Into the Beautiful North (24 page)

“Sal!” the guy at the desk called.

“In a minute, boss!”
Chava called. He glanced up at Nayeli. “Pendejo,” he muttered.

They laughed.

He cleared his throat.

“And—Irma? What can you tell me about Irma?”

“She is alone,” Nayeli said.

Chava Chavarín might have jumped a little.

“She never married.”

Chava let out a small puff of air.

“I think I mentioned that she has won the election for mayor.”

Chava laughed.

“That’s my girl,” he sighed. “That’s my Irma.”

“But Don Chava,” Nayeli said. “What of the blonde waitress? What of the baby?”

“Sal!”

“Hol’ your horses, boss!”

He put his palms flat on the table. Studied the backs of his hands.

“I have to go,” he said.

Then he settled back in his seat.

“I am not going to go.”

Atómiko walked past, on his way to the toilet. He flipped Nayeli’s hair. Chava watched him.

“She left,” he said. “The blonde. Of course. She left with a sailor. Who wants a poor Mexican cannery worker? She took a bus to Texas. I never saw her again. I never saw the baby.”

He closed his eyes. Nayeli fell back. He was crying.

“I could not go home. I was so ashamed!”

He banged his fist on the table.

Atómiko reappeared.

“Cheer up, pops!” he said.

Chava looked away from Nayeli and collected himself by watching Atómiko try to cadge a bowling lesson from Yolo so he could feel her arms around him. Chava wiped his eyes. “I don’t know if I like that fellow,” he noted. His face was the saddest thing Nayeli had ever seen.

“Off your butt, Sal!”

“On Mexican time here, boss!”

Nayeli reached across the table and put her hand on his.

“Now it’s my turn,” she said. “Let me tell you a story.”

When Chava Chavarín volunteered to join them on their journey, it was only after Nayeli assured him that everyone in Camarones would be thrilled to see him again. Everything would be forgiven—they needed him. Even Irma needed him. He wrung his hands.
Irma,
he mouthed. He nodded once and shook her hand and went back to work. Nayeli looked across the rail at Yolo and held up one finger. Yolo hurried over to her.

“Isn’t he old?”

“He’s wise.”

“I thought we wanted young men.”

Nayeli said, “He knows all the words the Americanos use. It’s a very complicated language.”

Yolo thought about it.

“He’s not a soldier. Or a cop.”

“But Irma asked for him.”

Yolo nodded slowly. She grinned.

“That’s one,” she said. “For Tía Irma!”

They slapped hands.

Matt and Atómiko were rolling appalling gutter balls. When the girls were able to pull them away, Nayeli made her full report. Matt drove home. He had to admit, he was loving this whole story. It was like falling into one of the books he’d been reading before he dropped out of college to go to Mex. It was crazy.

They got home to the doors of the duplex standing open, and the lights all on. Vampi was out on the lawn with Carla the tweaker. They had a hibachi fired up. Apparently, nobody cared that they were cooking hot dogs at midnight. Next door, Sundog the Mongol and Alex El Brujo were engaged in a furious bilingual game of Guitar Hero III.

Yolo nodded at Vampi and held up one finger.

“We got one,” she said.

Vampi smiled and looked into Sundog’s door.

She raised her hand and showed them two fingers.

“Two,” she said.

Chapter Twenty-four

R
igoberto wouldn’t let Tacho spend any money. Tacho felt guilty, but Rigo seemed to get a thrill out of helping him. He had prisms hung in his kitchen windows, and they shot rainbows all around the walls. In his bathroom, he kept tall brown bottles of almond oil shampoo and conditioner. Tacho smelled edible. Rigo’s housekeeper and cook were laughing girls from Playas de Tijuana, and they recolored Tacho’s hair and made great omelets that they ate with sourdough English muffins. Tacho had never eaten English muffins, and he had never heard of sourdough.

“Let’s have some tea,” Rigo said.

The girls placed a clear glass pot on the table. They dropped in a green puck of crushed leaves.

“Watch this,” Rigo said.

