbing through a book, but she wasn’t in the house. For a brief moment, I panicked, convinced that this had been some elaborate scheme and she was just here to rob Pop. But then I looked around the house and came to my senses. Who was I kidding? There might have been a few things worth stealing, but good luck finding them in the mess.

I found Yolanda outside walking along the side of the house and eating pomegranate seeds one at a time from a cracked open pomegranate. She daintily took each seed out of the husk and put it in her mouth. I could see the subtle motion of her jaw positioning the seed and then grinding it between her front teeth. One seed at a time. At that rate it would take her three days to finish that pomegranate. She turned to me, smiled, and held out the pomegranate to me. I shook my head as I walked to her.

She sat down on the concrete slab next to my nemesis, the water pump. I gave it a wicked sideways glance, reminding it who was boss. (It was.) Yolanda continued to eat the pomegranate, her fingers stained red. I sat down next to her. And for the next hour, we just sat. Yolanda worked through one seed at a time and I watched her. Talk was even cheaper when you didn’t understand each other. All in all, Yolanda was excellent company. I hadn’t had a morning that pleasant in a long time.

We got to Harris Convalescent around twelve thirty. I had called Angie on the drive to give her fair warning that we were on our way. She had assured me that Pop and Yolanda would not be disturbed.

Angie was at the front desk when Yolanda and I came through the double-glass doors. Yolanda wore the same sundress and carried her small overnight bag over her shoulder. Angie gave a noticeable eyebrow lift when she saw Yolanda. Angie gave me a smirk and an overexaggerated flourish and bow, with an elaborate, “You may enter.” I was going to introduce Yolanda and Angie, but it not only felt unnecessary, but inappropriate. I kept it to a nod and headed down the hall. Angie caught up to me and without a word put a blue pill in my hand.

At Pop’s door I motioned for Yolanda to wait. She nodded, switching her bag from one hand to the other. I gave the door a light rap and entered as I usually did, not waiting for permission.

There was another man in the room. A man in a suit. He sat next to Pop’s bed. Papers littered Pop’s tray and covered the man’s lap. Pop saw me and said softly to the man, “We’ll finish this later. Tomorrow maybe.”

The man turned and I recognized him as Clem “Red” Fidler, Pop’s lawyer and one of his closest friends.

“James, how you been?” Red stood, holding out his hand. “Your father and I will take care of this some other time.” Red might have had red hair at some point in his life, but he had been completely bald the whole time I had known him, his pate speckled with dark spots. I had always liked Red. He was a straight shooter. And as lawyers go, that was rare.

I shook his firm grip. “Thanks, Red. Doing good. How’s Bertha?” Bertha was his oldest granddaughter. We had gone to high school together. I wasn’t that curious, but I thought it polite to make small talk.

“Married to a preacher. Four kids, if you can believe it,” he said proudly. Pop shuffled the pages in front of him into an orderly stack and handed them to Red. Red stuffed them in his open-top briefcase and headed for the door.

“Jack, I’ll come by in the next couple of days to get the last few signatures,” Red said. “It’s good to see you back down, James.” He walked out the door, almost bumping into Yolanda. He gave her an extended stare. He looked back at me and Jack, then at Yolanda, then disappeared down the hall. The door closed. Yolanda remained outside.

“I thought you got all the paperwork finished months ago. Or did you think better of it and take me out of your will?”

“I didn’t tell you? I’m a Hare Krishna now. Leaving everything to the ashram.” Pop smiled. “Had to cross some t’s, dot a couple of i’s, and umlaut a few o’s. Is that Yolanda in the hall? My eyes were too far.”

“Sure is. How long should I skedaddle for? A couple of hours?”

“What time is it now?” Pop asked, squinting at the clock on the wall.

“About twelve thirty.”

“How about three? You entertain yourself until then?”

“I’ll be waiting in the lobby at three.” I silently set the blue pill on the nightstand and walked to the door.

Yolanda with her ever-present smile walked into the room as I exited. As the door closed, I watched Yolanda approach Pop in his hospital bed. Life returned to his eyes and smile. I saw something special happen, something important, and I was glad that I was able to give Pop that moment. All week, I had failed to give him the Big Laugh, but somehow Yolanda’s presence gave him something more real.

Angie was still at the reception desk. I strolled up, knocking on the counter. “They’re in there,” I said.

“I can’t believe you talked me into helping you,” she said. More as conversation than any real complaint.

“You’re not helping me, you’re helping Pop. But both of us thank you, Angie,” I said, meaning it.

She waved it off, pretending to work.

“Do you want to go to the movies with me?” I asked.

She looked up.

“I know you can’t play hooky right now, you’re working, but we used to go to movies together all the time, and it was fun, and I thought maybe, you know, we could see a movie together and then talk about it after, over coffee or a drink, just a movie. Not dinner. Dinner seems too much. A moving picture,” I said, realizing how ridiculous I sounded as I said it. But for whatever reason, I couldn’t stop the flow of words coming out of my mouth.

“Maybe,” she said after a few seconds.

“What? Really?” said Mister Cool. “Really?”

“Maybe.”

“Thanks. I don’t have many people down here. People I really know, you know. And as much as I like Bobby, we always end up hammered or worse.”

“He’s a good friend.”

“The best. No question. Shit, Angie, I’d just like to spend some time with you. We’re different people now. Like to see how we’ve both changed.”

“Just friends.”

“Just friends,” I lied.

And Angie and I left it at that. Not making any real plans, but opening up the possibility of seeing each other outside of the building where my father was dying.

I drove through El Centro. Just crisscrossing streets and getting nostalgic over different buildings that sparked forgotten memories. Because gas isn’t free, I parked downtown and walked among the mostly vacant storefronts. I tried to remember what businesses had been there when I was a kid.

El Centro Jewelers was gone. And so was Sports Mart, Valley Music, the Central Buffet, the Fashion Boat, and Desert Office Supplies. There had once been a magazine shop where I had bought comic books every Sunday as a kid, the name escaping me. The storefront was now being used as an office for the United Farm Workers.

Luckily, Book Nook was still around. The only used bookstore in the Imperial Valley and air-conditioned to boot. I browsed the stacks and picked up a couple of mysteries and a Hubert Selby book I had never seen. I remembered a conversation I had had with Pop, him telling me that he had never read Nathanael West’s
A Cool Million
. He had made the mistake of reading
The Dream Life of Balso Snell
. And due to his policy of not reading everything by an author, he had never read it. I picked up a copy.

El Centro is not an easy town to kill a couple of hours in. There is nothing to do. Especially when it’s hot. Luckily, I liked to drink. So I went to the Owl Café to join the lunch crowd for a couple of beers. The interior of the Owl is unique. It is a long, thin building, with a long counter running along each wall. On one side was the restaurant counter, and the other counter was the bar. When the Owl was full, it was almost impossible to squeeze between the backs of its patrons. Many of the regulars would just shift their weight from one stool to another, depending on when it was time to eat and when it was time to drink.

The lunch crowd looked like they may have also been the breakfast crowd, only a couple of people at each counter. Two Mexicans scarfed down burgers at the lunch counter, while a couple of barflies that I recognized by sight, but not name, stared at the labels of their bottles of Coors Light at the bar. When in Rome. I order a Coors Light, sitting two stools down from the nearest barfly.