They poured in steaming water. The puck unfolded into blossoms and leaves, a small garden in the pot. Tacho had never seen the like—his mouth fell slightly open and he sat there smiling.

“I love that,” Rigo noted.

His lover, Wilivaldo, was in Mexico City shooting a commercial for Pan Bimbo. It turned out that Wili was also bleached blond, and his clothes fit Tacho, more or less. Rigoberto decked Tacho out in fresh black Jordache jeans and a black silk T-shirt. He put a pair of Italian shades on Tacho’s face and smiled. “What do you think?” he asked his cook. She nodded.

“Exactly,” she said.

“Exactly what?” Tacho asked.

“Keep the sunglasses on,” Rigoberto said.

He left the kitchen and returned in a minute with a picture in a gold frame. “Wili,” he announced. Wili looked like Tacho, or enough like Tacho with the shades that you would look twice. The spiky blond hair, the skin color. Tacho looked like Wili after Wili had slacked off at the gym for a year. The same sunglasses. They could have been mistaken for brothers.

“Audacity is the only solution,” Rigo said.

He reached into his back pocket and produced Wilivaldo’s passport.

He smiled. The girls smiled. Tacho smiled.

“Who wants to go to San Diego?” Rigo cried.

“I do! I do!” said Tacho.

It’s different in a BMW,” Rigo said.

They were in the slow simmering lanes of traffic waiting to enter Los Yunaites. The windows were up: the world was silent. The inside of the car was cool and dark. It had the scent of leather and Tacho’s sweet almond hair. Rigo had dabbed on the slightest hint of XX, and the cologne sweetened the smell imperceptibly. The CD changer was murmuring Manu Chao. Tacho held a go-cup with cinnamon coffee.

“No kidding,” he said.

The many gates of the border crossing were open. Agents in booths asked questions. Tacho watched them walk around cars, sometimes inspect trunks. On the big bridge over the booths, he could see cameras mounted every few feet, watching the traffic. Mexican curio sellers in blue smocks walked between cars, selling an amazing array of kitsch: plaster skulls, blown-glass pirate ships, brightly painted flowerpots, shawls, sombreros, Mexican blankets, statues of Bart Simpson, bulls’ horns, paper flowers, plaster Yodas, churros. The ubiquitous Indio kids wandered among the cars with their sad cardboard trays of Chiclets. Fake Red Cross volunteers with cans asked for change. A man with no legs wheeled his chair up and down the line, looking in car windows. He gestured at Tacho. Tacho hit the button and was hit by the wave of sound and exhaust as the glass slid away like melting ice. He gave the man his Mexican coins. The man said nothing, simply turned his chair away and rolled to the next car.

“Tacho,” Rigoberto said. “Don’t encourage them.”

The window re-formed and shut out the sound and the light.

“Don’t say anything when we get to the booth.”

“No problem.”

Rigoberto grinned and reached over to squeeze Tacho’s knee.

“I’ll miss you, you criminal.”

Tacho laughed.

“I owe you.”

“Not at all.”

“More than I can say.”

“Don’t be silly.”

They moved forward a car length.

“This is a good day,” Rigo said. “It takes three hours to get across these days. We’re really moving. Everybody’s hunting for Iranians. Nobody cares about us.”

Tacho looked up at the dead dirt-clod hills above the border and saw the trucks watching. He watched a team of US agents walk down the line with an agitated German shepherd. It sniffed at the cars. It strained on its leash, wagging its tail.

“You think it’s hunting for drugs?” Rigoberto asked. “Or bombs?”

“Or us,” Tacho said.

Another car length.

“Look relaxed,” Rigo said. “But bitchy. You’d be amazed how far a BMW and some attitude gets you. Let me do the talking.”

Tacho slumped in his seat and put on his best bitch face.

“That’s hot,” Rigo said. “Keep the shades on.”

He rolled up to the booth and opened his window. He took off his own sunglasses. Smiled up at the suspicious woman sitting on a tall stool within. She stood, adjusted her gun belt, was already looking beyond them to the next car as she held out her hand for their papers. She typed in the license plate information of the next car with one hand and reluctantly turned her eyes to Rigoberto.

“Nationality?” she said.

“Mexican, of course!” Rigo replied.

He handed over both passports, flaring them out like a small hand of cards.

She plucked them out of his hand and bent down to the window.

“You’re Rigoberto?” she said.

“Correct.”

“And you?”

Tacho ignored her.

“You!” she repeated.

Rigoberto smacked his arm.

“¡Oye, cabrón!” he scolded.

Tacho turned to her.

“What!” he said.

Rigoberto turned to her and blushed deeply.

“Please forgive Wilivaldo,” he said. “We’re having a bit of a spat.”

“A spat.”

“I thought a weekend of shopping, a nice stay in a hotel… You know. I am trying to bring love back into the relationship.”

She had a look on her face that almost made Tacho laugh.

“Love.”

“If not love,” Rigoberto confided softly,
“sex.”

She stared at him, her face a complete blank.

“I am hoping what they say about hotel sex is true!”

She handed him the passports and said, “You two have a real nice day,” and backed into her booth.

Rigo put up his window and sped into California as they laughed and turned the stereo up very loud.

Tacho had never seen such a huge freeway. It was so clean. No dogs or donkeys anywhere. No trash. He smiled when they passed a white Border Patrol truck and the agent inside didn’t even look at them.

“You will like it here,” Rigo said. “Los Yunaites is our kind of place.”

They parked in the Gaslamp Quarter downtown, and Rigo took him to Croce’s for some jambalaya and corn bread. They sipped Heinekens and ate in peace. Tacho was trying to make the moment last, so he wouldn’t have to face the inevitable farewell. Rigo understood. He knew Tacho had to get on with it, though. It wasn’t like they’d gotten engaged to be married. He checked his watch. He slid his cell phone across the table and nodded.

Tacho took the phone and called Aunt Irma. She had gotten Matt’s phone number from Nayeli’s mom. “Tell them not to go anywhere until I talk to them,” she ordered.

Tacho punched in Matt’s number.

A gruff male voice answered.

“¿Qué onda?” it said.

“Uh… Matt?” asked Tacho.

“He gone out, ese. Bye.”

“No! Wait!” Tacho shouted. “Is Nayeli there?”

“Nayeli? Who jou think Matt go out with, pendejo?”

“Oh.”

“Hey, is this the maricón?”

“Oh, no,” Tacho said. “Not you.”

“I am Atómiko.”

“God hates me after all,” Tacho replied.

Rigoberto dropped Tacho off at the visitors’ center on Mission Bay. He wasn’t into teary good-byes or big kisses. They slugged each other on the arms, and they pushed each other a couple of times, and they threw a wide back-slapping abrazo. They could have been celebrating a football win.

Rigoberto leaped into the BMW and jauntily sped to the freeway ramp. Tacho strutted around happily, in case Rigo was watching in the mirror. When the big black land-shark had vanished in the traffic, Tacho sat on a bench and held his head in his hands. He wasn’t going to cry. He wasn’t a teenage girl; he wasn’t Vampi or anything. Damn! He wiped his eyes. He walked down to the water, then he walked back.

He called Matt’s house on the pay phone.

The girls erupted in screams and bellows and shrieks and sobs.

Tacho had to smile.

In about fifteen minutes, a battered old pickup truck pulled into the lot. A terrifying Aztec covered in devil tattoos got out and glared at him. His T-shirt bore a dreadful occult symbol and the inscrutable words
FIELDS OF THE NEPHILIM
. Whatever that was, it couldn’t be good.

Tacho wasn’t sure what was going on. Was he going to get bashed? Oh, shit. He wasn’t as good a fighter as Nayeli.

The heavy-metal monster slouched toward him. The girls had given El Brujo a password. He didn’t understand it, but they said Tacho would. They said to find a boy with blond spikes. Mostly, it was old ladies and moms with strollers. Just this one guy.

El Brujo walked up to Tacho’s bench.

He looked around, not making eye contact. He crossed his arms.

He said: “Yul Brynner.”